Originally Posted by
UAL T38 Phlyer
By the way, your listing of accidents that had military pilots is a non-sequitor. If I said "It turns out that in military accidents, the pilot was always a military pilot!" would be apparently laughable. Similar in airliner accidents: since, at most major carriers, traditional hiring standards meant that half or more of all their pilots were military, you would expect a military pilot to be involved in half or more of all their accidents.
Just chill, River. No one is attacking you personally, and I'd guess you are as able a 737 pilot as the next guy at SWA. Just accept this as gospel: If you polled the military guys on this forum, I don't think any one of us would say that our military experience made us a worse pilot. It made us better, and in my case, more trainable.
I won't ever doubt, debate, or argue that military training is far superior to civilian training. But when you have a very selective screening process, a very high standard of training, and well over a million dollars spent on it, that's what would be expected.
But to tie an incident that has not been mentioned, look at this one;
YouTube - C-5 Galaxy crash at Dover
Having superior training should (and usually does) make for a superior pilot. But as you mentioned, just because you had superior training, doesn't mean you are a superior pilot. How many eye balls were in the cockpit of that C5? How many instructors were in the front of that C5?. What is said on the CVR of that airplane? Something along the lines of "guys, I'm concerned", as well as "I don't know why we're even doing this anyway".
We can all point to the problems of the Colgan accident. Mainly, a training/competence issue. The guys is in the C5 obviously didn't have a training issue, but did they have a competency issue?
You can flame me if you wish, tell me something along the lines of "what you civilian types don't understand is blah blah blah". Sorry, won't change my point of view. Pilots are all prone to errors, regardless of the training we've received.
We all know the training differences between the Colgan crew and the C5 crew. But you want to know what one very, very, very big difference was between the C5 and Colgan? The C5 guys got lucky. Lucky their lack of competence didn't cause that fuel laden, heavy, 4 engine behemoth to slam into a populated area and kill a bunch of people on the ground. As well as they walked, hobbled, or were carried away from away from their mistake but live to tell about it.
Too bad we can't say the same of the Colgan crew.
R.I.P. guys.
Like I said, flame away. Not much more I can say.