Hi!

The average mil pilot is smarter than the average civ pilot due to the screening process. This means that the mil guy is more likely to make it through a training program. Being smarter does not make you a better pilot, it just makes you smarter (and, if you're quite a bit smarter, it makes life more difficult..the closer your IQ is to 100, the easier it is to function in society).

The avg mil training is better than the avg civ training. If you have a low-time guy, you definitely want the mil guy. Once they have been flying for a while, the training is not that big a deal. At 10-15,000 hours, I don't think there would be much of a difference in the overall quality of a civ vs. mil guy.

I flew about as little as possible, because I got screwed on flight time twice, and I still got about 1500 in 6.5 years. That's about the min flying hours for that time frame.

Lumping all the mil pilots together doesn't work, because there is so much diversity. A High School only army helo guy, a C-17 guy, and an F-18 carrier guy have MUCH different backgrounds and experience.

The fighter guy who said that they learn CRM, etc. is basically wrong. The CRM you need for an airline is WAY different than what a fighter guy does. It's not better or worse, just different. In my limited fighter-type aircraft training, I was continually pushed to get in and fly, and quit using a checklist. There was no concept of flows, profiles, callouts or checklist usage like there is at an airline, so that is a disadvantage to single-pilot guys. Other guys would preflight WAY quicker than me...they said there's an ejection seat, so why bother taking so much time.

My buddy was an A-10 guy, and he had to learn MASSIVE multi-tasking, like talking and listening on three radios at once, while he flew, avoided threats, marked and ID'd targets, and acted as a FAC to bring other guys in on target. You don't get anything remotely like that normal civilian experience, so some civ things were easier for him because of it.

A multi-crew mil guy will be closest to understanding airline flying, but that doesn't mean that in 1 year he will be any better than a helo or fighter guy, there's too much variation.

The fighter guys, definitely have more outwardly exposed ego, because of the job requirements. How they fit in at an airline is basically their personality and how they choose to act. They can fit in as easily (or as crappily) as any other type of mil pilot.

For the guy(s) who were saying the military TRAINING program weeds out more guys than a civ program are just wrong. The military SELECTION proces is where the weeding is done.

In the old days, the training process depended. If there were more guys than needed slots, due to over-recruiting, or whatever, they would axe guys pretty quickly. BUT, if they needed guys bad, they would re-train, and re-train, and re-train. Today, it is different, because the selection process is so complicated and expensive. The mil does NOT want to weed guys out, and they work very hard to train them and keep them moving forward.

The main point that is important, is that the range of pilots in the military, and in the civilian world is very large. There will ALWAYS be some mil guys better than civilian ones, and some civilian ones better than mil guys. This is also why there are some women who are FANTASTIC pilots. Women do not make as good a pilot as a man, ON AVERAGE. But, we don't hire averages, we hire an individual, and I know a bunch of women pilots who could kick YOUR (and my) A$$!

The MOST important thing, as someone already said, is that the airlines' hiring and training process should be tweaked as much as possible to ensure that everyone successfully coming off of IOE, and out of the sim training, will be at a level of competancy that will ensure that the plane lands at the end of each flight (or successfully rejects the takeoff). To clarify this, especially for the pilots who "grade" landings, you either land, or something bad happened.

I was once asked, "What happened back there?" I replied, "We landed." And then we taxied in and shut down, just like after 99.9+% of all the legs flown in the aviation industry.

SAFETY should be the goal of EVERYONE in the industry.

What are YOU doing to improve the safety of YOUR industry, TODAY???

God Bless!
cliff
NBO