Originally Posted by
TPROP4ever
Why then does it seem in the midst of all this that all line pilots see as whats best is a knee jerk reaction to supposedly raise pay, rather than what is needed to really make a safer industry. I am behind Babbit on this one, he is calling for stricter training and oversight, rather than an arbitrary number, to appease the public ( really look and pay attention to what he said). It actually looks like instead of some magic pill we all might face stricter, tighter standards to continue to fly 121, regardless of your hours when you entered. Is that so bad. My question is what are some of you scared of... Wouldn't you rather have an 800 hour pilot that has been vetted and proved himself, rather than a 1500 hr pilot that got a free pass into the industry because of an arbitrary hours minimum he met??? Trust me even back during the boom there were plenty of 1500+ hr pilots that were failing training events. HR 3371 as currently written is but a bandaid.
I agree with a lot of what you are saying but the problem is who is going to set these higher standards. There are a lot of FEDs out there that are only FEDs because they couldn't fly an airplane and were either fired or quit their airline jobs. After 3407 our training department, which I believe is one of the best in the contry, came under scrutiny from the FAA. Every day FEDs were observing PCs, LOFTs, and flight training. Many people with 20+ years in the business were failing for dumb things. One captain failed because he did his right seat training (all captains are dual qualified) after landing flow to slowly. A couple others failed because they recited the memory items incorrectly (saying press instead of push). They have to be 100% verbatim no exceptions. Is it going to save lives saying that you press instead of push the bagg exting button? NO. There were guys failing the stall maneuvers because they did not maintain +/- 100 feet on recovery. What made the Colgan flight come down? pulling back on the yoke. What do you think is better in a "stall maneuver" flying out of the maneuver and losing 150 feet or pulling back to maintain +/- 100 feet getting the pusher and not being able to recover. Did I mention that the stall maneuver is only done once every 2 years for FOs at my airline? We even had a check airman fail while giving a checkride, causing the instructors to be on edge. The PCs aren't practical tests they are just a list of boxes that need to be checked. I heard one debrief that went along the lines of " you may be Chuck Yeager on the line but if you lose 150 feet on a raw data stall recovery in the sim you are going to need some more training. Now on the other side, you could be an ace in the sim but be a danger to society if you go out and fly the line (sim instructors that only fly a few hours a year)
Babbitt wants an endorsement for flying in icing conditions. Why? He said you need an endorsement for high altitude operations. I don't have one and I have 1000s of hours in the flight levels. That is all covered in airline training. The icing would just be another box to check. He wants CRM training. I don't know of any airline that doesn't do CRM training. I know some do more than others. There are so many different experiences out there. There are many well rounded pilots out there but everyone has some area that is their weak point and some area that they excell at. I've done mountainous back country flying, high performance aerobatics and flown in some of the worst icing in the world (Cascades) in a light twin, but I never had experience in tropical weather with daily thunderstorms like what you see in Florida or Squall lines like in the great plains until I flew for an airline. You have the best chance of having well rounded, experienced crew, when people with a vast spectrum of experiences come together.