Originally Posted by
CGFLYER
I'm not saying that military pilots are the best, but the training system in my opinion is superior.
Actually, they are the best but it's an apples to oranges comparison.
Military candidates are selected based on their performance potential, determined by an evaluation of their academic, athletic, and other records as well as medical and cognitive testing.
The military also gets to pick the cream of the crop because they offer free training, often free college, good pay, real benefits, and prestige. Don't underestimate prestige, it has a dollar-value too.
Then they provide high-quality training, but in limited quantities...you either learn fast and keep up, or you go home.
Once you finish training, you have about ten years to kill yourself and/or wreck an airplane while conducting tactical flying. If you make it through those ten years unscathed, the airlines would love to talk to you!
We all know about civilian training. There's certainly nothing to prevent someone with great potential from hooking up with a great training program, but you also get mediocre wannabees who can keep paying for more training, and retesting again and again after numerous failures (ala colgan).
But the military requirements are greater than most civilian missions, so again it's not a fair comparison.