Originally Posted by The Hitcher

No, my point was, it goes both ways. As a downgraded captain, I've seen it as such.

I've heard some phenomenally dumb logic sitting left, and I've heard some phenomenally dumb logic sitting right. I've my share of brainfarts, for sure. I'm far from perfect, let's make that clear.

We have a flawed training system. It's spring-loaded to the arbitrary position du jour. They are capable of and do some fantastic work, to be sure, but two options remain when a captain with 15000 hr in TYPE downgrades forever or a gob****e with zero SA and ability are allowed to fly pax. Here they are, in no particular order:

1) Training dept failed
2) Training dept failed

They shouldn't have failed at all. I'm not being an apologist, but I'm certain there are things outside the snapshot of AQP that aren't occurring.

Am I saying the FAA is being silly? Am I saying the training department is shackled by stupid mandates? Am I saying that passing training at PDT is an accomplishment? Do we have the most experienced training pilots on the Dash 8 in the world? Does this all add up to making no sense at all?

The answer is yes. As long as we have a young-un crying on the line as a qualed FO, and an almost 2 decade CA downgrade occurring at the same time, something dumb is going on.