IHateYou

This is nothing new. When I was hired at express (now expressjet) in late 90’s, upgrade time on the 1900 was literally 4 months or sooner if you were hired right when the bid was coming out (they were every 6 months then). Lots of guys took the quickest upgrade.

And you are correct with the majors bypassing guys for young studs. My buddy who was captain at express for 15 years couldn’t even get delta to talk to him. He was at a job fair and they told him he had “too many hours” and that he was “untrainable” because of his 15,000 hours. Thankfully another legacy picked him up.

More people have to die at the hands of relatively inexperienced pilots before anything will change regarding experience.

PhantomHawk

That was a different crop of applicants. You had to be worth a $hit to even make it to the RIGHT seat back then. For a while over the last couple years, anybody with 1500 hours and a pulse could get hired over the phone and some carriers would offer as many retrains and extra sim sessions as it took to crank out another butt in the right seat. Compound that with a lightning-fast upgrade, then pair that guy with another questionable FO.......and it’s a recipe for disaster. In my opinion, the airplanes themselves and the inherent safety of the system are the only reason things haven’t been worse. I know it’s verboten to speculate......but if half of the rumors floating around are true, then this accident and the CommutAir accident are solid examples of this problem.

tomgoodman

Much safer to take a raft trip down the river. What are the odds of being squashed by a falling donkey?

DownInPetaluma

I’ve heard of certain regionals doing 20-30 sims and 50-100 hrs of IOE to get new hires through. Why any hiring manager or VP would take this risk is beyond comprehension.

At the same time they can’t find enough captains who want to become LCPs. I wonder why...

pangolin

If the donkey falls on you the odds are 100 percent.

That’s how stupid this odds argument is.

deltajuliet

It doesn't by itself necessarily mean anything, but that part is accurate.

If true, this whole pprune narrative is pretty sad, unfortunate, and preventable. As has been said, it would be telling to see what kind of a schedule they had in the days leading up to the event, especially their current duty day. Maybe 117 will finally be coming to cargo.

Pogey Bait

Sir, that is what a regional airline captain is.... a flight instructor!

TiredSoul

You can’t blame a new hire for not knowing what they don’t know for what they have not be taught in training.
Plenty of Captains not willing to be mentors and share their experience and they somehow expect you to magically read their mind and be able to run all out right out of the IOE gate.
“I don’t get paid to mentor”.
Yes you do, that’s why you’re making more then your FO is making.

Name User

Seems like we should be doing basic sim evals for interviews these days.

I really doubt this is a problem just at the ACMI carriers, I'm sure it exists industry wide at the lower career levels. Hell even at my legacy, I knew crews who were "recycled" in intital training...that was unheard at at my regional even, if you didn't make it through you were toast, they might have given you a single sim lesson extra (maybe).

AirBear

I went straight from the USAF to USAir, never got any CFI time. After furlough I did the flow down to Mesa flying the CRJ200. As a PIC I was concerned with the low time SIC's, mostly about when to take the controls away from them. (this was before the ATP for SIC's requirement) My buddies who had lots of CFI time said "don't worry, you'll know". I'm like "but how?" They said you'll know. I'm like "OK". A few months later I'm flying with a very sweet young lady who had just finished IOE. She only got 1 or 2 landings on the CRJ200, the rest were on the 700/900. She had about 500 hours TT.

Landing picture is very different on the 200 with no slats. Got slam dunked into 18R @ CLT. She flared the jet about 50 feet too high and I watched the airspeed quickly go below Ref. My buddies were right, it was pure instinct, no thought process at all. I took the controls and recovered. Luckily we had enough runway left we didn't need to go around.