The Walrus

I think by low, he meant that 2300 with 800 in the aircraft would probably mean that he was hired at Fedex with 1500hrs, which is well below the average hrs to be hired here with.

dojetdriver

What's the average total time of a typical single seat/IP pilot that only did the minimum commitment when there were hired at FedEx?

The Walrus

No idea, but you need 1500 hrs for an ATP, and it is required. I was just saying that the average flt time of a fedex pilot is probably around 4000.

dojetdriver

I was just saying that I think you'd be hard pressed to find a single seat/tactical pilot that just did the minimum military commitment, had the sponsor, the 3 recs from FedEx pilots that he/she has flown operationally with, did the meet n' greet, passed the interview, and had much more than the 1500 hours to fill out the app.

KC10 FATboy

My comment was innocent and I was trying to infer anything negative about certain classes of pilots or bring hate. TheWalrus said it best as to what I had been thinking.

I was interested in this accident because the USAF has had several KC-10s lose parts of the stab/elevator while encountering buffet. In one instance, I believe it was enough to cause damage to the stab trim jack screws/motors and the crew ended up with a jammed horizontal stabilizer.

I once had a TCAS RA which commanded a 3,750FPM descent. During the maneuver, it reversed itself and switched to a climbing TCAS RA. We were at FL280, 0.83M, and 565Klbs when it all started. Per the flight manual, I used the vertical speed wheel and autopilot to fly the RA (Air Force rules, not the TCAS maker's) and set the VVI in the green arc. When I rolled the vertical speed wheel from a descent to a climb, the aircraft shook violently ... very violently. Even though we were still at .83M, somehow the aircraft accelerated stalled?? I had our first set of receivers do a damage check of the tail and they didn't see anything unusual. We flew the mission and landed uneventually. I notified maintenance and they inspected the tail but found no damage.

A few months later, a safety rep from the Air Force and Boeing got in touch with me. It seems they were interested in my story and were investigating how the TCAS system could command rates of climbs, descent, and rollouts which could be outside the performance envelope of the KC-10. I've never heard back from them and I don't know what was or was not discovered.

One thing I know for sure, I'm not the only one who has had a KC-10 get into buffet like this.

FliFast

7 years of flying to attain 1300, but it's good quality ?

1300 hours is 1300 hours. 15 hours a month.

I'm not unappreciative of our courageous men and women of the armed forces, but call it what it is, and furthermore who cares how many hours the pilot in question has. None of us are immune to accidents, incidents, violations, and just plain boneheaded mistakes....experience just means you've probably already made the same mistake and learned from it without incident.

FF

MaydayMark

I "think" we've had more than one MD-11 GPWS alert (usually in heavy rain showers which used to indicate as terrain prior to a software fix), that, during the flight manual recovery procedure (even by rather petite women) damaged the horizontal stab? It a long moment arm and it wouldn't take much to "over G" the tail?

Jetjok

Yes, of course you're right. 1300 hours is indeed 1300 hours. And there certainly can't be much difference between C-172 time and F-18 (flying off of an aircraft carrier.) I'm sure any interview board would rate both guys about the same. Another interesting point is that if this guy got hired at FedEx with minimum time, he is either a good stick (or for you heavy boys, a good yoke) or he's got some serious friends on the hiring board. I prefer to think that he's a good pilot. I do agree that in this business, there are those who have and those who will. That's why they publish accident and incident reports, so that we can learn and hopefully not repeat anothers mistake.

JJ

The Walrus

There are those who have, and those who has been.

KC10 FATboy

I agree, that's why some of us were curious about this accident. But some of ya'll slammed the door in our faces with the "we've addressed it, you don't fly the MD-10, nothing to see here" attitude.

We weren't throwing stones in the glass house, we were trying to learn something to include in our bag of tricks.