PMeyer

You prefer a 737, or a DC9?

dundem

Surely a waste of my time, but here goes:

There are no facts that support the theory that low-timers (whatever definition you use) have higher accident rates. I've met a few senior Captains that were hired in the late 60's- early 70's with zero time and were aircraft commanders (DC-8's and -9's) with approx 3,000 hrs and 4-5 years of company seniority. If they could do it safely on Jurassic jets then, I don't see why newer more reliable equipment would be any less safe. It’s simply a supply and demand issue.

Side-note: Unfortunately, it's the same posters on these boards that continue to infect us with their ignorance that has brought down the average quality of info on these boards.

If, as is suggested, 19 year olds are being hired, at 25 yrs old that person would have six years of airline experience when they upgrade. What's scary about that?

A previous poster attempted to rectify some misinformation and I'll try to put a few more things in perspective. India has a huge population- over a billion with approx. 72% living in rural areas (Encarta). Without doing a very in-depth report, it is quite easy to see that a large % of Indians may not have access to the best education and living conditions. That said, when the population is greater than 1,000,000,000 even when a minority has access to good education (superior by far to much of good ole U.S.A.) there is obviously a large number of educated people who are accustomed to first world living conditions. It is my bet that these are the ones that are being hired at the airlines there and I would wager my next (paltry) paycheck that they are not interested in leaving their country to come work for even one of our 'best' regionals.

I understand that the Indian school system is also based somewhat on the British system and they do produce exceptional students (those that have access to it). For example- I have a friend that is a manager at Microsoft who is involved in hiring. He told me that there are candidates that they interview who had MIT here in the US as a back-up school. Point of this story? These low-timers are likely a higher caliber candidate than our average US regional F/O.

Underlying here among many posters is that US is superior in all respects to so many countries. It's time to face facts- we are middle-of-the-pack at best when it comes to airline careers right now. Not counting our top 5 carriers, our national prospects are in the toilets. It's time to stop thinking that we are so good that pilots from all over are salivating for our jobs. International pilots for the most part have no interest in coming here. They are better paid, better treated and have better career outlooks than all of our carriers (except maybe the top five) and we all know the top five would never (rightfully so) hire them anyway

RedeyeAV8r

I'll take that Bet. I travel to India all the time, even The Elite aren't living in what most of us would consider First world conditions. They do have a privileged life. Why are there so Many Doctors and Computer Software engineers of Indian Descent practicing their trade here in the USA?

Answer, they go where the Pay is? and they leave a culture of filth extreme poverty, disease and death (like I have never experience elswhere) I Can't blame them really, but the fact is they are willing to work for far less than the average 1st world Pilot.

Just look at what has happened to Dot.Coms and where did the bulk of their outsourcing go too?
Just call 1-800m Dell with a computer problem, who do you talk to?

As for asking what is wrong with a Zero time Pilot upgrading to CAPT in 5 years?
I will sum it up in one Word.............Experience. Yes in 4-5 years the Fledgling Pilot has seen a few things and has had some hands on time, but I'll take the guy who did 6 years in the Military and an Major FO for 5-9 years, or the civilan guy who Flight instructed for 2 years, Flew night Bank Checks a Beech for a year or two and then got on with a Regional for 3-5 years before he made it to a major of LCC and was an FO for 5-8 years before his Capt upgrade, thank you very much.

But 5 years total from zero experience to being a 121 Capt on a A320 or Bigger. No thanks , My wife and kids ain't geeting on that plane. You take the Fliedgling Capt and now he has a zero time wonder in the right seat and it is a recepie for disaster.

BTW they aren't planning on these kids flying RJ's. They are planning on them flying the heavy iron.

dundem

Redeye respectfully,

My statements are based on the aviation community, not healthcare or technology. The real reason the med. and tech. guys/gals come here is that on average they will have a better life here for them and their families than in India; the same does not hold true for pilots.

Please point me to some stats that say a 250 hr initial hire (brainy) pilot will not be ready for upgrade with > 4,000 hrs of heavy iron time.

Though I don't have nearly as much experience as you do, I have a varied background: I flew charters in C-206/207/208B and 210T and I know firsthand the kind of experience to which you refer (I'm typed and also flew the Dash-8 before). I have been there done that and have heard the hangar-talk associated with such flying. I'll tell you right now, shooting an approach in a C-207 in weather so bad that A-330's are in the hold may seem like good experience, but in retrospect is clearly asinine. No pilot needs that kind of experience to tell them it is a bad idea- that should've been a no-brainer.

As an experienced aviator, I often value your and others' opinions; however, they are simply not supported by facts and stats. Maybe one day this will change, but for now they are merely strong feelings.

I currently work for ExpressJet and I've been flying with captains that got hired with mins two years ago and have just recently upgraded- one as young as 23 yrs old. Will you have your wife and kids on these flights?

RedeyeAV8r

[QUOTE=dundem;222073]Redeye respectfully,

I currently work for ExpressJet and I've been flying with captains that got hired with mins two years ago and have just recently upgraded- one as young as 23 yrs old. Will you have your wife and kids on these flights?[/QUOTE]


Respectfully, No.

dundem

Redeye,

Enough said. My hat's off to you.

vagabond

Here is a study from 2003 on pilot age and accident rates. It's sometimes difficult to understand the results because the methodology is different on the various studies. Some have the proper cohorts, some don't, and yet others were looking at something else altogether. I am not a statistician, but I think the conclusion of this particular study is that there is "U-shaped" relationship between the age of professional pilots holding a Class 1 and an ATP certificate and the accident rate for operations under 121 and 135. However, it goes on to state that the mean differences between the age groups were small and not statistically significant. I already read enough dry, boring legal stuff and am not about to spend valuable personal time reading dry, boring aviation stuff!

http://www.faa.gov/library/reports/m...ia/age60_3.pdf

Anyway, I don't profess to speak for my friend Redeye, but at the end, all of us here are expressing our opinions based on our own personal experiences, which necessarily vary greatly. This is what makes this forum interesting and a good learning experience. Whenever I pose a question or a thought, someone here has seen it or done it already.

When I spoke of my squeamishness, I was referring to pilots trained mainly on a simulator and who had no real life experience behind the yoke. India is trying to solve its problems the way it sees fit. Perhaps the same problem will occur here, if it hasn't already. The bottom line is that there will always be a need for pilots due to retirement and attrition. If more leave than new ones coming in, then there probably will be more 19 year olds flying on the right, next to 25 year olds on the left. I wonder about having a 65 year old on the right with a 25 year old on the left.

Finally, I commend everyone on this thread for keeping the dialogue civil and free of inflammatory comments.

KoruPilot

If one looks at incidents, not just accidents, I think you will find that flight safety problems do in fact relate to experience. Really, who honestly thinks they do not relate?

Look at Jetsgo in Canada. A number of seriously scary incidents becasue of inexperienced crew. Luckily nobody died, but if they had kept going that may not be the case. This is from pilots in the airline by the way who thought they were in over their heads, but the job was going to be done by somebody. Nobody dead, no CNN, the public remains ignorant and the talking heads have their plausible data for thing's like cadet programs and MCL's. I have worked in flight safety lately and know there has been a rise in serious incidents in LCC's using cadets. Some are great, freaks of nature who can walk into it without the experience, but most just don't have the fundamentals they would have obtained flying bags. thing's like SOP's, ATC, FMC's and maintenance go only so far in keeping thing's safe, but adding another hole in the swiss cheese because it is economically justifiable is bad for us all.

With India and other places in Asia it is a matter of keeping the airplanes in the air, someone has to fly all those Boeing's and Bus's that they have ordered. Heck, some guy's even pay for the opportunity. How safe would the average passenger feel if they knew the driver had to pay for the job. I just wonder if we would have the argument, or the potential problem if this desire to have a billion seats flying around by rich guy's measuring size didn't exist.

On a different note, I really like India. The guy's that we have trained lately for a big operation in India are all well experienced jet pilots and very good drivers, so I wonder who is hiring all the low timers. I did get an email for a sub pay B777 job lately with a national Asian carrier, if I bought my own rating. I guess they didn't read the part of my CV that said I already fly the thing. Makes me wonder about how much attention they pay to who they hire period frankly.

dundem

Hey Koru,

I've read your posts for months now & you are one of the few consistently excellent posters on these boards. Thank-you.

That said, my only contention with this theme is that so far, the stats haven't backed up the theory about low-timers. The premise sounds fine on paper, but has yet to play out in the real-world. I don't doubt that there has been many a close call with low-experience types, but without systemwide data that shows data for everyone I won't be convinced.

How many times have we flown with high-experience captains that are just so complacent that they are sloppy and borderline dangerous? I know it's happened to me at least as often as a green captain being a little behind the aircraft. There is danger on both extremes of the experience curve and it is acutely individual specific.

More important factors in safety are the quality of the applicant, the depth of training provided, the experience in the left seat and the companies' culture. I'll sit behind a 350 hr BA, LH, etc. F/O anyday with my family.

Viliamu

Hello all,

This has been an interesting thread. Thanks to all for some good posts.

I have a couple of meager comments to add, if I may. Like Koru, I currently work in the aviation safety arena and have been fortunate enough to receive some formal training and excellent experience through a former position in aviation insurance.

Perhaps one reason for the seemingly-insignificant statistical differences vis-a-vis experience is that most of the aircraft are flown with two-person crews. Koru alluded to the Reason model of accident analysis, the "swiss-cheese" model, and adding a second crew member to the flight deck generally takes away a couple of holes in the slice (assuming, of course, a well-trained, qualified, and current slice of cheese in the second seat).

However, if BOTH pilots are inexperienced, in both life and the cockpit, then perhaps things may be different. I don't think we can accurately compare the current changes in places like India and China with U.S. or European aviation history. Infrastructure, language, maintenance, weather, lack of radar and precision approaches, and the explosive growth promulgated abroad all add factors not necessarily present during the nascent stages of commercial aviation here in the U.S. (again, talking about commercial, for-profit ops with two-crew aircraft, not barn-stormers or WWII fighters playing chicken with railroad locomotives).

Second, and perhaps more importantly, it's a commonly-accepted tenet of aviation safety these days that statistical analysis only tells you what happened in the past; only through aggressively adopting industry "best practices" will the accident rate anywhere be lowered significantly from where it already is. Suffice to say that putting two very young adults in the cockpit of a high-speed metal tube in one of the aforementioned underdeveloped areas isn't exactly industry standard, or a reflection of those best practices.

Again, though, the swiss cheese model (assuming for this argument that we subscribe to Reason's causation beliefs) requires many holes to line up for an accident to occur. The important thing to take away from this is: the absence of accidents does not indicate a safe or healthy operation.

Viliamu