Atlas Shrugged

I agree with you. But that rigorous process becomes very grey in our current system. I am not against ab initio programs in general, just the bad ones. Somebody has to pay for the training. The military does a better job because they are not as price sensitive.

USMCFLYR

Yes - more evidence - -- of an idiotic statement.
The right people will get hired?
Good. Rather have the right people than the wrong people.
You can not invest yourself?
You mention over and over again how you wish you could.
Once again you spend an amazing amount of time trying to justify your decisions, not only to yourself, but to the aviation population at large.

Shy - airline flying has often been described as the same flight over and over again.
I imagine that it is better than the CFI hour that you are trying to relate to with your 1 hr a thousand times over, but at that level of expertise, is it really that much different?

The US has reason to talk from a high horse position on many areas of aviation.
It runs one of the absolute safest aviation industries (every aspect of aviation) in the world on a consistent basis - year after year.

UAL T38 Phlyer

Not giving you flak, but painting a more complete picture.

While you are correct that the military often is an ab initio program, the selection process as well as the training syllabus makes it a far different program than taking flying lessons from an FBO or University Flying Program.

First: physical standards. The military standards will disqualify (my estimate) about half of the applicants who could otherwise hold an unrestricted FAA Class 1.

Second: educational standards. I believe all four services require a four-year degree (Army WO program is my only question-mark). While a college degree is not a direct correleation to aeronautical success, it does give testament to mental ability to study, learn, apply, manage time, organize, etc....all skills which have a place in aviation.

I would estimate the predominant intelligence quotient of military officers I have worked with is in the 110-120 range, which means, they are above-average.

Third: Stress and Time-Compression: a student at ERAU who struggles can continue to train as long as he has enough money.

Not in the military, especially the Air Force. You're given 54 weeks to finish. If you are making progress, but not at the ascribed rate, you'll probably get washed-out. Done. Go away. Don't come back.

Sometimes they get washed-back a class, but rarely more than once.

This means weak-swimmers are usually eliminated.

Fourth: Aerobatics: in theory, one could go from Student Pilot all the way to ATP and never go beyond 60 degrees of bank, and +20/-10 pitch. All the services (Army is my question again) start in the primary phase with aerobatics. Why? It teaches a guy how to fly an airplane in any attitude, not just the ones he is used to. It teaches confidence. It teaches air-sense.

I had some pretty distorted ideas about spins prior to my military training, and I thought I was fairly well educated on the subject.

About one-third of all USAF students will fly the T-38, and they have to earn that potential in the T-6. Even after all the screening to get in, when they graduate, 50% of these guys will be in the bottom-half of their class. Only one-third to one-fourth of the T-38 guys will get a fighter.

Fifth: Supervision. Now a newly-minted USAF ab initio pilot, the heavy drivers will sit right-seat under the eye of an IP, and then experienced AC.

Fighter guys: after finishing their training (same limitations as 3 & 4 above), they will be wingman. About all they are good for is to follow Lead.

I had nearly 3000 hours total, and 700 in the F-4, before I really knew what I was doing.


My point here: no one was regularly putting guys in bizarre circumstances in airline training, such as a full aft-stick stall, etc. (Colgan 3407; AF 447). If you don't train them for it, they won't know how to interpret....let alone react.

'Ab initio' in the military isn't the same thing as in the civilian world.

Atlas Shrugged

Degree not required for Army warrant but many have one and most eventually get one if they want to reach the top.

Army fixed wing pilots go through full stall and spin training in an aerobatic Zlin. We should get more training, but what we get is good. I did mine with a former F-18 driver, and I had some training in gliders as well on my own.

Adlerdriver

I get the “quality vs. quantity” argument but that’s a very simplistic approach to this discussion.
T-38 Phyler did a great job addressing that, so I’ll just “ditto” his thoughts and move on.

When countries had “older jets”, they also had much older non-jets. They weren’t putting ab-initio graduates into the right seat of a DC-8 or 707 with less than 250 hours of actual flying time.

Even Lufthansa’s ab-initio program (which I assume would be one of the better programs) only gets their students about 200 hours of actual flying time over 2 years. That could be the best training in the world but 2 years and 200 hours isn’t going to compare to the kind of experience the typical civilian or military pilot gets as they work their way through the traditional path to an airline cockpit.

My point is that once a pilot arrives in the cockpit of a modern airliner, there is little opportunity to really increase his skill level beyond what he got there with and he’s basically done building the foundational skills he will use for the rest of his career. That’s just the nature of airline flying these days.

Autopilot use is part of life at an airline and it comprises almost all flying done by most pilots. Hand flying, when it’s done, is probably accomplished with auto-throttles on and a flight director leading him around by the nose. Even if he hand flies with all the magic off to cruise and during descent (which I doubt happens with much regularity), the crew is probably swapping legs which means the FO is probably only the flying pilot half the time he operates, if that. If he’s on a 777 or 747, then his chances to fly diminish even more with the addition of long haul operations, relief pilots, etc. Long haul pilots at most US airlines have to use the sim pretty regularly to remain current because they can’t get 3 and 3 every 90 days. Relief pilots or “cruise pilots” who never fly tend to be entry level jobs at some airlines.

I can teach a basic pilot with a small number of hours the rote procedural knowledge necessary to fly a modern airliner (especially with judicious use of the autopilot). You may find a few who might blossom into decent pilots because they were born with nature ability but the average guy will remain average. He’ll never be the same as a pilot who has spent thousands of hours hand flying, working his scan, basic stick and rudder skills and instrument approaches. He’ll be an adequate systems operator that can fly basic maneuvers, stick to the script, follow company procedures and read a checklist and that is about all. Throw him a serious curve ball and the fact that he really has very little flying skills to fall back on is going to become a serious issue.

On AF447, to be fair, the Captain wasn’t even in the cockpit when the event began. Describing the other pilots as “clueless” is a bit extreme given the situation. At that level of professional aviation, I doubt those other pilots thought they’d be dealing with a fellow crew member who didn’t understand the basics of stall recovery. Also, the fact that the Airbus stick being held full aft for most of the event would be really difficult to notice by others in the cockpit (especially if you assume the guy holding the stick actually knows what he’s doing) was a huge factor, IMO. You can definitely point a finger at system design with regards to that.

If the “bad reasons” for the aviation disasters you refer to aren’t pilot error, then they don’t really apply to this discussion. Pointing out potential issues with inexperienced pilots and potentially flawed training programs doesn’t constitute a “high horse”. When a country’s national airline’s annual flight schedule is 10% of the monthly fights of all the US airlines, pointing to them as an example of effective training simply because they lack a pilot related accident is an ineffective comparison.

mike734

I remember flying with a female captain a few years ago. She was probably 50 years old but still pretty hot. I am sure she was smoking in her 20s. Anyway, she came up through the corporate ranks to get her time before she landed an airline job. In the few years she flew corporate she got 15 type rating! I guess she was just that good.....

Noseeums

The unfortunate reality is you just don't have to be that great at the controls to do this job anymore. Technology is replacing skilled labor with unskilled labor (and cheaper labor). Eventually I don't think airlines/corporate will need more than one person up front. That's quite a ways down the road though.

bcrosier

This statement is debatable - the U.S. has absolutely been the forerunner in safety from the beginning. Have we had some disasters? Certainly, but I challenge you to show me anywhere else with the amount of traffic we have in all segments of professional aviation who does it any better.

Yes they do, but for a cost that private industry won't stomach. There is also a different level of what is considered acceptable losses in a military vs. civilian commercial operation.

At least partly attributable to aircraft design, but that's a different debate.

See above. To your statement about flying 1000 hours vs. 1 hour x 1000: I while I don't completely discount this statement, it's certainly not flatly true. You simply cannot claim that there is nothing to be learned over a certain span of time, measured both on the Hobbs meter AND the calendar. There is no short cut around that. You can accomplish a great deal with excellent instruction - there is no doubt about that either; but it is NOT a wholesale replacement for real world experience.

PS: After typing this I realized there was another page on this. T38 & Adler both hit it squarely on the head. To claim otherwise indicates you don't know what you don't know.

ShyGuy

It's good now, but the US suffered a lot in the 80s and 90s for hull loses. The 2000s decade was the decade of regional crashes, and only one mainline loss (AA 587, excluding 9/11).

ShyGuy

I know all too well about the above. I found out that my vision wouldn't qualify me. I was told the vision I had was okay to have after one is accepted and flying in the AF, but for entry, the requirement was still the requirement and I couldn't meet it.

I'd venture to say a majority of airline pilots today (myself included) do have a 4-yr college degree.


Good. As it should be. As for college students at flight school programs, I've seen some wash out too. Some just can't cut it, no matter how fat the wallet or how deep the loan well runs.

I agree with the above, I think there should be a requirement to teach this stuff to PPL level in training.


I never understood the egotistic want of a fighter jet. Oooh, a shiny fighter. Big deal, I would have been perfectly happy flying a cargo airplane or refueling tanker. A bomber or a fighter pilot would have been good too, but I wouldn't care.

Foreign airlines do the same, some actually have a 3rd crewmember in the jumpseat even on A320s/737s for supervision for a new-minted ab initio pilot.

I agree, but that's where airline training needs to improve. As I've already written, airline training was emphasizing the wrong thing in landing stalls. I remember being taught to "hold it" in the stick shaker, and sometimes that meant slight back pressure and power out of the stall at max power. The actual response should be immediate nose down and max power, and then accept the altitude loss (minimize it, but recovery is first and foremost).

Don't forget, plenty of ex-military pilots have gone to airlines and crashed too. It's not just a civilian thing.

I think we need to improve airline training standards to go beyond just what is mandated in a PC per Part 121 regulations. For the Airbus guys, more emphasis should be done flying in alternate law (but the flying protections are like any other airplane in terms of low speed and high speed cues, minus a stick shaker).