The problem
 

Regarding: spin training, stall tng vs speed awareness, Gulfstream, PFT, commuting, pilot pay, and whatever other current topics have been offered to explain the reason Colgan 3407 fell out of the sky. All are valid topics, but they don't address the real problem. That problem is actually very simple. It's a two part problem, but it IS simple.

Part One. Pilots who have not learned their craft have been allowed to sit in the seat of an airliner. More later.
Part Two. The airline pilot certification system is not capable of catching the pilots who don't YET belong in the seat of an airplane carrying people for hire.

About my first point. For decades, a pilot spent many years as a civilian actually flying airplanes. Either as an instructor, or freight dawg flying checks, or any one of hundreds of other positions that allowed/forced the pilot to gain real stick and rudder time. Military pilots accelerated the process, but the large majority of their time was spent either training, or being trained. Either way, both backgrounds allowed a pilot to learn real flying skills and build real world experience. These pilots had the experiences that allowed flying to become somewhat instinctive. Flying, just as driving, becomes somewhat instinctive after many miles and hours.

Over the last fifteen (or so) years, the industry exploited the intent of the certification system and started putting people into airliners that just didn't belong in an airliner at that stage of their career. Management justified this because it met the letter of the law. But the rules were written in a time when the only pilots being hired into an airliner with less than 1000 hours were highly trained military pilots. (I'm civilian trained, but I recognize that a Navy trained F18 guy with 250 hours is better trained than the average civilian commercial pilot applicant)

Thinking back to when Pinnacle had an empty leg crash and on this Colgan crash, it is obvious that the aeronautical knowledge, decision making and skills of pilots who go straight to an airliner with only a few hundred hours are potentially lacking when a situation arises that demands good flying instincts.


When one thinks about it, the airline environment is sheltered. We never overbank, over pitch, underpitch etc. We always keep everything in the middle of the envelope. If a pilot didn't develop skills necessary to deal with the edge of the envelope, he/she WILL NOT develop those skills in the airline training environment. If the industry and the FAA insist on allowing 250 hour pilots in transport category aircraft, they must also insist that these pilots demonstrate the ability to recognize and recover from operations near or at the edge of the envelope.

+1. Great post skybolt.

I had 6000 or so hours when I was hired by a major - I have to say that I learned a lot from the mistakes I made in flying those 6000 hours. Some big mistakes come to mind immediately, but I'm sure there are many more small mistakes that made me the professional pilot I am today.

Nothing beats experience.

This will not be a popular position ....especially amongst my former regional brethern, but I believe that as MINIMUM.. if you want to be an AIRLINE PILOT at ANY level.... to sit in EITHER SEAT you should be an ATP. Would that magically solve all the problems... NO. but it would be a start. You hear it bantered about all the time how the "regionals" were hiring 300 hour pilots. Yes it did happen, I know of ONE at RAH, a female. I do know it happend at other carriers.. but not every new hire during the last boom was a 300 hour wonder. In my training class at S5 for the E170... our low time guy was a 900 hour CFI...and we had a number of guys like that. MOST of the guys and gal... had 1200-1500 hours, several came from other carriers, COMAIR, MESA and IFL. I had top time at just about 3000 hours. we had two people wash out... one had 1300 hours, the other 2400 hours. Both had problems with the "speed" at which things happened in the jet, they just could not adapt. I had a friend who went to ASA with 1900 hours... they had a couple of guys who had less than 500 hours.. but most had well over 1000 hours. My point is..... were very low time pilots hired... YES... were they a majority... I dont think so ... not by a long shot... infact I would bet the sub 800 hour pilot was a small minority across the board. Maybe its was different at some other carriers and they hired LOTS of those low time guys... but that was not my experience.

That would be a great start!!

ATP as a minimum!

Requiring an ATP for an airline gig is a wonderful idea. This would force pilots to get some real piloting experience, as alluded to earlier, instructing, flying freight, etc. Seems like that could be an easy rule change, hint hint FAA.

I agree 100%!! That would weed out alot of people and force people to be qualified at airline transprt pilot standards before flying paying passengers. It would also eliminate most of the zero to hero pft programs at the same time. It would also force the airlines to pay more to attract qualified applicants and not just anyone with minimum quals and a warm body to fill a required position.

I emailed this exact recommendation to my elected government reps yesterday.

Something tells me that you are absolutely correct. I wish there were numbers published, I would be interested if ALPA published them for their carriers. Just once. Regardless, there will probably not be many sub 1000 hour pilots, if any, hired for a while once hiring commences again.

If i remember correctly renslow was hired in 2005 or so with as he quoted on the CVR 670 hours. Working for colgan for 3 years averaging 900 hours a year accounting for the occasional vacation and training events, you end up just around 3000 hours or so. is this not expierence? Expierence is not the god send to aviation that you think it is. Ive flown with very expierenced captains who were some of the most dangerous people I have ever seen in an airplane. I have also flown with brand new captains who had just been in the right place at the right time and were perfectly safe with low total hours. The reason this crash happend was momentary lack of attention that allowed the airspeed to decrease at a rapid rate. Even Sully could have a momentary lack of attention and allow that to happen. Does he have enough expierence for you?

Setting ATP as the mins for airlines might also even out this boom-bust cycle we have seen. Airlines will have to plan better when they hire as the pool of applicants would only be so big. Though they will argue for the low mind as Europe uses airline academies with no issue.

The problem is that all airlines train "approach to stalls" and not stall and spin recovery. When you recover from an approach to stall you add power and maintain pitch or in some aircraft increase pitch. After doing this over and over again in the sim, I can see why one would pull up rather than nose over in an actual stall. If you pulled back 50 times in the sim when you got the shaker, you'll pull back when you get the shaker in the airplane.

Next time you have a PC ask the instructor to let you recover from an actual stall at 1500 feet and then another one at FL370. If you have never done it, you will shortly find out that you don't want to see it for the first time after a long day in the ice going into BUF.

"The Problem" is many things. One of the major problems is pilots nowadays rely too much on automated systems to keep them in the air. They simply do not know how to fly the airplane in abnormal situations. :mad:

I'm not saying you're right or wrong and this isn't directed at you personally.

The difference is, we are supposed to be profesional airline pilots. If you can't read your flight manuals and learn the differences between approach to and post stall recovery and/or ask for the training when you have 5 minutes in your recurrent training, then you probably aren't a professional airline pilot.

At this point in our careers, we are armed with enough tools to figure out what our strong and low points are. And we should be using that information to make oursevles better, safer pilots. This isn't the type of job where you should be the epitome of "just meets standards". Yes, the standard is good enough, but if you aren't keeping yourself in the books and trying to learn bigger and better things, then this probably isn't the career for you.

This isn't about him. It's about the fact that a pilot flying as a 121 airline pilot Should posess a ATP license. Less than ATP mins is just a way for airlines to get by with mnimal pay and hiring practices. They just sneak by because the captains are training and mentoring the newbs as they gain experiance. That's fine but is that really the time or place for training?

My point is simply that pilots who ENTER the airline business having never learned to deal with the edge of the envelope will NEVER be trained by the airlines to deal with that possibility. If a pilot has poor stick and rudder skills and inadequate stick and rudder sense, the airline flying and training environment will NOT impart those qualities to that pilot. A pilot must gain good flying "sense" from somewhere other than the airline training department.

The airline training department is specialized in teaching the systems and operations of a specific airplane, and teaching the maneuvers required on a PC and type ride. A pilot could go through decades of recurrent and PC's and still not ever get any training about flying when the doodoo hits the fan.

My position is that pilots must gain that flying ability before they get to the sheltered airline training/operating environment.

It's about skills and abilities, not about hours or Expierence (sic).

No, that is not a problem. Airlines fly part 25 airplanes, you don't spin part 25 airplanes.

A pilot needs to have the basic stall recovery techniques ingrained in his brain well before he learns how to deal with an incipient stall in airline training. Stall recovery (reduce the angle of attack) is different than recovering from a low energy approach to stall.


In CFI training, you learn all of the laws of learning. One of those laws is primacy. First in stays in the best. If a pilot comes to the airlines knowing how to recover from a real stall, that ability is not erased by airline style low speed recovery training.



good advice. I've done real stalls in swept wing jets (functional flight checks) and they are an eye opening experience. If the bird really stalls, constant altitude is not an option.

Heck, for some reason when I was flight instructing I never got the memo and thought you HAD to have an ATP to fly a transport category aircraft. So that's what I set out to do building all sort of hours to get to my 1500. Then one day I was poking around online and was astonished to see that all I needed to get a job flying a jet with a bunch of people was 500/50. Holy crap! I could have gotten a job years before. Needless to say I applied right away with just shy of 900tt. Call me stupid but you never really think of those things when you are goal oriented and see your goal within arms reach.

Getting back to post, yes the best pilots are more expensive. And the public may very well see a move to more expensive pilots in the future. In turn, this will naturally increase the price of a ticket and therefore a drop in demand. I think its a good thing... it will keep the public more safe. But will economics allow this?? Afterall, its still just a businness.

Great post man! I can totally agree with all of the above. From time to time I get people that ask me "How long would it take me to get all the certifications to become an airline pilot?". My answer to them is "not long enough". The question should be "how long should it take me to get all the training needed (not required) to become a pilot that can safely transition to a transport category aircraft?"

Before any one of us could even solo, we have been taught that at the first indication of a stall, PUSH FORWARD and add power... what are we all missing/denying here?

Great post skybolt.

"Good judgment comes from experience, experience comes from bad judgment".

Not all 3,000 hours are equal… For example, a pilot who has been exposed (for 3, 000 hours) to the sheltered environment of FAR 121 flying ONLY, may not be prepared for the 1% of the time that can potentially expose him/her to a catastrophic event (e.g., dual engine failure after bird strikes on take-off, or a stall in night IMC at low altitude). On the other hand, a pilot who has flown 3,000 hours in many different environments, such as single pilot, CFi, night freight, charter, military – in several different airplanes, is more likely to be prepared to handle the demands of that 1% of the time. That’s what experience is all about.

Today, we fly very reliable airplanes; consequently, it’s very easy to fall into the complacency trap that makes us believe we are great pilots because we grease the landing after an uneventful flight. Lets do our profession a favor and don’t fall for that fallacy.

Lets face it, anybody can be a “good” pilot when everything is working properly or an “abnormal” is easily found in the QRH. In contrast, professionals excel when they are faced with exceptional situations.

+1 on this post too!

I've been reading the various threads on this crash, and wanted to post some thoughts, but Skybolt summed it up perfectly. Pilots need to have a solid background in airmanship before they get into Part 121 ops. I've been flying 121 for 13 years now, and had 7 years of military flying before that. Most of my 121 time is exactly the same hour repeated a few thousand times. Still, the basic stick and rudder skills that I learned early on keep me right in the center of the envelope when flying passengers. Nice, safe, and comfortable.

When you look at the NTSB reenactment of the Colgan crash and see the airspeed drop 50 knots or so in a space of less than a minute, you have to ask yourself: What pilot could allow this to happen? I don't care how tired you are; when you're in the approach phase, your eyes are on the instruments whether you're the flying pilot or the pilot monitoring. Another example is the Pinnacle RJ crash. The pilots climbed to FL410 and the airspeed was what, a hundred and eighty knots indicated or something? No alarm bells going off here?

How much money is Colgan (and their insurers) going to lose in the lawsuits? Probably hundreds of millions. How much would it have cost them to pay their pilots more, thereby attracting much better pilot applicants? I dunno, maybe 2 or 3 million. I hope the lawyers stick it to them, and maybe, just maybe, the rest of the industry will wake up. Not holding my breath, though.

[quote=skybolt;612597]My point is simply that pilots who ENTER the airline business having never learned to deal with the edge of the envelope will NEVER be trained by the airlines to deal with that possibility. If a pilot has poor stick and rudder skills and inadequate stick and rudder sense, the airline flying and training environment will NOT impart those qualities to that pilot. A pilot must gain good flying "sense" from somewhere other than the airline training department.


Bolt - Great thread. I was fortunate enough to be a Standardization pilot in Navy primary training and as such got to train other instructor pilots. The best part of the syllabus was out of control flight training or OCF. We would put the instructor trainee in numerous situations such as inverted flight, zero airspeed departures (90 degrees nose up and zero airspeed), approach turn stalls, skidded turn stalls, spins etc - it was a blast, and the best part was that you would soon be recovering the aircraft instinctively. I am sure that civilian aerobatic pilots have similar training experiences.
I think this would be a huge advantage in recovering an aircraft, just as the "windshear" simulation in recurrent would help us in a actual windshear type of situation. Think about how much more difficult an actual windshear recovery would be without the training - same thing applies for upsets.

Scoop

Great post skybolt. I think we can all agree that experience is needed. However where do you draw the line? Both had experience (121 and CFI). Would an ATP suffice? The captain had one and it still happened. The FO was a flight instructor with more than enough time to obtain an ATP and it still happened. Anybody can be trained to PTS standards to pass a checkride. Pilot factories like ALLATPs are proof positive of this. Cooperate to graduate.

What bothers me most about this accident is the overlooked fact that the FO raised the flaps. You're slow, have a bunch of ice on the aircraft and make a configuration change. I think this cardinal sin is being forgotten by everybody, including ourselves. I think this is the fundamental part that skybolt is talking about.

Experience plays a huge part but no amount of experience can trump a poor decision. We've seen plenty of experienced crews make stupid choices that ended with a smoking hole in the ground.

An extremely small portion of the fare goes to paying the flight crew. For the average flight on a regional airline it's somewhere around $5 for the flight per passenger.

Of course we are talking about the same people that will put their 2 year old on their lap for the flight to avoid buying another ticket...

The Problem is:

Pilot Error

It can happen to any pilot: military or civilain trained, High time or low, fat wallet or skinny.

Good thread bolt.

Civilian CFIs with 500 hours dual given have been on the edge of the envelope many times.

Military pilots have many training flights at the edge of the envelope.

Repeat from regional thread pertinent to this discussion:

jonnyjetprop - Of course it was pilot error, anytime a perfectly good airplane is put in the dirt there is pilot error involved. Once upon a time, investigations ended right then and there: the pilots screwed up. After years and years of crashes caused by pilots screwing up, we eventually came to realize that investigations must go further to find out why the pilots screwed up to have any hope of preventing repeats. There are often cultural and environmental factors that are much, much bigger than the pilots involved. This is one of those cases, I think.

This is what my wife said after watching this on the news. She has 10 hours dual from 20 years ago. She still knows stall recovery. She never even soloed.

[quote=skybolt;612394]

Part One. Pilots who have not learned their craft have been allowed to sit in the seat of an airliner. More later.
Part Two. The airline pilot certification system is not capable of catching the pilots who don't YET belong in the seat of an airplane carrying people for hire.

Good post, Skybolt. Almost any certification and training process will allow a few incapable people to slip by. I am thinking of an F-14 crash in the southeast during the early 90's. The pilot had been visiting family and decided to show them a max climb. He pulled a lot of G's climbing more or less straight up into an overcast. He lost situational awareness and control of the aircraft. His RIO had control of the ejection seats but was blacked out due to G-LOC and did not punch them out. The aircraft crashed and both were killed. This was the second aircraft this pilot had crashed due to poor judgement.

About my first point. For decades, a pilot spent many years as a civilian actually flying airplanes. Either as an instructor, or freight dawg flying checks, or any one of hundreds of other positions that allowed/forced the pilot to gain real stick and rudder time. Military pilots accelerated the process, but the large majority of their time was spent either training, or being trained.

During this period there were still crashes due to poor airmanship or a lack of judgement. I favor requiring an ATP to be hired by a Part 121 carrier. However, I cannot help but worry about how difficult it might make it for someone to begin a carrier. I do not think CFI or other jobs that woild give someone the opportunity to gain experience are easy to find right now. The economy has also allowed airlines to raise their minimums. I doubt anyone is being hired at 500/50 right now.


The Dash Whisperer

Complacancy
 

There are more accidents blamed on complacency then lack of experience. If the middle of the envelope is the best place to be in regards to safety then perhaps pilots should be trimmed when they reach a certain age or experience level. At least older pilots should be kicked back to the right seat.

In our modern age of equality the bottom has gotten lower in regards to hiring low time pilots and the top has gotten longer with the age 65 rule. How long will it be before we start having accidents where two 64 year old guys fall asleep on approach?

The best approach is to minimize the human element altogether. In the end the answer will be fully automated planes.

Skyhigh

Of course there were still crashes due to poor airmanship and or lack of judgment. But those crashes did not kill innocent passengers who bought a ticket expecting to be flown by safe pilots.

This debate is not about the difficulty factor surrounding the airline pilot career. It's about preventing airline crashes. It took me until 36 years of age before I managed to get a decent airline job, so I know how difficult it can be, but that in no way excuses a system that has been placing unskilled pilots in control of peoples lives.

Would you put your mother on a regional flight if you KNEW that the pilots never developed any flying skill before getting into that RJ/turboprop seat?

Ideally, all airline flying should be done by that airline. A good example is Lufthansa. All flying, whether it is a flight on a CRJ900 or overseas international flight on a B777, are flown by Lufthansa pilots under one seniority system. If we had the same system here in the US, there would be no Mesa, GoJet, XJT, CHQ, Skywest etc, etc. All United Airlines flying would be done by United Airlines pilots and all Delta Airlines flying would be carried out by DAL pilots whether it is Saab 340, CRJ900, CRJ200, or a E175 flight. This way all training would be under the mainline control and everyone would go through the same type of training.

Everyone gets a random selection on what type of aircraft to fly, giving consideration to their own experience and desires and based on that particular airlines' needs at that particular time. Similar to the aircraft assignment in the military. If you do well during the initial ground school before the aircraft systems training begins, you get your pick of the aircraft, within the constraint of the airline needs at the time you finish your initial ground school.

On the point requiring ATP to fly Part 121. Yeah, I agree with that. That takes care of minimum 1500 hours and min age 23 requirements.

And the low time guys go to the little (regional aircraft) where they are trained under an FAA approved 121 course.

Sound familiar? This is exactly how it's done at the regionals as well. How would Delta, or United, or American train to any different standard? How can you expect any different level of training when they do the same thing?

I think one of the big issues is that now that air travel has become so safe every accident is scrutinized to the Nth degree. You can never eliminate them but we're doing a pretty good job the reduce them when you can count the number of fatal accidents at 121 carriers this decade on your hands. When you couple that with 24 hour mass hysteria news channels you have a very bad mix.

Basically, I think you're saying this would have never happened if the majors hadn't given up scope. We would still have accidents because majors crash too.

Actually while i agree for the most part. I have another side to this argument. When i got hired 3yrs ago at former carrier. I had 1300hrs 200 or so hours multi. I was an instructor. I will fully admit my instrument skills where lacking when I got hired. While i am a CFII and MEI. I ended up with a lot traffic pattern work. I actually was a anxious about flying in the clouds as i did not have a lot of actual time. I had few bad experiences with ice and t storms in the GA airplanes. I guess you could say i learned something from these experiences. However, i didn't feel comfortable flying around in actual conditions. After being hired by commutair, flying the B1900, no autopilot; flying through the rain, snow, ice, thunderstorms, fog. Landing on snow cover runways with mountains around in Rutland VT and Saranac Lake NY. That did more for confidence then anything. It really fine tuned my instrument, flying skills, and made me comfortable flying through anything. Now i want to go flying through the eye of a hurricane. So I think it depends what type of aircraft new guys jump into.... JMO

How do you make that assumption based on my post? My post has not addressed what would have prevented this accident. I was merely addressing our current airline career problem we are all facing with no light at the end of the tunnel.

My position is that ideally, all brand name flying should be done under one flag with same standardized training and this is not how it's done in the US. You have missed the point entirely. My point is there would be no myriad of regionals running around, each with their own training stds. ie., All UAL or DAL flying would be done by UAL or DAL pilots under one seniority system and all their training would be under their own training department. I agree with those who said Minimum stds for getting hired at a Part 121 carrier should be ATP.

All 121 training programs are approved by the FAA. There are certain items that they must hit regardless. Having been through two regionals and familiar with a major, they've been very similar.

However, even when you get into the same airline they might have different training programs. There was a very good thread in the cargo forum about UPS and the differences in programs there. Depending on the aircraft type, and who's running the program they can be very different even when under the same airline.

Regardless of who's operating the aircraft accidents still happen. Q-400s operated by Continental would not have prevented this because pilots with the same level of experience with the same standard of training (FAA approved) would have been operating the aircraft.

Anyone wonder why some regionals don't have sim rides for their interview process while most (if not all) majors have a sim ride?

The leap from small props to regional flying is much greater than the jump to the majors from the regionals. Even some of the wholly owned airlines didn't have sim rides while the major did.

Skyhigh, you must be inhaling too much of your dirt bike fumes. I assume that this was all tongue in cheek. Remember, two over 60s can't fly together. And can you give me one 121 accident that has been advanced age related? Think Sully-late 50s, Al Haynes (UAL232) very late 50s. I believe both of those gents did a "fair" job of their situations despite being old and barely able to function in the cockpit. But again, I will take your post as a bit tongue in cheek. Right?