So I guess the question remains...how do you get that experience?

Military pilots sure as hell aren't going to go to a regional and sit right seat for $20k/yr. Mainline guys will do it if furloughed, but not many of them. Besides the problem rears its ugly head when times are good and pilots are hard to come by...resulting in so-called pilot mills. I'm not talking about universities, either. I'm talking about the "GO FROM ZERO TIME TO RIGHT SEAT IN 6 MONTHS!!!" places.

That's about as close to no experience as you can get. Airlines are getting away with filling the pilot shortage with pilots who have never scared the crap out of themselves.

So, how do we get them to scare the crap out of themselves?

Well, for one, require them to fly for a bit with that brand new wet commercial. If we made ATP mins a requirement for the 121 world, that would at least make it cost-prohibitive (to most) to buy your time and sit with an instructor who will make the decisions for you. It would therefore force the majority of people to take that wet commercial and go find a job, where, as with any flying job, they will be forced with these types of tough decisions on a daily basis. Or, god-forbid, they will have to continue their training through their CFI and get their experience by keeping their students from killing them.

But, will even these types of flying fully prepare you for an airline? In a word...no.

The airline industry forces you to fly on a daily basis in and around weather that there are very limited ways to experience before you get there (not to mention in aircraft that are much more capable and powerful than most will have experienced). How many 121 pilots out there can say they de-iced an aircraft or referenced their speed via Mach number before they entered the 121 world? Sure, a few did. But I'd be willing to bet that most didn't.

Is that wrong? No. As long as you are trained well and are paired with experienced captains who can walk you through these types of situations the first time you encounter them, then you will be fine. Which brings up another issue...

6-Month upgrades. What? You mean a regional pilot can upgrade to captain and still never had to fly in icing conditions or reference the holdover tables? I think that, at the very least, a person needs to have at least 40 or 50 hours of 121 experience in every month of the year before they can upgrade to Captain. (I'm probably going to catch a little flak from that from people who upgraded in 6 months.) That way they will have at least experienced the gambit of weather (from storms to wind to icing and blizzards). I'm guessing the fast upgrade will be a rather large problem (again) at the regional level once age-65 catches back up. But it is certainly an issue that needs to be resolved.

There are many more issues (training, our current seniority system of "pairing newbees on the worst trips" as Shoreguy put it, etc., etc.) that are coming to light due to this Colgan accident, and it seems to be a bright enough light that the cockroaches have nowhere to go.

Hopefully some changes (a lot of them overdue) will be coming as a result of this investigations. Will we like them? Some of them...yes. Some of them...no. Will those changes make our industry safer? Time will tell.

But airline experience is exactly that...airline experience. You can't gain it from sitting in a sim or studying in a classroom. You can't get it from instructing or flying freight in a 210 (even though flying freight in a high-performance twin is about as close as you can get). The 121 world is a whole 'nother ballgame. You can't get airline experience until you're right there in the action, sitting on the right side of the plane, with passengers strapped in behind you counting on you and your Captain to make the right string of decisions to get them to their destination safely.

Is that ok? Sure, as I said before, though: As long as your 121 training was good and you are paired with experienced check airmen during IOE or with experienced captains the first time you encounter serious icing or take off in snow, then the system works.

As others have pointed out, there are a number of issues that need attention when it comes to gaining that all-so-elusive "experience". Can it be solved like an accident can by "breaking a link in the chain"? I'm not so sure it can, but a big link for me would be starting with the fast upgrade.

~ksuav8r

 

The discussion must center around improving safety, not creating barriers to entry, therefore raising compensation.

Just b/c the Colgan FO had the requisite hours to apply for an ATP doesn't nullify the premise that requiring an ATP for all pilots flying FAR 121 would improve safety.

I'm with 'Salty' - after a certain amount of experience, a well-trained pilot is more beneficial to promoting safety than a pilot with lots of experience, but not relevant experience to the operation they are assigned to. And I'd say the minimum experience level needs to be raised. I go with an ATP b/c it's just that, an "Airline Transport Pilot" license. To be an Airline Transport Pilot, you should have to be licensed as such.

 

I’d like to start by saying: Will anything but 121 experience give you 121 experience? Not exactly. But you must have a good base to begin with in order to properly and successfully build the 121 experience.


Just cuz someone has 1600 hours doesn’t tell the whole story. Rhino Driver made a good point. In addition, I’ll add that I still consider someone with 300 hours coming in the front door and the rest of the time accrued in a year and a half to be inexperienced, period. It is very rare to find a job other than the regionals where you can “drink from the flight-time-building fire hose” like that. And most of those jobs don’t involve taking 50 to 100 people with you on each flight. Part of “experience”—especially at the beginning of the learning curve—is accruing that flight time at a slower rate so that experiences, thought about what is actually happening, working on ways to improve your skills, etc. etc. have time to sink in (even while working as a lowly flight instructor.) This is one of the major differences between past and present to me. We want to bypass a lot of the work and time that used to be required and “live the dream” NOW. Do some adapt to the “fire-hose” treatment quickly? A few. Ultimately almost all eventually adapt after a few more years of it . . . and rely on luck that nothing happens during those first few years that is too far out of “the norm.”

I think the ATP requirement is a great idea, not just for the check ride alone, but because it would cause people to have to slow down and take some time to develop. Rhino Driver also gave some other good reasons for raising the requirements that I will not re-hash. Would an ATP requirement automatically make every pilot safer? Probably not for “GOD’s gift to aviation” types. They will be good from the get-go. But for most of us folks with average ability (like me,) I believe it would make a difference. In the big picture, the overall odds would move toward the safer side. JMHO

 

The answer is not by getting an ATP. Rather, it's by flying with seasoned captains. I think that's where the focus needs to be. Look at Europe. Pilots for BA, KLM, AF, Lufthansa, etc. either come from the military or through an ab initio program. The latter may only have 300-400 hours when they start. It works because they are trained to proficiency and they gain the experience by flying with captains with years of airline experience.

Which is what the majority will do, especially now that jobs like check-hauling are going away. 1,500 hours as an instructor doing the same thing over and over is not exactly an experience builder, IMO.

Exactly. Perhaps there needs to be another standard in place to act as Captain in a 121 world, other than an ATP. Maybe require 1,500 hours of Part 121 experience. That would get rid of the 6-month upgrades and perhaps force the regionals to improve wages and work rules in order to attract and retain pilots.

Again, I respectfully disagree. An ATP only proves that you can pass a check ride (and an easy one at that) and doesn't show what experiences you've had leading up to those magical 1,500 hours that made you eligible for the thing. Referencing my analogy in a previous post, the 750-hour pilot who somehow managed to get quality real-life experience is more of an ATP than the 1,500-hour CFI who has spent his entire career in the traffic pattern.

We all agree on this: You've got to get the experience somewhere. The answer lies with having Captains in the left seat only after they have the experience and the hours so they can transfer that experience to their FOs.

 

The value of experience is all relative. As many here have mentioned in the past professional pilots came from a broad area of experience. They started out as instructors, crop dusters, night piston cargo, military pilots and plenty of other forms of aviation.

Today it seems that many of those kinds of jobs are going away and HR departments seem to prefer long institutionalized pilots with an exclusive part 121 background.

Airline captains use to say that I had a good background as a former forest service and Alaskan bush pilot. Good for what? HR departments do not care if you can properly load a beaver on a beach or that I have over a thousand hours of piston single pilot IFR over the cascades. All they want are 28 year old automaton RJ captains.

Maybe hiring fads will change? I doubt it though.

Skyhigh

 

upandsky-

You will never cover all your bases. ATP mins, a certain amount of PIC, and say 300 multi-engine minimum requirement to get on at any 121 carrier will squash the chances of any of those issues.

I have 1200 hours of flight instruction given, and not a single one of those hours was the same. Every student is different, every lesson is different with varying weather conditions, time constraints, and so on. It's only 1 hour 1000 times over if you make it that. You are the PIC, you are constantly making command decisions. A CFI that says that quote about how flight instruction was is immediately telling me that they sucked as an instructor.

The multi-engine requirement will make them go out and at the least teach MEI or fly corporate or small time freight. Flying corporate was some of the best experience I gained prior to the airlines and really helped prepare me for being an airline captain. It all rode on me alone- from the normal pilot stuff to taking care of the pax.

Then we come to the issue of the airline training departments. A TRAINING program and not a checking program is what is absolutely necessary. The former is rare at the regionals.

 

The different takes on this whole experience idea are as varied as the number of different posters. If there is no consensus here, there won't be in the real world either.

There is a therapeutic value to setting up the "ideal scene" and thinking about it. But we must think in terms of reality. No one knows where the industry is going long term. My belief is that it isn't going to get much better, but I hope I am wrong.

Those who have already made it are likely going to be alright in the long term. Those with around 2,000 hours and some turbine time (right now) will likely be given a second chance at this game in about 3-4 years. Once they are all used up, the general rule is going to be less and less qualified pilots available. Flying is just too damned expensive and just doesn't pay off nearly quickly enough for most people.

Those who just HAVE TO FLY!!! and so will not do anything else will still follow through the ranks, but those who do it for money and QOL will find happiness in another route.

More and more airline pilots are steering their kids away from this profession.

But, as the saying goes, the gold lies at the bottom of a barrel of crap. Those who do endure will likely be satisfied in the end. From what I hear, it does/can get better. Its the rat race to the top that makes it so unfulfilling. My guess is the UPS guys, wide-body captains, SWA guys, are all happy with their career choices.

Just my $.02.

 

Clamp,

I'm glad you found your instructing experience rewarding. I can't say the same about mine. I instructed at a small flight school where the majority of students were getting their Private. I'd occasionally have an instrument student and we'd try to get in the clouds but that was hit and miss. Teaching was great for my confidence as a pilot but flying to and from the traffic pattern or the occasional cross country did very little to prepare me for the skills and experiences I would eventually need to be an airline pilot. That included 100 hours teaching in a Seminole. Shutting off a fuel tank and watching someone go through the single engine drill for the umpteenth time only goes so far. I don't know. Maybe I'm one of those that sucked as an instructor.

I left instructing after 1200 hours and hauled checks single-pilot for two years. By the time I got to the regionals, I didn't know how to fly a jet per se, but I sure as hell knew a lot more about weather, ATC, busy airspace, command decisions and risks than I ever did before.

You and I had the fortune to find experiences elsewhere, you with corporate, me with freight. Unfortunately for the majority of others, their experience will be limited to the traffic pattern and the 100 hours of twin time that they will beg, borrow or steal, more so now than ever, since many of the skill-building jobs are going away.

And you're right. An airline training program should be exactly that, a training program. Fortunately, I had the choice to go to a respectable regional that did that. But from what I hear from others, that can't be said for all regionals.

 

Lower Part 135 PIC minimums for non-passenger operations from 1200tt to 750tt.

This would enable a person to go to a place like Central Air Southwest or Flight Express after putting in a bit of work as a CFI or banner tower and start getting experience MUCH more applicable to a 121 environment than flight instructing MUCH more quickly.

Really though, and I don't intend this to come off as devil's advocate talking...but is the current setup of 500-1200tt pilots hired as regional FOs (because lets face it, there haven't been that damn many 300hr pilots hired at the 121 level even over the last decade) and seasoned to get experience by flying with captains really that different than the current setup in the medical field, where med school students become interns, then residents who supervise interns, then finally attending physicians who supervise residents?

 

Yes and no. The difference is that interns work under the supervision of experienced doctors who have spent years in their field. There are no 6-month attending physician "upgrades." That can't be said about the regionals, as the Colgan and Pinnacle crashes attest.