Sniper

As far as ALPA taking a role in flight schools: for the record, the Farmington Mesa program is perhaps the only flight school ever to see the president of ALPA speak to its students in support of an ALPA pilot group. Duane Woerth (at the time, the sitting President of ALPA) went to Farmington in late 2002 to discourage the students from accepting employment with Freedom Airlines, at the time a non-union airline set up by Mesa Air Group to undermine the pilots of Mesa Airlines and Air Midwest Airlines (like GoJet currently does with the pilots of TSA). About 3-4 months later, the Mesa ALPA pilots ratified a contract capturing Freedom Airlines on their seniority list, as well as integrating the pilots of CC Air with seniority, whom Mesa had also furloughed in a situation similar to what's now going on @ Midwest and Republic (buy the airline, replace the pilots with your own lower cost ones). It is for this contract (captured an alter-ego, offered integration to fellow ALPA pilots) that Mesa pilots were then berated for on internet forums, ironically often by pilots who often weren't even in the industry @ the time of signing.

Don't know what you're referring to here, but, on the surface, sounds like a good idea to me. What's stupid is putting unqualified pilots into the flight deck; the ATP requirement is just one method of trying to eradicate this, though it will weed out a small minority of excellent pilots with low time, pilots like the 500 hour guy 'The Duke' flew with. Airlines hire future Captains, plain and simple. If you can't pass a PIC type rating in the aircraft you will soon fly, why should you even be in the right seat? Many major airlines type all their crew members from the outset, though often b/c the ICAO requirements for both pilots to have PIC types necessitates it. While learning on the job a bit is understandable, if you can't demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and leadership to command the aircraft @ the beginning of your employment, perhaps you should be forced to surrender your seat to someone who can, while you go back to piston singles and polish your skills (if this resulted in many regionals having a hiring crisis, then that only proves the point that many of their FO's were never qualified in the first place). 'Career FO' should be a position based on QOL choices made by the pilot, not on a training department assessment that the pilot is unfit to command an aircraft (but is somehow fit to command an aircraft if the Captain is incapacitated?). In my mind, all pilots flying for the airlines should be fit to command the aircraft as soon as they are off their first IOE @ the airline, though I'm not naive enough to believe this will even come true.

If this is some kind of 'regional scam', busting pilots on purpose, then fine - who are we talking about? But, then again, why would anyone seek employment with a company known to do this?

Sorry for the thread drift. The Farmington program produced good pilots from what I'd heard from Mesa Training Department contacts in the past. Too bad that the program is going away. Perhaps that only proves that the program wasn't a huge money machine for Mesa, but was rather only about producing a good product (albeit a pilot with little chance of leaving Mesa for a couple years, so Mesa did benefit some too), rather than a place that just rubber stamped ratings or sent anyone with a pulse and a fist full of cash to the right seat. Sadly, those programs are still around. There's a pilot shortage after all, no?

rickair7777

But the problem with colgan is at least the CA had very low time when he started at colgan. IMO that is a recipe for diasaster...face it, there are some things you simply don't learn in a 121 cockpit.

Airline ops occur in a multi-layered bubble of protections which insidiously encourage complacency. Nothing like 1000+ hours of piston 91/135 to teach you that things can and will eventually go wrong.

IMO it takes a low-timer a lot longer to learn certain basics in the airline world...and he might never learn them in a jet.

Aquapilot

We would all like to think that we are not capable of mistakes but I believe the ultimate cause of the Colgan crash was failure of the most basic pilot skills. The crew failed to identify the airspeed bleeding off which resulted in a stall that they did not recover from...very tragic. These skills are learned at the private pilot level.....ALWAYS fly the plane first.....this has nothing to do with when they were hired with how many hours......my prayers are for the family's of those affected by this terrible tragedy and that we all can learn from that tragedy...

I do agree with the new ATP Requirement.....it can only help increase safety

skywatch

I agree that the ATP is a great idea. In fact, because we know that mistakes in the flight deck can be attributed to low experience, and in light of this recent NW MSP overfly, I have written my congressman to suggest that it is dangerous to have inexperienced crew like that in the flight deck as well and want legislation to mandate nothing short of 20000 hours (the FO only had 11000 or so hours!!!) to make sure something like this cannot happen again.

DBSociety

Just last week I heard this exact quote from a six month instructor~

"I was supposed to be at an airline by now..if I have to do this (instruct) for another six months I'll quit."

To add insult to injury..it wasn't that long ago that the powers that be cut the pay almost in half for incoming instructors and we still have no shortage of guys who show up willing to do everything including wash the owners car for a few flight hours. I ask them how they can work for less than what the rest are being paid and the reply usually is along the lines of ..well its just for a few months until I get hired or something asinine like that

sqwkvfr

No, it is not.

This ATP requirement is going to lead to a shortage of people with 1500 hours willing to work for regional airlines and a subsequent move toward a "frozen ATP" like the JAA/EASA countries (states?) of Europe.

....a system where only the rich get to play and any idiot with the money can find himself with a "frozen" ATPL, 200-some hours and a direct entry into the right seat of a mainline aircraft.

This 1500 hour ATP requirement is a bad thing....no matter how well intentioned, it will backfire and not work to our benefit.

Remember, you heard it here first.

Zayghami

Finally someone I can agree with

DeltaPaySoon

I don't believe this will be the case. What I do believe will happen is that the leading universities around the country will get in bed with lenders / government backing (ie. guaranteed loans) and return ever so slightly to what it once was where you actually had to QUALIFY, based on strict academia and motivation, for the loans.

Lenders will stop producing loans for places like Flight Safety and ATP as the number of defaults are skyrocketing.

Believe it or not, not every individual that wanted to get into aviation was actually able to get into aviation back in the day. Also, not every one of them had to pay for their education as most aviation universities had scholarship programs for those fortunate to be picked out of the hundreds that wanted to go.

This will help aid getting the best of the best again. Now, we still have to get wages back up across the board

rickair7777

???? makes no sense at all.

If we go to a frozen ATP, we would be right back where we started...250-hour airline pilots, which almost everyone (even the public and congress) can see is a bad thing.

The Europeans get away with it because they really have no other means of acquiring flight time and because their standards are much higher.

If we included european-style ground school and testing for the frozen ATP that would not be so bad at all. It would require real effort and dedication to complete the training...that would scare off many of our entry-level types today. And the airlines would have to pay well enough to attract the type of individual who can excel in school...ie people with other options.

Not sure why you would need to be rich though? But here's a fact of life: money makes almost anything easier. You can enjoy comforts above and beyond your current payscale and you don't have to stress so much over the economic consequences of failure.

TheBills

You could argue that, not sure if thats a fact of life.