saab2000

I beg to differ. At least one person on this board passed those tests.....

CaptainMark

all hail saab2000...you da man!

Whaledriver101

You must be a 600 hr. pilot looking for the "easy way out". Yeah,, the planes are safer and the training is better(probably because of 600 hr. pilot mistakes). They dont teach experience, which is imperative in a pilots situational awareness. Which is the fault in most airplane accidents.

If an airline hires an inexperienced guy thats their business. Just dont tell the passengers.

JetJock16

All pilots have to start some where. Times have not changed just the scope. A regional FO will gain experience from an experienced CA, this has been the way of the airlines world for almost a century now. It's just a bonus that the planes are safer. Don't blow it out of proportion, airlines have been hiring pilots since the 30's with 1000TT or less and upgrading them around 3000TT. Funny how the only thing that changes is technology.

Freightpuppy

Most airline accidents are caused by low time pilots. NOT!

Anyways, I disagree with you. All the passengers SHOULD know what the experience level is. I want them all to know. I also want them to know how much the crew is paid - not that they care about that. The reality is is that as long as they get their ticket as cheap as possible, they will take the flight - I guarantee that.

org1

I'd be interested in knowing his name. Could it be you were taken in by an urban legend? Anything's possible, I suppose, but that one sounds pretty unlikely.

ImperialxRat

He's not that far off. My grandpa joined the navy when he was 18, got out around 22-23 and was recruited by TWA. He only had his PPL when he left the navy, so TWA paid for his instrument and commercial. He then became a FE at age 60, and retired at 62 because he was afraid of losing his retirement.

But he was a pilot during the glory days, and loved it.

He stayed in the reserves after he left active duty, and his weekend a month, they basically gave him and his buddy each a plane, and they just did x-countries. There weren't any requirements on them....just log some flight time.

He loved it =)

viktorbravo

I must admit that flying a heavy jet over the big puddles around the world is much easier than flying a 30 pax turboprop 9 legs a day in and out of busy terminal areas, yet many of us cut our teeth on that much more demanding and unforgiving commuter type of flying. So I'll step out on a limb here and say its safer to put a sharp low time person in a big jet environment where they fly 1 to 2 legs a day with good FD's, autopilots, FMC etc, than to put them in a high perfomance turboprop with minimal aviaonics flying 8 to 12 legs a day in and out of busy terminal areas.

Like I joke to the folks I fly with, Hey man I actually used to be a pretty decent pilot when I was at the commuters, now I get scared if I have to hand fly a real IMC approach without autothrottles! I remember those days not very long ago hand flying 8 to 12 1800RVR approaches in one day and we used to turn the flight director off because we could fly a better approach without it.

de727ups

"How do I change the title?"

I would assume you click on it. At JC that works and that's how I can do it here as a mod. It could be the admins have the settings different than JC.

de727ups

"Total time is meaningless."

"Experience is priceless"

So, which is it?

I disagree with you, which is no surprise, but I agree that planes aren't fall out of the sky in Europe. I'd say it's partly cause of the higher standards in ground training and a more rigorous selection process. That's why it works for the military. The Capts over there must have some pretty interesting "low time F/O" stories to tell as well.

The more experience/flight time the F/O brings to the table, the better. You can best learn by doing.