Freightpuppy

LOL! I know what you mean. The good old days.

saab2000

You are right. Those sound contradictory. But experience comes not only through thousands of hours. I have a buddy in Switzerland who has spent most of his career flying MD-11s. It is a lifestyle which undoubtedly has it's own challenges. But I know for a fact that he has twice as many hours as I have, but I have more approaches and landings than he has. By a large number. The flying I do averages about 1 landing per hour. I have about 4000 hours total time now. All but 260 of it in the airline environment.

Who has more experience? Since most of his hours are in cruise at FL350 I don't really think he is learning too much.

Anyway, captains here have low-time F/O stories to tell too. I could tell some of my own! I was certainly no hero pilot at 260 hours, I can tell you that. But who among us was?

But in Europe it is done a bit differently than in the US. It is very normal for a plane to be vectored to final to fly the ILS, even in CAVU weather. Not too hard for the 260 hour wonder to fly headings, altitudes and speeds with the autopilot and fly the last 2 minutes on the ILS by hand. It is the visual approaches which can screw someone up, and there are few done over there.

I am not here to say that any system is better than the other. But I don't have a problem with low-time pilots per se. The safety comes through judgement and training and of course, experience. But experience alone is not the only thing.

If there were a way to combine the best of the European system with the best of the US ways of doing things it would be very nice. I enjoy the challenges and rewards of both places.

Ftrooppilot

Agree with de727ups with a slight modification. A rigorous selection process, quality training and "depth of experience (not total hours)" are critical to safe operations. Some learn to swim then spend hours in the shallow end of the pool. Others migrate to the deep end and gain more experience. Five hundred hours of single pilot cargo (checks) operations in the weather at night is much more valuable then 1000 hrs flying a light twin on day VFR cross country trips to the Bahamas.

SkyHigh

Yes and flight instructing is near totally worthless. What is 1000 hours of touch and goes and ground reference maneuvers supposed to do for a guy? Most of the time a CFI sits with arms folded in the right seat trying not to fall asleep.

I too wish our system was based more upon merit and natural ability than luck and contacts.

SkyHigh

saab2000

I agree with what you guys have written. It isn't really black and white.

I tend to think that my experience now of operating a CRJ on the east coast from Washington DC to Maine to the north and the Carolinas to the south is the toughest environment in the US. And it is for sure more intense in terms of weather and ATC than it was in Europe.

cruiseclimb

One thing that is not really directly addressed, but is probably part of the bigger picture, is that it's not the total hours always that reflect 100% of the pilots abilities (although it is the best benchmark we have at the moment). We aren't being hired just for our monkey/stick and rudder skills. We're being hired for our maturity in judgement and problem solving in a high stress, technically complex enviroment. I know low time pilots can fly well, but it's aviation maturity that is truely the heart of the issue.

The military puts 300 hr pilots in 40 million dollar F-18s and shoots them off of a ship at night loaded with bombs to go over enemy territory, then come back and land on a postage stamp. These pilots were chosen because they went through a training weeding out process that demonstrated their ability to function well in this environment before ever getting near an airplane. (I'm not a F18 guy). We don't have this selection process in civil aviation, so we rely on total flight hours and past flying jobs to show we've had some exposure to some stressfull experiences. The bridge programs bypass this. Some guys are sharp at 300 hrs, some aren't. It's a gamble that some of the regionals are willing to take to save money by not paying for higher time pilots. They are flooding the market with lower time pilots which makes it harder to negotiate wages. I hope this doesn't offend anyone... I just know that many low time guys will look back in a few years and realize how much they may have learned between 300 hrs and 1,300 hrs.

rickair7777

As has already been mentioned, this would be great at the entry level, ie rigorous screening. But beyond that a merit-based system would be far too subjective..."merit" would be determined soley by ass-kissing skills.

Sucking up is critically important in the real world, but unlike flying there is still some realistic level of performance assessment. I had a jerk boss who had two operations managers, me and a guy who had been hired because he was friends with my boss. The other OM was useless, but of course he was the bosse's bum-chum. Layoff time came around, and we had to lose one of the two OM's, me or this other guy. I expected to get the ax, but to my shock the boss fired his buddy instead. Turns out the boss KNEW his friend couldn't do jack, and he knew that his OWN job would be in jeoporady if he got rid of the guy who did know how to do the job. In flying, as long as you can pass your PC (not hard with the right instructor), that's the end of objectivity.

Remember back in the day the good routes, good shifts, good airplanes, and upgrades were based on whatever the boss felt like, not seniority. Needless to say there were lots of pilots hanging out in operations to kiss the man's butt.

Ftrooppilot

Still baiting SKYHIGH. That's allright. I love fishing expeditions.

Must respectfully disagree. Flight instruction is often staying awake making sure the student doesn't kill you. It certainly is more then basic maneuvers and landings. We do have CFIIs, MEIs, Sim instructors, etc.

"We all had flight instructors; no one learned by osmosis." Be thankful for their efforts. Their value to aviation will become better know when there is a severe shortage.

Many of us learned more from teaching then we did as students. I'm talking about the classroom and the airplane.

Have absolutely no idea what luck and contacts have to do with flight instruction.

You make contacts sound like a dirty word. It's called networking in the modern day world. What's wrong with it ? It's a way of getting your resume in the front door where abilities and qualifications are checked. These are the people who don't sit around and wait for the job to come to them. I'm sure many construction workers network through friends to find work in your industry.

SkyHigh

Those who can do those who can't flight instruct.

Sure we all need instructors however to what end does teaching turns around point do for a future CRJ pilot? Perhaps CFI's should get paid a similar wage to a regional captain and it should be considered a totally separate career path since really they are two separate professions with little in common.

SkyHigh

SkyHigh

The modern airliner is so highly automated that real old fashioned pilot skills are really unnecessary anyway. The only real skills needed are a basic understanding of computers and the ability to rote memorise reactions and information.

Others on this thread have already mentioned that stick and rudder skills fade away once one reached a jetliner anyway. Why not hire them young and set their expectations accordingly? Why subject a Charles Lindberg to a career of automated boredom?

The airline pilots of today are little more than manual programed automatons that regurgitate company approved actions and reactions or follow decision trees and are heavily supported by ATC, dispatch and maintenance control.

A 200 hour enthusiastic lump of clay is perfect for that job.

SkyHigh