At Envoy, we have over 200 lifers. That's almost 10% of the airline. More than enough to make it run.

The real brain drain is in the training department. Our "professional" sim instructors suck. Most have never flown a jet before.

I worry about “lifers” more than FNGs.

I flew with a couple who were terrifying

I’d prefer the ones that keep up their instrument scan rather than letting their attention be distracted by micromanaging something that on a five nautical mile wide airway will move them one mile to the right or left of centerline over the next 100 miles.

Anybody who is obsessing on a 1 degree heading issue anywhere outside the FAF isn’t paying attention to more important things.

YMMV.

I'm with you on at least having a goal fo excellence rather than adequacy ... but pilots are kinda like 2*4's. They need to be like every other 2*4. They don't have to be twice as strong and half the weight.

Couldn't agree more. Thankfully most sim instructors are still actual pilots.

I think you miss my point. While someone who operates just inside the tolerances for whatever is certainly adequate and meets the standard, they aren't trying to improve their skills. And that's the point - someone who isn't trying to improve their professional skillset isn't worth hiring if there is someone who *is* constantly trying to improve available. It's not hard to tell the two apart in a 30 minute conversation, LCA or not.

Our line pilots in the training dept are super heroes. The PSI's are like black holes of misinformation. It's an atrocity.

I think you chose a poor example to make your point. Chasing parallax error or Brownian motion does not make you more precise or motivated, it just increases your task loading without benefit, which won’t hurt you usually if everything else is going OK.

Acquiring the skill and knowledge of how to most safely and efficiently manage an aircraft is indeed a laudable goal, but instantly correcting every one degree deviation does not contribute to that - not outside the FAF anyway. There are other places the mental effort to accomplish that degree of attention could and should be better spent.

Sigh. Sorry. Didn't realize I was dealing with Capt. Literal. :rolleyes:

My training feedback that I sent was pretty darn long. I'm glad I had quite a lot of experience in real life IFR flying, and I was paired with a CA upgrade. So we knew to call out the BS our PSI tried to feed us doing IPTs and one sim session.
"If you can't load the LDA from the FMS just load the ILS, it's the same thing".
Wish I was making that sh*t up.

The real line pilot instructors, just like you say, are amazing.