This is very untrue. A degree in aviation gives you more insight and knowledge than what a flight school will teach you. A degree will make you a much better pilot.

University
 

Spoken like someone with a brand new college degree;)

SkyHigh

"Most of what is learned through an average general aviation flight training experience has little to no value to an airline pilot anyway."

Disagree. A pilots a pilot. An airline pilot is simply a pilot that works for an airline.

Thats ridiculous, an airplane is an airplane is an airplane. Weather is Weather............what are you talking about, X-wind landings in a small airplane or a swept wing airplane is essentially the same, Thrust and drag act on all airplanes not just Airliners come on...................

Example
 

One time I showed a VFR chart to a Delta Airlines DC-10 captain. To my shock he didn't know what it was. In his entire career he had never had to work with anything that was VFR. I had another guy who was a check airman at Horizon Air who had never filed his own flight plan or called a fight service station. Both of these guys were ex-military. They didn't need those skills at all.

Airline pilots could skip a lot of what is taught to new GA pilots. Why would an RJ pilot ever need to preform a soft field landing, forward slip, stalls, spins, dead reckoning, flight planning....ect?

Maybe the FAA could create a "121 only" limitation on the commercial licence? They could also make a "121 Jet Only" limitation on multi engine ratings. Why would an RJ pilot ever need to know how to feather a prop?


SkyHigh

i dont buy that for one second. military guys are for the most part their own dispatchers and flight followers. its part of the agony of military flying. its why they show 3 hours prior to takeoff, they have to do EVERYTHING

Military
 

Training programs change over time. Maybe they forgot? These guys and others I have known may have had to learn some of that stuff but they sure didn't know it later. Why would they? It is totally useless skills to an airline pilot.

Most of what takes up time in training are to develop skills that are mostly never called upon again once an airliner is reached. Why then don't we just skip that stuff and create civilian 121 only pilots? I bet we could shave 100 hours off the required program and substitute it with RJ simulator time instead.

SkyHigh

"Never say, Never" and "If you don't use it, you lose it."
Sure as we progress in our careers we use our VFR techniques and other skills less often and sometimes forget altogether. It was two years ago a ex-UAL captain asked me "How do we pickup an IFR cleareance from a non-towered airfield?" This very basic step that was probably one of the first things taught to a fleging instrument student. This just goes to show how the basics are just as important as the advanced training and skills we employ in our daily jobs. Because you never know when you will find yourself in any one of a variety of circumstances.

Vfr
 

VFR navigation is becoming a lost art even among VFR pilots.
How many VFR pilots break out a plotter and flight computer, put a line on a chart, compute winds and variation?

How many simply dial in KXXX, and press Enter, Enter?

Antiquated pilot skills
 

Airline pilots do not need to learn pilotage, dead reckoning, VFR rules, stalls, steam gauge attitude instrument skills, most of WX charts ect.... Most of that stuff is as worthless to a new pilot as an E6B.

Where in the near future will new pilots even be able to develop such skills? New planes are all glass with moving maps and GPS.

At one time it was considered essential for pilots to memorise Morse code, learn tail wheel skills and pilotage.

In the near future airlines will have their own sponsored initial training sources and pilots will fund the cost of their own training. UAL and the rest did something similar in the late 1960's. No pilot shortage.

Oh yea, and hand flying IFR will be considered to be an emergency procedure only practiced in the sim.

SkyHigh