Ask the Pilot-Colgan 3407
 

This is a link to the latest column from Patrick Smith. In this column he writes about the Colgan crash in Buffalo.

Ask the pilot: Did an inexplicable mistake cause the crash near Buffalo? | Salon Technology

Hmm..an article about flying that I don't hate...

Interesting....

He states many already known points,..but they're all good ones. Unfortunately nothing will change :-\

great article, more of that needs to be published in National newspapers

Nice job to the writer(pilot) of the articles.

Nice to see someone in the media without their head up their .....

Once again: All commercial jets operate with a minimum of two pilots, a captain and a first officer. The latter is known colloquially as the copilot, but he or she is not an apprentice or a helping hand. First officers perform just as many takeoffs and landings as captains do, and are fully qualified to operate the plane in all regimes of flight.

The best paragraph in the articles.

Great Article! I Did the airline thing for 4 years. I am now lucky enough to fly on the the corporate side where I am treated like a valuable commodity. This treatment makes me want to go the extra mile everytime I go to work. It also reminds me of what a valuable commodity an experienced pilot really is. The billionaire I fly for says, "I only personally hire my pilots and my doctors". Isnt this how it should be? We arent just some dime a dozen sandwich artists. Just think! Everybody got into flying so they could fly airplanes like they used to dream about. This is all well and good, but there is so much more once you get to this level. There comes a point when you get tired of being treated like a circus chimp and have to move to greener pastures. Airline execs are geniuses! It can be debated all day on how and why but, they have taken a highly skilled proffesion and created a barren environment with more dogs than there are scraps. just read the bashing on this board and picture wolves fighting over a rabbit.

I still relish the day I was junior manned on my in-range call on the last leg of my last day at my old airline. The nerve right? Needless to say, I did not go the extra mile.

I read the entire series. Thanks for posting the link. He sums up the feelings here on APC rather wel on a multitude of issues. Some of the articles ought to be required reading in the flight schols and ready rooms around the country.

USMCFLYR

Nicely written, Ovrtake!

"Pilots, especially at the regional level, are constantly reminded to uphold the tenets of "professionalism" -- a word thrown around with rather intense and gratuitous frequency. This would be easier to take if they were actually treated as professionals in the first place.

Even the most worker-unfriendly, cost-cutting regional is a long way from unsafe, but there is a long-term problem here -- one that will, I feel, require a culture shift: vast changes in the way these companies train, and treat, their pilots."

Very good summary.

Ok, that was a good article. But I just have to ask, besides being a CFI and teaching students to fly, then getting enough hours. The next step is Regional airlines. That's the way it's been going right? The aircraft have been getting alot better from let's say the 70's or 80's but we all start somewhere so I don't really understand why someone has to talk about how us as pilots aren't qualified enough, we all start somewhere. I just wish we didn't have to keep talking about the accident. Yeah he might of messed up which took the lives of everybody on the plane and one on the ground but WE weren't there so just give it a rest and just wait until we find out exactly what happened. Let's try not to make it harder for his family. All the families. Sorry I just didn't get where this was going.

Not making a value judgment, but it seems to me that the norm through much of the 90's was close to 500 hours to get a good full-time flight instructor job, and 1500-2000 hours+ to get in with a regional (some exceptions exist such as GLA). In many cases it took several thousand hours to get a "good" regional job (decent pay & no Pay For Training). There was never an expectation to fly a jet aircraft right out of school. Many of those hired by the regional airlines already had some PIC experience in a 135 environment, in all weather flying.