F4 guy. Said he didn't fly to crap weather runways and if so dropped the hook. Never went slip slidin' away:)

You will be assimilated...
 

That's the bottom line. I could hardly ever tell where a fellow pilot learned to fly until we started chatting about the subject. A really young guy probably had to be civilian-trained, as did the occasional female (until the military started accepting them), but those were the only clues. I think the hiring process and the S/O seat experience worked to "standardize" crewmembers.

I'd like to see that. I assumed someone would quickly point that the military would not be private flight lessons and how the training would be better. I guess we all know what happens when you assume.

If I remember correctly, Cali was the standard human factors accident with all the accompanying things that usually contribute to said type of event.

The A300 isn't even the same sport, much less the same ballpark. That was a pilot doing EXACTLY as he was trained to do by the airline.

Can't really use that one to make the point.

This Al Yurman guy can't even spell... "much lower coast" ?!? Some expert!

Well hey, if the tax payers funded my flight school with an almost unlimited cash flow then I guarantee our training would have been light years ahead of other civilian schools as well. duh.

I had a similar path and concur. Although I will add that my overall best individual instructors have been on the civilian side (much lower percentage of screamers), the military system provides training opportunities such as acro, out of control flight, bombing, carrier qual, formation flying etc... in mostly high performance aircraft that straight civilian training cannot duplicate without spending $$$$$

So sacrifice your time, personal freedom, and self determination for the next 12 years get the best training in the world. The airlines might be on an "up" cycle by then.

Having completed a.a.m.p., I'd say I can make that point, sport.

Read the report or consider this analogy:

Departing a slush covered runway, the crew should make turns to the left and right on climbout to avoid refreezing of the contaminant on the aileron hinges.

Contrast that with "a pilot, doing EXACTLY as he was trained to do by the airline" completing barrel rolls on the departure climb...

Actually at many companies it is a violation of company policy to sleep overnight in the crew room. Happened all the time at my last 121 carrier... just saying ....strictly speaking it violated company policy.

Any civilian pilot who thinks that their overall training equals a military trained pilot is kidding themselves. How many civies have been to an altitude chamber, had aerobatic training, started flying swept wing jets with less than 100 hours under their belt. Please there is no comparison.

Still does not mean that military pilots are better. But they sure are trained better.

By the way I am 100 percent civilian trained.

I'm civilian trained. I've been to the altitude chamber 3 times, I've had aerobatic training, and I wouldn't say flying a swept wing jet with low time has any benefit over 1000 hours of dual given with a transition to turbo props, then jets. Either you get it, or you don't. Let's all stop arguing about who is better, and try to make ourselves better.

Of course the military provides better training - it costs what, upwards of $1M to train each military pilot? Contrast that with the civilian route, where you can go from zero time to CFI-AIM with a Citation or 737 type rating for less than $100k.

However, not everybody can be a military pilot, even if that is their career goal and their actions reflect their motivation to achieve it. There are many circumstances beyond one's control that can prevent somebody from getting those wings; just ask me about my ocular hypertension :mad:

QFT. Although I am a private pilot my self, it really hurts to watch these guys talk on the news.

The genius misspelled "Concorde"

Interesting thread. Pilots come in all shapes and sizes (look around at the airport) and skill levels, both military and civilian trained. I will say when I get on a mainline flight I don't wonder if the Captain is giving some 300 hour FO on the job training. I do however, now have to worry if the Captain is going senile, thanks age 65 law!

:):) Scoop - striving to be average!

Since when is Ron Jeremy an aviation expert :eek:

Scoop,I think you found the why of this tragedy,the Capt. was senile not incompetent. Give it a rest.

No doubt it was next to impossible to recover from, but I believe one needs to address how they got into that unusual attitude. Now please don't jump on me because I'm not armchair QBing here, I just think that when CA Renslow said "Yeah, that's a lot, I mean the most ice I've seen on the wings in a while." THAT should have been a red flag.

God Bless the crew & pax of Colgan 3407.

I'm the one walking on water there Herc! You're Ex military/Aviation expert is the one claiming guys like yourself walk on water with you military training! Like, I said the guys who have the problems at SWA most of time are the military guys. Their not use to flying in a civilian enviroment and most are not good stick and rudder guys. For this so called expert to say this Captain was not a very good pilot because he was civilian trained is BS! Did this guy screw up, it looks that way, does that make him any less of pilot because he came up through the civilian ranks no! And just for the record all the accidents that have happened at SWA over the past few years, the over run in Burbank, the over run in Chicago, and the going off the runway in Amarillo, Texas, all three aircraft had captains that were ex-airforce. Funny, how we have not seen any experts give testimony to that.

I think regional pilots have tarnish their own reputations with out any help...

WOW River6. Some guy comes on and says that military is good and you jump all over him and then you make statements like the one in bold above? Seems you should take some on your own advice.:rolleyes:
Imagine if I started a thread out saying that most civvie pilots are not good stick and rudder guys - AFTER having gone through training that is recognized as some of the best in the world!

USMCFLYR

I was thinking the same thing about major airline pilots since I can remember. Whether they were running DC-8's out of gas in Portland, attempting to land during severe thunderstorms on the Airport in Dallas or Little Rock, repeatedly plopping them into the river at La guardia rightside up (737-400) or upside down (F-28), smashing L-1011's into the Everglades because (like the Colgan crew) no one was flying the plane or flat out forgot to set the flaps in Detroit or Dallas because (like the Colgan crew) they were flapping their chops, it always amazed me how well they can retian their holier-then-thou attitude.

BRAVO !!!!!!!!...........it's nice to see soime consistancy still exists !

The longer you're in this business, the more you come to realize that good pilots are where you find them. The peacetime military does a pretty good job of weeding out those less able or less-suited, but so does a few thousand hours of hand-flying single-pilot, hard IFR in the middle of the night.

The guys coming out of college programs like ERAU and UND are pretty sharp. They may not speak in acronyms or of "pickling off 500 pound GBU's against Bad Guys" but they know their stuff when it comes to this business. Likewise, it's hard to fault a guy who's just come off a tour flying C-17's all over the world. Chances are, his shoes are a little better-shined than the average civilian pilot as well. That's because he hasn't had to buy them from the Goodwill Store for the last 10 years.

I don't think there's ever been a correlation shown between accident rates among military and civilian pilots at the major airlines.* That alone should tell you something.

This isn't about "Military vs. Civilian" pilots. It's about professionalism in the cockpit, a quality that was lacking when 3407 started it's approach.



*If there has been such a correlation, I'd like to see it.

If it's the best in world lets do a comparison of all the Major Airline crashes in the last 15 years and bet you any amount of money that 95% of the Captains who were piloting those aircraft were military trained. So the best training in the world comes with questions? To say a pilot who is trained in the military is a better pilot to someone who comes out of a school like Purdue, or ERAU is naive on your part. Most of the F-teen drivers and heavy drivers come to the majors with 1500tt over a period of 10 to 15 years which comes up to be 100 hours a year. In peace time, it's less than that. To say they are better pilots than some guy who has been flying RJ, ATR's in and out of Boston, LGA, JFK and logs 1000hour in one year and comes to the majors with 6000 hours of airline experience is a joke!

A few recent crashes that had Captains all trained by the Uniited States military.

Captain Richard Bushmann AMR flight that crashed in LIT
Captain Edward States AMR flight that crashed in Queens
Captain Nicholas Tafuri AMR flight that crashed in Cali

All were contibuted to pilot error. Accidents happen and will continue to happen for some ex-military/aviation expert to say the Colgan Captain was not as well trained as military pilot is a crock!

If I'm not mistaken, the f/o on the Queens crash was at the controls and he was a civilian - former American Eagle pilot.

Hard to recover the aircraft after your copilot sheds the vertical stab.

1500 hours in 10 years?.... you are out of your mind. MAYBE ...MAYBE a fastmover driver who had a desk tour in that 10 years.... Heavy drivers.. C-17 guys... C-5 guys... and the 141 guys... as well as the 130 guys... I would bet over the past 20 yrs have averaged a hell of alot more than your 100 hours per year you talk about. I flew the line in hercs for 4 years and another year on wing staff and managed 2000 hours...many of my squadron mates flew 2500 hours or more during that time period.

For what its worth..YOU are the one who talk about walking on water, I believe if you read ALL my posts you will see that I have the utmost respect for civilian trained pilots and I specifically pointed out what I consider the main difference. MORE the half of my current flight time is flying civilian aircraft ... the ATR-42 in BOS, JFK, DCA, MIA etc... E170's out of ATL, ORD, DFW, MIA, DEN etc.... and most recently 4 different models of the citation.....I have known great MIL trained guys... and great CIV trained guys....and not so great guys on both sides.... I asked a mainline recruiter once why ( and this was years ago when DAL heavily favoured MIL guys ) they hired so many MIL vs CIV guys ...he response was they felt over all they got more of a known quantity overall to the type of training they had been exposed to... that was it.....its was that simple. This is way to complex a discussion to say which is better... each guy or gal stands on their own merit.

Have a great day River6!!

It’s sad to say this tragedy could have been avoided. The Colgan knew of the pilot’s substandard performance in training and checking. When I say Colgan, I mean the instructors, check airmen, Director of Training, Chief Pilot, and D/O. Under the regs, the FAA is also kept in the loop about check and training events, along with pass/fails.

With that being said, Colgan did him an injustice by upgrading him perhaps before he was actually ready for command. Reading the transcripts it also appears the F/O was way behind the aircraft and it’s systems possibly due to the nonchalant conversation and her fear of flying in icing conditions.

Winter operations alone is very demanding on one’s attention and experience. It’s unfortunate that carriers don’t require first officers, contemplating upgrade, to operate from a base for a full winter season and get real hands on experience. To quote Shakespeare “4,000 hours PIC in the south a winter pilot does not make.”

Airline training curricula merely require training in stall recognition , and not actual stall escape procedures. That’s a disgrace. I know… I know since we don’t intentionally perform stalls in the aircraft, why should we train stall recoveries in the simulator. Would training stalls have saved the crew? Would have experiencing the stick pull system in the simulator saved the crew? Nobody can answer that question.

Seems like the civillian versus military training has some egos flaring. Here's my 2 cents, if I may...

I went to a ma & pa flight school for my private, then to a well-renowned university for everything up through my CFII, and then the military. From my experience, military training is by far the best. Granted, skills such as formation & low-level flying don't DIRECTLY correlate to 121 ops, but they do enhance your overall skill and SA. That's not saying that civillian training is sub-par (several people I know from places like UND & ERAU are really really sharp)... it's almost comparing apples & oranges. You can't compare getting 200 (+/-) hours in 4 years in light single and twin piston aircraft to getting the same time in 1 year starting off with 1,100 shp and then transitioning to an mach 1 capable aircraft built in the 60s with no auto-pilot. (Fyi, I'm not trying to geek-out with the 1,100 shp and supersonic BS... I'm just trying to point out that 201 hp isn't really "high-performance" anymore). Anyways, that's just what happens when you are able to spend $1 Million on each pilot you train. Was the 200+ hours of civillian training bad? Absolutely not! There is something to be said for a program that has a syllabus and will boot you if you don't meet standards instead of re-taking the test until you pass, but that's another story.

Now, if I were to apply for an airline job, I'm positive the biggest obstacle myself or any fellow military pilot would have to overcome would be the civillian methods and procedures. Let's not go attacking stick-and-rudder skills... every military pilot I know has had to pass a formation checkride (military guys back me up on this). I doubt CRM would be an issue either (unless you're dealing with a REALLY old-school type-A guy which can come from either side these days). CRM is taught heavily in the military, even for single-seat fighter types.

When I was getting a degree in aviation, I was being groomed by civillian training to be an airline pilot. It would have been a relatively easy shoe-in to go through regional training because our civillian syllabus was written by regional airline guys. The same holds true for civillians going through military training. A scary number of CFIs fail out of UPT... not because they're bad pilots, but because they think that their hundreds of hours in Cessnas and Pipers have paved the way for their military career... it's a very different style of flying. The point I'm trying to make is that you're going to have example of people struggling whether it's military to civillian or visa versa.

In my opinion, it's what you do with your hours that makes you the pilot you are. If you hand-fly a complex aircraft in a variety of airspace, weather, and flight conditions and you get the most out of every hour, then I'd say you're set up to have many of the attributes that make a great pilot. If, on the flip-side, you flick on the AP at 600 AGL (not that an auto-pilot is a sin) and take a nap for a few hours until RAPCON wakes you up, I think you're setting yourself (and whatever you're hauling) up for disaster. Don't be a passenger when you should be a pilot.

Please, both of you, educate us on what those "happy feet" entailed?

Or rather, what was the AA crew trained to do by their airline when encountering an upset?

Last time I checked the Captain is responsible for the operation of a aircraft under part 121 and 135 operations.

my experiences would agree with your post. Well said.

Re the AA Airbus crash, re-read the accident report. Although the AAMP may have (probably did) contributed to the FO's mind-set, more than one captain commented on his over-aggressive rudder use, including in a 727 several years before the crash. Like most accidents, there were several links in this chain.

Interesting you mention Delta. My dad retired there after 27 years after 9/11. He would tell me it would be hard for me to get hired there even though he retired from there because it's a good old boy military club. At one time, he stated to me there was over 600 guys there from one squadron alone. At SWA we have over 400 Luke Airforce guys on the property. Delta hired because you were in the club, it had nothing to do with quality. The average military guy at SWA comes to us with about 1800 to 2000hrs total time and that's in 10 to 15 year time frame and that's after coverting their time. How is it that you only flew 4 years in the military, I thought the contact was for 7 to 10 years??

Captain is responsbile for the safety of the flight! Read your FOM!

Are you serious??? This is the second time that you have said this about the AA crash. Sure the Captain is responsible for the safety of the flight, but at what point after the tail fell off was he supposed to do something about it???

This is straight from NTSB.gov:

"The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the in-flight separation of the vertical stabilizer as a result of the loads beyond ultimate design that were created by the first officer’s unnecessary and excessive rudder pedal inputs."


It is not the Captain's fault that the guy sitting next to him, who was at the controls, decided to overstress the airframe before a reaction could be made.

600 from one squadron? How many planes in that squadron?

did I say i flew four years ....read my post... oh.. but thats something you dont do.

I said I flew the line for 4 years... and ANOTHER year on a wing staff job......which actually was more like 18 months..... thats 5 1/2.... plus my year of UPT... plus 6 months of post UPT training before I was in the squadron. And then 5 months... off flight status once I submitted my papers to leave the military. In my day late 80's early 90's the commitment was 6 years from date of winging.

As for you assertion that there were 600 pilots from one squadron.... hum...lets see............. a herc squadron.(lets use something i am familiar with) was crewed at 1.75 crews per aircraft....thats 28 crews... 56 pilots.. that would be all pilots from the newest guy to the CO. Thats 11 years of pilots, more or less assuming EVERY PILOT in that SQUADRON went to DAL... Even if half of the guys who went to the airlines went to DAL and only about half of military pilots end up after separating going to the airlines....that would be 14 in a given year.. and most pilots are in the sqd 3-5 years.... without taking it any further....even over a 20-25 year period ... 600 pilots from ONE squadron... BULLSHEET. IF 15 pilots left every year for Delta it would still take 40 years to come up with the number you spout.... again... BULLSHEET.

Does that mean that if it had been the CA's take off, a similar upset recovery procedure would NOt have been used and everybody would have lived?

Don't think we'll ever know.

Bravo Taurus...well said!