On a complete tangent, I have a good friend that was suppose to be on that flight. His connection was late and he missed the flight. He still has his ticket. Talk about someone looking out for you.

 

And I can not help but think that a summer or two of banner towing, or a bit of flight instructing, might have kept that accident from happening.

And per Duksrule's request: 2300 hours into the right seat of a Twin Otter in 1982. I was considered, and considered myself to be, low time with a lot to learn.

 

Airlines will have to increase their compensation to attract those pilots holding ATPs who work in other segments of industry (expats, corporate/frax/charter, those employed outside aviation, etc.) or go out of business. Then those businesses will have to increase their compensation to retain or recruit new talent.

Its this nifty thing called the "free market".

There will never be a lack of well-qualified pilots wanting to work at quality operators that offer suitable compensation and quality of life. Those companies that offer industry-lagging pay & QOL, well....they'll go the way of the dodo due to a lack of talent. It'll be short-term pain for some, for the greater good of the entire industry.

 

Maybe because they now realize what little they knew back in the day of low time when they thought they knew everything too. I mean, in your many years of military service, don't you look back on certain things and realize how little you knew about what was going on when you first started and after many more years of living the dream you realize how many more factors were at play in the decisions being made?

Maybe it is that very experience that now colors their perceptions. Actually quite a few on this thread have even said [I didn't know what I didnt know].

That doesn't answer the question of how many times things might have gone wrong or nearly went wrong except for someone catching something. If you are only basing your argument on mishap statistics, and not what is REALLY going on in the cockpit which is being shared with you in stories and experiences ith CA flying with some of these people then not much can be siad to convince you otherwise.

A healthy combination of BOTH makes the pilot.

csh405:
That point has been well debated even in this thread.

USMCFLYR

 

USMC I completely understand your points and to some extent I agree just maybe not on the same fix. For the guys who got hired with low time and suddenly had the epiphany that "wow I don't know as much as I thought and I am not safe" I ask DID YOU QUIT or did you continue to work and learn? Now that they have seen the light they want it to be harder for everyone below them. It makes them sound like primadonnas that forgot where they came from and what it was like to grow. Now that they are in, screw the rest of the guys trying to make it. It would be like an officer saying now that I got my commision with just a BS degree, I want to fight for all that come after me to have to have a MS degree because I didn't feel I was educated enough before going to OCS. (I know over simplified but you get the point)

Also the examples you talk about in this thread go both ways. Captains correct FOs and FOs catch mistakes that the CA make. That is all part of being a team and working together. Many people talk about low time guys like they are sitting in the right seat in their booster chair just pushing buttons and licking the window. I am all about if EITHER pilot is doing something in the cockpit that is so bad that it puts the A/C or passengers at risk then steps need to be taken and have them fired. It is just that simple. But if it is just the learning curve of being a new FO well then I do feel that part of the CAs job is to mentor junior pilots. As a MC aviator did you ever mentor your JOs? Or did you say "screw you, you are a low time bad pilot and it isn't my job to teach you"? My guess is that you held training whether it was your "job" or not.

My only point is that 1500 isn't a magic number. It has been proven with statistics that mishaps involving pilot error happen more with an over 1500 hour pilot in the cockpit. While being a CFI may give you some insight and experience, sitting in the right seat not flying the A/C for 1500 hours doesn't make you a super pilot. Or how about the CFIs that are in FL or someplace that they really never see weather, fly nothing but new airplanes etc.... and how much planning/decision making is involved in taking a new airplane that is full of gas out for 1.2 in the practice area doing turns with a student? My wife gets more experience riding right seat in our cessna on a bad weather day.

 

I'm going to post this again, for what seems like the one billionth time. The CA had 263 hours when he entered the 121 world.

 

I laugh every time I read this. Stalls are something taught from day four or five...rehashed through every stage of training all the way through a type rating. There is no excuse for ignoring a shaker then overpowering a pusher. No amount of 'banner towing, or a bit of flight instructing' would prevent that.

For those who don't fly the -8, it's a learning scenario to see what they did in the sim. The -8 has very benign stall characteristics and easily recovers. Plenty of warning with the shaker and a good, quick pusher. It really does make you wonder what all was going on in that cockpit to cause the accident.

 

It seems to me that many highlighting the need for more experience in the cockpit are from the generation when you need thousands of hours and much more experience than currently required to even have a shot at FO in a JS or Saab. Your question would more likely be answered from the new CAs who were hired and upgraded within the last few years (maybe at the time of the last "hiring boom" - if they have even upgraded yet).
In the end - even if you are correct and they have forgotten where they came from - - - two wrongs don't make a right.

MENTORING and TEACHING are two different things. No one argues that new FOs don't need mentoring or even INSTRUCTION in the ways of the world regarding P121 operations. No matter your background growing up whether it be night dogging it or coming out of military heavy international experience - - those pilots still need mentoring and instruction in the ways of airline flying. THAT is what IOE CAs and training CAs are required to do. If you read carefully - many of these CAs who have answered this thread are saying that they have had to INSTRUCT in BASIC FLYING principles, not the details of their particular airlines OpSecs, FOMs, or finer details of airline flying. That is not good.

What did we do as MC aviators in the fleet? We complained to the training squadrons (Basic, Advanced and RAGs/FRSs) that some of the students they were sending us couldn't even rendezvous correctly or were still making what was considered basic mistakes and all concerned continued to tweak the training syllabus' to target those areas of most frequent complaints.
FLEET INSTRUCTION (think airline IOE) consisted of more advance flying and more indepth tactics (think P121 training) and FLEET IPs (think IOE CAs) didn't have time or opportunity to be training basic airmanship.

Nope - nothing magical about it at all except a lot of studies I presume, and a lot of smart people sitting around the table, trying to come up with some number and set amount of experience that proerly equated the the highest rating available in the US aviation system. I'm sure someone will always have a different idea - especially if it is viewed by that someone as inhibiting them in any way. What number of hours would YOU come up with Duks if you were tasked with providing a quality or quantity of hours/training? Could you sell it to the government and the public as the end all, be all answer? Could you defend it against the ants coming out of the woodwork who would cite study after study to discredit your 'arbitrary' minimums?

USMCFLYR

 

I wouldn't have a set time. It would be more of a practical training and testing issue. Of course you would have to have some set hours but the testing is where it's at. You have to come up with some sort of real world no BS test. Not hey were are going to simulate X, what would you do? Not sure how you would do that but it would weed out the weaker pilots. It has been proven that hours don't mean anything. I can go CFI for 1500 hours, safety pilot for 1500 hours, fly my own plane for 1500 hours, buy the SIC program from a PFT shop for 1500 hours, etc... in the end I get to ATP mins but it doesn't mean that I am qualified to have an ATP. It is the test that makes me qualified.

Funny that everyone is OK with a 250 hour pilot teaching people to fly airplanes from PVT to ATP all by themselves but just not riding in the right seat of a RJ under a CAs supervision.

 

1500 hours is not what is going to be required...... An Airline Transport Pilot license is what will be required.