Perhaps mainline should reconsider hiring any regional pilots?

I do think it is interesting though, that after the majors got rid of the military style CRM structure, the accident rate basically dropped to zero.

 

I must agree that the majors probably go beyond the call of duty with your training but it doesn't necessarily make you a better pilot if anything it just makes your life easier during training. The regionals have good training and if anything it makes it harder on the pilot. Most regional pilots are hard workers with tremendous experience in and out of busy airports etc. High quality I say. Most I have flown with put me to shame with knowledge and experience. I would have no problem putting my family on any regional aircraft. The bible talks about taking the log out of your eye before you see the twig in others. I have apply this as well.

 

What type of military brethren
1. CFI’s who join as WO to get 750 and become RJ FO’s
2. CFI’s who become commissioned officer’ s and retired there
3. John Q public who get a flight slot in guard, reserve or active duty without have ever touching an airplane and either retired there or didn’t
4. RJ FO’s who sign up to wait out seniority
5. RJ pilots who were laid off and didn’t want to start over
6. People who were born better and PI$$ excellence like you sound
Comparing an all civilian career to a civilian+military career is not the same as comparing civilian to all military in only public aircraft career.

 

Many, many former students of mine are now both regional and mainline pilots. (I've been around for a while.) To a man (and a woman), the mainline pilots all tell me that the only difference between regional operations and mainline operations is the compensation and the general QOL/ morale.

I also fail to see the difference between a CRJ-900 operating SFO-ORD nonstop, vs. a 132-seat mainline A318 flying the same exact route. (Aside from the Airbus's larger passenger capacity.) You're flying the same altitudes, same airspeeds, dealing with the same weather conditions, and operating under the same regulations. Perhaps you could enlighten us as to the dramatic difference that supposedly requires all mainline pilots to be Chuck Yeager, while the regional guys are happy just to find the airport.

And if your assertion were true, it would follow that the rate of accidents, incidents, and stupid pilot tricks worthy of CNN coverage would be far higher for regionals than for mainline aircraft. Do you have the data to back up your claim? If so, I'm sure we'd all be interested to see it. A check of airline accident records in the US, over the past ten years, reveals the following accidents that took place in US airspace by US-operated carriers. (It does not include incidents that resulted in no injuries, such as the NWA crew that overflew their destination airport by 150nm a few years back. It also does not include incidents that were clearly due to mechanical failure and were no fault of the crew.)

Regional: Colgan 3407, Comair 5191, and Pinnacle 3701.

Mainline: SWA 1248, SWA 345, UPS 1354, AA 331, CAL 1404.

Obviously this isn't a scientific list, and it only goes back ten years from today. But with regional airlines operating something like 50% of all 121 departures (again, not a precise figure), one would expect to find far more regional airline incidents than mainline. This does not appear to be the case.

Always willing to be educated and told that I'm wrong...however, I'd like to see the data.

 

Thanks for the info on the Guard. Much respect for anyone who serves this country. Should not have made my comment about the guard. Just trying to take a jab at the 1 percenter on this forum that we all have flying at our company/branch.

 

My reasoning is simple. Colgan 3407.

 

Seriously? The actions of one crew somehow represent the competence of tens of thousands of pilots?

Sure, 3407 was an astonishing display of lethal incompetence. But there have been plenty of gross failures of airmanship at the mainline level. Plenty. I noticed that 3 of the mainline accidents involved SWA aircraft landing. Would you conclue that all SWA pilots therefore aren't qualified to land their aircraft?

 

Good post. Needed to be said.

 

Ah, so then UPS didn't crash a plane and kill a crew recently.

 

Are ya‘ll really measuring airline performance based on the ability to not crash. Is a post solo student as capable as a CFI because they both don’t have a crash under their belt? If a crash is a really a series of events that were chained together on one trip wouldn’t you want to determine how frequent these same events occurred separately not causing a crash. Would you not also want to measure go-arounds caused by pilot error or runway incursions, or 360 on final for energy mgmt.
There are two different points being made here:
1 The mainline/regional equipment is harder/easier to fly.
Well, mainline pilots are managing more energy
2 The overall operations are equal
Mainline generates the standard and regional matches it. I.e. United introduced CRM as a result of a crash. Colgan merged, went out of business, and washed its name as a result of a crash.