I hear this constantly but want to know specifically what US Air Force students get access to that makes them gods among pilots.

 

Think the the selection process and failure rate in training too. Unlike the military, a flight school will accept any student who can get a loan and as long as they have enough money, they will eventually pass. The military screens applicants to get the best and then sets high training standards. If they can't meet those standards, they are dropped. By the end of it, you are left with a select group of pilots whose abilities are far ahead of their flight time.

 

That's a ridiculous comparison. How much does it cost to get a military pilot to that point? Sure, you *could* do it in the civilian sector by spending millions per student with a bazillion percent washout rate (and an 8-10 year commitment at the regionals? LOL!) but that's comparing apples to jackhammers.

 

That's only a small part of it. Student pilots simply can't do all their training in multimillion dollar turbine aircraft at a price point of millions of dollars per head. The notion that we can lower mins to match military training hours and get the same thing is completely absurd. The civilian training programs need experience, which is what the RAA/A4A are so desperate to try and lower.

 

The military training model is a valid comparison but there are a lot of differences as mentioned by other posters. I will add also that military safety records (during peacetime operations) have not been as high as civilian safety records. Military training, by nature, is designed to push individuals to the extreme of their capability. I can teach my kid to fly a jet airliner with zero time but it doesn't mean you want him flying the line.

I can sit here and argue with Gloopy all day but he just goes back and forth and gets upset so I think we should call it quits.

In the past the 1500 rule wasn't necessary because airlines would hire a broader base of experience and generally it was hard to get a job at any airline (even flying a 19 seat turboprop) with less than 3000 hours.

There is a very clear reason why airlines push so hard to hire low time pilots these days instead of hiring existing higher time pilots and although guys like Gloopy can't see it (or deliberately ignore it for whatever agenda they have) the problem is real and only the unions can make it go away.

The unions have guys like Gloopy so locked in that it's going to be very hard to break the mentality. Younger regional pilots just starting out in their career need to be wary of the propaganda that is fed to them and keep their eyes open.

 

It doesn't. It only protects those few pilots at the top and then only if they manage to keep their jobs. The problem is the big unions are now in bed with management (look at Delta) and they share a common goal of allowing a large supply of low cost outsourced pilot labor in order to protect themselves. The dream of regional pilots to one day be one of those few is the motivator that drives the propaganda.

It wasn't always like this but the system that was originally designed to protect pilots has been morphed over time into a system designed to keep wages artificially very low. The problem is the very few senior pilots have all bought into it because they think it worked for them.

The system is sophisticated and entrenched and the propaganda runs very deep. It's not difficult to understand if you just stand back a bit and look at the whole picture.

 

So first I work for the RAA, even though I go against pretty much everything they've ever stood for.

So then I work for a large flight school PR firm, even though I'm against pretty much everything they're attempting to push through.

So now, finally, I'm a "union guy" primarily because I won't advocate eliminating seniority lists and turning the industry into a free for all of individual contractors.

just isn't cutting it.



that's better.

 

Others have answered the question, but the way you ask it leads me to suspect that you're not familiar with how military pilots are hired and trainined...

The first available slots and the majority of all slots go to service academy and ROTC students, who are on full-ride scholarships, largely in technical/scientific fields and have had to maintain a certain GPA to keep the scholarship. The scholarships were competitive so we're talking about HS scholar/athletes as the starting point.

Remaining slots go to off-the-street hires, who must have a degree and are more competitive with a technical degree and good grades. This process is long and daunting and requires a lot of motivation just to jump through all the hurdles. At this point in time time there is essentially zero tolerance for any history of criminal activity or drug use (even very minor history, like D&D). It wasn't always that way, but seems to be the standard now.

Then you do OCS/OTS which isn't fun to put it mildly, followed by aviation indoc/ground school (also not really fun).

Once you start flying, you jump right into turbo-prop equipment and are typically expected to solo around ten hours IIRC. Every training flight is a graded event, and you are allowed a very limited number of repeats. Aerobatic and formation flying is part of the package...most civilians don't touch that until they have at least hundreds of hours (if ever). Once you complete that, you're off to another airframe type usually a jet trainer of some sort. Final step is you report to a training or operational squadron to qualify on your assigned airframe.

You can't buy more training if you need it and the typical instructors' bedside manner would get them fired from a civilian school. Washout rate is high, historically well over 50%.

The airlines could do something like this but it would cost them dearly...not just the training, they'd probably also have to pay higher entry-level wages to attract the kind of folks who could complete such a program. Might be financially feasible for the majors, but totally impractical for regionals.

The european/asian ab initio model falls far short of our military training...they hire kids who are good at taking tests, and train them to operate simulators and complex systems...their training/experience in actually flying airplanes is very limited and we've seen the results of that a few times.

 

This is 100% correct.

The system will reward you beyond your wildest dreams if you grab the brass ring...otherwise you'll be an indentured servant subject to seniority & wage "resets" every 15 years or so.

 

And you have to grab it early enough or you will have spent the first half of your career in poverty making the whole thing hardly worthwhile. It's a long shot gamble at best these days for a new pilot just starting out.

Also...excellent analysis of military vs civilian training.