Wrong answer, if he had been in the training/experience pipeline longer his dirty laundry would have surfaced more than once. Anyone with psych training will tell you, you can fool an expert for :30 minutes, but as time increases its harder and harder to keep the charade up. Experience cannot be hurried, training and screening will only go so far to start. German Wings had everything to do with low time and experience, he had plenty of the former and little of the latter. I fly with ERAU and UND wunderkids quite often and while quite technically proficient, lots of cricket noises when the off the scale stuff happens. Experience takes time, and there is no substitute for either. Before you go all military, that is an apples to porcupine comparison, the military guys are culled and groomed at rates inversely proportional to regional pilots, who are hired for their ability to fog a mirror.

 

Sounds similar to the interview process we all go through or better known as the dog and pony show.

 

Maybe, but almost every time someone goes off the edge people say: jeez, I did t think he/she was capable of that. Seems it's often the quiet ones. Company procedures also shouldn't allow only one person in the flight deck while in flight

 

Is a 600-hour pilot too green to be safe? I think that is what Miles O'Brien was alluding to here.


Yes, absolutely. A natural experience progression built on a solid foundation of airmanship skills.

If you want to use the 'cross eyed and drooling' argument about CFIing and the like, whose to say this shouldn't be used for airline pilots too? Cause ya know, all we do is sit there and watch the autopilot fly, while the flight computers do all the thinkin'....am I right?? Not so fair to grossly oversimplify now, is it?

Fair point...I have done coverage of various other carriers, including RAH, G7, and yes CPZ. (Not sure why the latter gets some people's knickers in a knot. We all bail each other out from time to time.) But yes, it seems RAH and G7 seem to have big trouble...not sure which is worse now and particularly what the fallout will be. It seems something has to give and give soon.

 

Sorry partner sometimes we get tangled in terms such as a small city in which is relative. Try flying between city pairs that make money in other words where many people want to travel. Last time I checked Cleveland didn't make the list but cities such as New York, Miami, L.A., San Fran, Chicago, Dallas, and Atlanta are always on the list. I would follow the really good foreign airlines and see what city those companies are attempting to fly to or increase their frequencies because this is where people want to be my good person.

 

Dunno what airline you work for but.....
I've done IOE with multiple outfits (121 and 135) and we were always practicing stalls, slow flight and other basics on day 1 and pretty much every other day, while we carried 8-80 pax in the back . Thats what we got paid to do lol.

Seriously though, if you did not do the basics prior to showing up for IOE, you never get much of a chance to hone those skills. Once a year PC will not help this.

Check out air france 447 and other incidents for why this matters....

 

I am a big advocate for gaining flying experience outside of the 121 environment. Being a self dispatched 135 Freight Dog generated lots of real world experience. While the thought of not upgrading pilots at 18 months is not popular, experience must be gained and there is no easy way to compress time. I do advocate increased pay so that the experience gathering process can be done without the looming specter of bankruptcy distracting the poor F/O who has to endure said process.

 

It's called building blocks of learning. Now all that stuff that FOs do is after gaining experience before getting to their first 121.

 

That's if the geezer you are flying with let's you be involved in the decision making process. Lots of "army of one" types out there.

 

That's because there are plenty of you Germanwings types out there to make us nervous. Yes, that's right, you aren't as hot as you think. Your job is to provide the PIC with info and whatever he wants, when he wants it.
"Sharing" the decision making process is a joke of the first magnitude, there is one decision maker in every airplane. So for every "three stripe" snot nose out there there is a "geezer" carrying the heavy load. You ever wonder why those "army of one" "geezers" won't let you "share in the decision making process"?
Look in the mirror.