Hi guys,

Here in the middle east Captains require 500 hours PIC on a narrow body before we are able to transition over to a widy body. Seems a little low to me. Just curious what the requirements are at your airline?

Cheers

No requirements at Delta. New hires are going straight into the 767 as an fo. As far as a captain no pic requirement just strictly a seniority issue.

Same applies at UAL

No requirements at FedEx either. New hires going straight into the right seat of 777's, in fact all of our widebodies.

Seems ridiculous to me!

GF

Requirement?

Answer: Seniority.

What's your automation policy at your airline in the Middle East? That may have a greater affect on the experience of those FO's upgrading and narrow body Captains with limited hours than a hard flight requirement.

The 500 hour requirement would seem low to me also if a pilot's experience consisted of starting as a pay for training "Cadet", then flying immediately the right seat with the minimum hours, and leading up to his potential wide body upgrade had rarely flown without the autopilot above 1000 AGL.

I came from Emirates a few years ago. Their automation policy was one of being a robot: "maximum use of automation...". That meant not being able to hand fly above 10,000 ft... ever! Autopilot shall be used above 10,000ft.
They are trained to become robots without thinking too much. Not even looking at the synoptic when you had an EICAS message to see what was really going on. Simply told to follow the checklist in it's entirety. Be a robot... don't think.

So glad I left that slave ship operation with their 100 hours a month crossing more time zones in a month than all other airlines do in a year!

Other than that, it was a great gig! :-)

Kap

How is flying a Widebody any different than flying a Narrowbody?

Sad. And IIRC from the prelim report of the EK incident at DXB, they touched the G/A button and just assumed it would power up, pulled up to a go around attitude and raised the gear. Weight on wheels at touchdown took away the automatic power increase to the GA detent, and without following it up with the hands manually, the rest was history. Another robot mentality was going around in the first place because of the "long landing" auto callout. 3,000 feet used up in DXB still gave them over 10,000 feet to stop on a dry runway. Then again I read that EK is draconian and would have called those pilots in for a carpet dance if the "long landing" warning went off and they continued the landing.

Robotic operation with a hint of draconian practices in management