no, not fewer NDB approaches.... I flew with a girl a while back on a 747-200 who had absolutely no idea how to use the RMI to get her relative position to a station... seriously?

Is that what that thing is for? I thought it pointed at the nearest Waffle House. Why else would it swing around so much?

hey there bud! Hope the new job is treating you well!

Must have been a long while back.

Are you Frank Abignale?

I can only assume you are employed at Delta, and if so, I hope you are advocating to your management/HR Department the benefit in hiring Turboprop pilots with 8,000+ hrs of "steam six pack" time. We are constantly in the weather, hand flying, operating our aircraft to the edges of its envelope. However, for some time now, it seems most any major is more interested in hiring a 2,500 hr jet pilot, who found a quick upgrade at a jet regional.

I'm not saying a jet pilot doesn't have their own unique skill set, but if stick and rudder skills are so important, (which I wholeheartedly agree with), jet operators need to stop looking down their nose at a high time turboprop pilot. I know several excellent pilots who have plenty of smarts to be able to program an FMS, or work an AFCS, that would be an asset at any airline, who have been shot down recently, because they didn't have any "holy" turbojet time. There may come a time when all the button pushing in the world will not save your plane, and I would much rather have a high time prop driver sitting next to me.

Anyway, my intent is not to start a prop vs jet debate, but to make the point that I do believe experienced prop drivers are under-valued when applying to major jet operators.

yeah, so long ago that it was between 2007 and now..


as for what DAL 88 driver said... he's 100% correct.. the "kids" learning to fly on glass cockpit trainers and then going to CRJ's with NDs are missing a major and critical / formative part of what makes for a good aviator.. map, needle, and a ham sandwich! If you can't do basic navigation, when all that electronic fancy stuff goes away, what are you going to do then??

I'm not some old crusty steam gauge driver who's bitter about not having glass cockpit time, to the contrary, most of my time is in advanced glass airplanes, but I've also got some straight citation time and classic whale time and I can tell you, there's a lot more to situational awareness than a picture tube with a "you are here" arrow..

FixTheMess, You are probably correct. My background is also heavy turboprop time, Convair 580s and F27/227s amongst others and the DC6. I once saw a bumper sticker in Engand at the gift shop for the aerodrome serving both British HeavyLift and British AirFerries Mx bases, it read "Jets are for Kids."
Delta use to be pretty heavy with ex P3 guys in the training department. I think Delta values pilots with heavy turboprop experience.
Be happy to see you aboard. I have flown with a few, but not many, command bar cripples in recent times. We are beginning to see the result of modern cockpit primary training and low experience new hires at the regional level in new pilots at the majors.

That checks. A buddy of mine at SWA who cut his teeth flying the turbo-props you speak of for a quality regional, was recently chatting with a CP while at work. They discussed the sad reality that because he had no jet PIC time, he wouldn't even get an interview had he been applying today.

I've flown four different high performance jets in the Air Force (well, maybe the T-37 isn't "high performance"), and the KA-350ER. By far the most challenging "pilot" situations occurred in the King Air.

I wouldn't trade my Air Force training for anything, ever. I am a better pilot for having flown, and made decisions in, an aircraft that had just enough performance to get me right where I didn't want to be in Afghanistan.

Hopefully I'll get hired.

Edited for brevity

Pilots use automated systems to fly airliners for all but about three minutes of a flight: the takeoff and landing.

...In the most recent fatal airline crash in the U.S., in 2009 near Buffalo, N.Y., the co-pilot of a regional airliner programmed incorrect information into the plane's computers, causing it to slow to an unsafe speed. That triggered a stall warning.

...The startled captain, who hadn't noticed the plane had slowed too much, responded by repeatedly pulling back on the control yoke, overriding two safety systems, when the correct procedure was to push forward.

A couple questions-
1) Who only hand flies for three minutes?
2) Is the Dash that computer heavy, or is this bogus info?
Ok, this is a statement-
3) We do need basic stick and rudder skills ingrained in us from hundreds of hours of flying (not 200 but many hundreds), this should not have to be taught to us at our first regional, it shoud be in basic training, not at a puppy mill.



Has this changed recently, or is this the kind of research that MSNBC does?

I would like to say when I used to fly the SAAB we had to disconnect the A/P in icing conditions, which we were in quite a bit as the SAAB couldn't outclimb its own shadow, so I can't see how they could make a blanket statement like "80 seconds" at the commuters.

I wish one day someone would interview a line pilot, instead of a "network expert".

I think there needs to be MORE stall training, and NOT just training to recognize and immediately recover.... I think in the sim they need to let stall fully develop and let the pilots see just how bad it can be. I was surprised when my current employer did HIGH altitude stall training/demo where we allowed the jet at FL350 to fully stall and then recover.... pretty eye opening to see how many THOUSANDS of feet it took to fly it out. I am also an advocate of spin training, having come from a AF background we spun the ever living crap out of the T-37 every which way but loose. Beyond the fact that it teaches you the mechanics of a stall recovery in THAT aircraft much more valuable is that it teaches you NOT to panic when you are out of control and that with proper technique situations which may seem unrecoverable are probably recoverable. The ability to keep your head when you get in those situations and perform a recovery and or use good flying skills to recover is the cornerstone of a confident pilot. A bit more hand flying in and out of the terminal environment wouldnt hurt either. At the at least the commercial pilot level and certainly the ATP level verifiable spin and stall training needs to be part of the required training. Hell, when i started flying in 1978 we spun C150s before solo.... I am pretty sure that doesnt happen today.