baseball

1. The less amount of flight time you have the less experience you have.

2. The less experience you have to base decisions off of, the less judgment you have to bring to bear.

3. The less judgment you have in aeronautical decision making the more you have to rely on other things to guide your process.

4. The United training footprint doesn't substitute for reduced experience and judgement.


5. Aeronautical decision making is a product of, and a sum of; training, experience, and judgement.


6. A pilot can't spend 6 weeks in training and all of a sudden jump out of the phone booth with all the tools he/or she needs to necessarily be all that he or she needs to be. The training footprint is designed for efficiency and cost effectiveness and to cover what needs to be covered in the "time allotted."

7. There isn't enough "OE" to go around for inexperienced new hire pilots to cover a years worth of complex operations in 2 or 3 line trips with a check airman babysitting you.

8. The low time pilot does have a higher instance. If you were to ask an FAA inspector at what some of the institutional markers are that they use to justify increased surveillance or observation one of them is turnover and/or allot of inexperience on the flight deck.

9. A pilot gets his/her seasoning and experience however they can get it. Like all persons pursing advancement in a profession the goal is to spend the least amount of time possible working for peanuts so that they can spend the bulk of their time maximizing the return on their investment (training, education). It's no secret a pilot would like to spend zero time at the regionals if they could. But, since the industry doesn't pay well enough at the regionals and since the same industry killed career progression after 9-11 it is what it is.

10. The profession needs to rebound for a sustained period of time in order for the experience factor to get back to acceptable norms for new hires entering the profession. I see no valid reason to pass on highly experienced candidates and hire a new CFI instead of a 10,000 hour RJ pilot. We need to try and force that new CFI to get invested in the profession and get that experience we all want him or her to have before getting hired by a major.

Floyd

I'm sure they are fine people, have the book answers down pat and can fly a beautiful ILS. My question is how are they operating in an extremely busy terminal environment with WX/last minute runway changes, doing the RV19 DCA/Expressway 31 LGA at night with 25kts of wind out of the West? Do they have enough experience to tell a weak captain no or be an asset to the Captain when the cockpit is extremely busy?


..... Beat me to it baseball

baseball

They don't. Why? Because they can't tell a low time or even a high time Captain anything, because they don't know anything, and more importantly, even if they did, they wouldn't know how to articulate it in a meaningful way. You need more than 3 stripes and an Ipad to be an effective co pilot. If the Captain knows you know nothing, likely you are already blown off and your opinions not highly considered. But, knowing how to say it, is a "learned technique." You don't just pop out of the womb doing advanced calculus, and you don't just pop of the TK super pilot phone booth with being a jedi master in CRM. You need experience to "back up" the great training UAL gave you when you were hired. It's experience plus training that gives you the judgment. It's also that combination that gives you credibility.

UALfoLIFE

I flew with 2 LCAs and PI all told me their book skills were fine but their flying skills/judgment were very subpar compared to the normal mil/civ new hire. All needed more sims or more paired LCA flying before getting through training. Hiring people without turbine time in the current environment is completely ridiculous.

One of the LCAs also told me that the current head of LCA program has a kid enrolled in this program, and that is why this nothing but CFI program was able to get a CPP with UAL set up.

757Driver

Good thing they'll pay us Captains extra to train these guys and gals out on the line, NOT !!

baseball

Just call the FODM and politely tell them you aren't a baby-sitter. Find another copilot who is ready for prime time.

baseball

Was it the head of the overall LCA program, or just a particular LCA on a particular fleet type? I would like to see our union look into this particular issue if the facts back up what you stated. It sort of reminds me of how Fred Abbot operated with his "pfriends of pfred" program. Just get done what he wants done via his relationships....

Broncofan

Well I can personally tell you the extra sims is bull **** for the 2 I went through training with. Absolutely no extra sims. And they were the first ones to go through about 3 months ago. As far as operating in high workload environments? I cant say for sure, but everyone including mil guys have a hard time with that at first

Spicy McHaggis

Excellent points but I can tell you why they are doing this. It’s not to pass up the 10,000hr RJ pilot. Everyone knows he’s going to be better than a CFI. This is an experiment to see if hiring from basically zero time will be viable in the future should the regional applicant pool dry up.

Spicy McHaggis

What pilot from a regional has issues with flying in “high workload environments?” Almost all of them have been flying in and out of the busiest airports in the country for years.