This. Someone from the civilian side has probably done one spin flight and 200 of those 500 hours in the traffic pattern at the local airport as a CFI in a 172. Someone on the C-17 on the military side has a lot more experience by 500 hrs via a training program an order of magnitude more involved than civilian training, and likely a lot of simulator time on top of that. (I came from the civilian side and this opinion has been formed by comparing my training to my buddies who were trained in the military.)

 

He’s talking about the left seat of a military aircraft, for which an R-ATP means nothing.

 

In that case the only option that matters is the squadron commander who is willing to put their career on the line to sign that person off.

People either meet the minimum requirements and the standard during the upgrade course or they don’t. Not sure why people get their underwear all bunched up about arbitrary hours numbers for people to sit in x seat in y aircraft. What’s more important is having a training department with the fortitude to not pass trash when someone doesn’t meet the standard. Whether it’s retraining, or attrition, the solution shouldn’t be passing someone along to the line out of fear of rocking the boat.

 

They won’t get robust training at an airline. They will get a highly scripted program that was designed to take already experienced pilots and get them through the syllabus and onto the line.

 

How would you feel about a 13,000 hour 737 civilian going into the left seat of a C-17?

Lets keep the comparison on the same table.

 

I read the changes, and to me it sounds like an overall improvement (despite the upgrade failure aspect). A lot of maturing happens once you become a captain, and this change requires that experience before you transition to UAL.

 

The robustness isn’t even remotely comparable. Apples and oranges.

Surprised nobody has mentioned the 300 hour PIC jet pilots landing on aircraft carriers, and 600 hour PICs leading wingmen and making combat decisions.

 

Ah come on man, we’ve seen this conversation come up before plenty of times on here, and we all know that our biases can easily get injected into it. Civilians aren’t perfect, but neither are military guys either. Military pilots have more than their share of struggles and adjustments when transitioning to airline flying just like civilians. I can count on one hand the number of times I've heard airline sim instructors tell me over the last 2 years of how military guys are the ones getting the most retrains/repeat lessons more than anyone else. And no they weren’t military helicopter pilots. Military pilots can and do wash out of training. Does that necessarily ‘mean something?’ No, nor am I tying to imply anything by it. Just means military aren’t perfect.

Granted, the training in the military is very intense and demanding considering the types of operations you do in the military. The training for that kind of stuff isn’t easy nor should it be. Especially things like landing on carriers and formation flying. Takes lots of practice and focus I would imagine to not only perfect those skills but to maintain them as well.

The military wants you to fly the way they want you to fly. It’s understandable. The airlines are the same way. You fly the machine the way they want you to fly it. We don’t do formation flying, land on carriers, perform aerobatics or night NVG stuff at low level, but the training certainly is demanding enough to a degree that military types still can, and do struggle with. Sure you may have flown a high performance, high speed jet in the military, but the way you will fly the jet will be very different at your airline job. The procedures are likely vastly different.

In terms of hours and experience, yea I’ll give it to you that the military pilot has certainly seen and experienced more, especially all in turbine aircraft in 500 hours compared to the average civilian. But give it 5-10 years and that civilian will likely have accumulated far more flight time and experiences, likely in turbojets, than the average military aviator. Military pilots just simply don’t fly as much after flight school. For civilians it’s usually the opposite. They are still flying a ton long after they completed flight training. Their proficiency is sharp.

Yes military vs civilian training and flying are apples to oranges. They are 2 very different animals, that are focused on entirely different things. Civilian training is good for civilian operations. Military training is good for military operations. Can there be a good, positive transfer of learning from one realm to the other? Certainly, but sometimes that’s not the case. Attitude is ultimately the thing makes or breaks people. Go in with the wrong attitude in either realm, military or civilian, or switching from one to the other, and you’re gonna have problems before you know it. Like I said civilians may not do any of the cool xxit that military guys get to do, but it doesn’t mean we aren’t good at what we do.

 

I agree with much of your post and was not saying that military pilots are perfect. I was replying to the message about the 2000 hour pilot made earlier. The point was to illustrate that the rigor in military flight training and civilian flight training are universes apart, and that the comparison wasn’t apt. It was not intended to say that military pilots are perfect or civilian pilots are weak.

 

What's the difference between 1500 tt pilots in an ERJ? Vs. a 737 or an A320? Either way they're learning in the right seat and probably have little to no experience in a jet.