26-year-old airline captain and her 19-year-old co-pilot

My guess is some of you guys may have contributed to their (or another like them) training.
We have the best puppy mills in all the land....So they send them over here for the ab intio waterboarding CPL.
 
We have a Capt who was in the left seat of a DC8 by age 25 and a B747 Capt at 26 flying international routes. He's now in is early 50's and a MD11 Capt. He's an extremely sharp pilot and a hella'va nice guy to boot.
 
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A300Capt said:
We have a Capt who was in the left seat of a DC8 by age 25 and a B747 Capt at 26 flying international routes. He's now in is early 50's and a MD11 Capt. He's an extremely sharp pilot and a hella'va nice guy to boot.
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I heard he bumped the president of his airline off the jumpseat.
 
Adler said:
Yawn. Nobody wrote any articles about our mid 20's IFL crew. @TallWeeds

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Think it has something to do with eye candy. That picture hurts my eyes.

This picture is easy on the eyes.
fholbert said:
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I honestly don't care about the age -- I've flown with some excellent 20-something pilots over the years.

I'm more concerned with the variety and depth of experience in something other than straight-and-level, FMS/autoflight/autopilot, under-radar-control flying.

Quite honestly, just about anyone who has a PPL with an instrument rating could babysit an FMS flying a programmed route and click off the autopilot long enough for a safe landing. It is when stuff gets sideways that we really need depth and breadth of experience in the front end of the jet. After all, Al Haynes and Sullenberger learned everything they needed to know in their respective airline training programs, right?

Those 20-somethings I've known had the fortune and luck to get some varied, high-performance flying in at a young age and were instilled with good levels of both discipline and attitude by those who taught them. The generation of airline pilots that grew up young at the airlines flying low-bypass jets with flight engineers, no autopilots, no FMSs, etc, certainly had a different level of seasoning from what many current airline pilots are growing up with.

IMHO, the MPL-babies (especially) are the very opposite of this.
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
And he'd have a good point.....

Ab-initio 250-hr turned 5-yr A320 CA with no more than 4-5k total, and an ab-initio FO with 250 hrs total. 45 yrs combined age and 5k combined total flight time for an A320? That's not a well of experience to draw from.


That would all go well if "everything goes according to plan. Introduce a little anarchy and everything becomes chaos."
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Is the A320 that much harder than an RJ to fly? Only reason I ask, is because people always say this about "mainline" metal. Meanwhile here in the U.S you can have less than 5K of experience in the cockpit at times, especially these days at Compass, which flies 70 seat jets. Does that make you not want to jump on Compass?? Do you think if passengers knew that they would not fly on Delta knowing they outsource some flying to less experience to remain cost effective?

I get it, many want to see the experience in front of the tube they are about get a ride in. But honestly other than the potential of losing 90 more people in an accident...what is the difference? I think that is just it. If you crash and burn, now the airline has to pay out more families insurance claims on an Airbus vs RJ.

Or..... Maybe I'm way off and am in right field picking daisies on this one... :)
 
Hacker15e said:
The difference is in the depth of the bag-of-tricks the crew will have to dig into when something really bad happens.
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No I get that. More experience is good, I'm not saying it isn't. But why is it that people are shocked when an Airbus has a young crew and not When an ERJ has a young crew? Simply the size of the airplane? It's not like there are "safety bumpers" for said ERJ when the dung hits the fan.
 
JDean3204 said:
No I get that. More experience is good, I'm not saying it isn't. But why is it that people are shocked when an Airbus has a young crew and not When an ERJ has a young crew? Simply the size of the airplane? It's not like there are "safety bumpers" for said ERJ when the dung hits the fan.
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When I ride on an RJ, I expect the crew to be young and inexperienced for the most part as the job is entry level.
When I ride on a mainliner, I expect the crew to be older and experienced as their job is not entry level.
 
JDean3204 said:
But why is it that people are shocked when an Airbus has a young crew and not When an ERJ has a young crew?
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Because, like it or not, Joe six pack and Jane public equates Regional pilots flying RJ's as being less experienced then those flying larger aircraft. People assume, right or wrong, that the larger the aircraft the more experienced the crew. They think those pilots are making more money and hence, have more experience, and because of that they believe they must be safer.

Now having said that, I've known heavy jet pilots I wouldn't let drive my car across the parking lot and I've flown with extremely competent Regional/commuter pilots. I know it sucks having people judge your experience level based on aircraft size or your age. It's human nature. We want our pilots, surgeons, priests, Company CEO's, etc...to have gray hair and plenty of experience.

When I was a 24 yr old commuter Captain on a Metroliner I got the stares and comments about if I was old enough, experienced enough, etc...to fly them to their destination. There is a cure for that. It's called Father Time. It catches up with all of us if you live long enough. And with time comes life experiences and hopefully good judgement which probably came from little experience and bad judgement.
 
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A300Capt said:
Because, like it or not, Joe six pack and Jane public equates Regional pilots flying RJ's as being less experienced then those flying larger aircraft. People assume, right or wrong, that the larger the aircraft the more experienced the crew. The think those pilots are making more money and hence, have more experience because of that which means they must be safer.

Now having said that, I've known heavy jet pilots I wouldn't let drive my car across the parking lot and I've flown with extremely competent Regional/commuter pilots. I know it sucks having people judge your experience level based on aircraft size or your age. It's human nature. We want our pilots, surgeons, priests, Company CEO's, etc...to have gray hair and plenty of experience.

When I was a 24 yr old commuter Captain on a Metroliner I got the stares and comments about if I was old enough, experienced enough, etc...to fly them to their destination. There is a cure for that. It's called Father Time. It catches up with all of us if you live long enough. And with time comes life experiences and hopefully good judgement which probably came from little experience and bad judgement.
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I was getting that same look as a "young" captain on a caravan. Everyday I had to answer a question to the effect "how old are you? How long have you been flying? Are you really old enough to fly this thing?" I had a few lines with two different FO's in their 50's. Which was nice because most of the time the questions were absent as they seen one person with gray hair up front...
 
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