FAA Revising ATP Regs

I think the complaint is that everyone is prepared to reduce safety (and yes, sorry, but dropping mins reduces safety...ask an actuary) on the threat (promise?) of a "pilot shortage", without said shortage ever having shown its glorious head. How bout a few flights go unflown and the airlines can't beg, borrow, or God forbid PAY anyone to sit up front, THEN we'll talk about what's needed to fill them cockpits. They all look pretty full to me, and as someone pointed out above, there's been a noticeable lack of "concessionary" contracts on the part of management. Why do you imagine that might be?
 
The laws mandate an ATP, but the FAA is free to set the requirements for an ATP (or restricted ATP) to whatever they want.
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so then FAA will make the ATP reqs 500tt and 25 ME? I think it'll make more sense for the FAA to lobby congress to get rid of the ATP get all together vs water it down even more.
 
Boris Badenov said:
I think the complaint is that everyone is prepared to reduce safety (and yes, sorry, but dropping mins reduces safety...ask an actuary) on the threat (promise?) of a "pilot shortage", without said shortage ever having shown its glorious head. How bout a few flights go unflown and the airlines can't beg, borrow, or God forbid PAY anyone to sit up front, THEN we'll talk about what's needed to fill them cockpits. They all look pretty full to me, and as someone pointed out above, there's been a noticeable lack of "concessionary" contracts on the part of management. Why do you imagine that might be?
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There is already two of those three. But #3 will never happen(at the regionals).
 
Beech90 said:
so then FAA will make the ATP reqs 500tt and 25 ME? I think it'll make more sense for the FAA to lobby congress to get rid of the ATP get all together vs water it down even more.
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They could make a restricted ATP have those requirements, making it closer to how the Europeans do it.

What I figure will happen is about the time I am competitive at a major airline (or they are desperate enough) the whole system will switch to ab initio and then I won't be able to get hired because I have too much experience.
 
Cav said:
My personal feelings aside on what is and what is not qualified has no bearing on the issue at hand. The truth is that the rule under it's current state is unsustainable so it is unrealistic to expect it to remain as is. Nor is it worth getting emotional about the fact that it will be altered. So in the end, it will and probably should be changed. Do I think someone should be piloting 50 or more people around with 250? Of course not. Do I think it is necessary for someone to have 1500 hours before they are hired? Certainly doesn't hurt but isn't a requirement and doesn't define the level of pilot.

The important part is the quality of the individual, the quality of the training, the quality of experience, and the standards required to attain the necessary ratings. 500 hrs, 1500 hrs, 2000 hrs, or 3000 hrs mean nothing in regards to airline safety if the training sucked and the experience is entirely unrelated (no IFR experience for example). I don't have the answer on how to best accomplish that but I've said for a long time that we need higher and tougher standards, more barriers to entry, and better "apprentice" type of oversight.
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Agree totally! I thought the reason for taking action after Colgan 3407 was to address lousy training and pay/QOL for pilots at regional airlines. The Captain had 3263 total time (110 in type) and the F/O 2200 total time (772 in type), so the FAA coming up with a reg that mandated 1500 hours for F/Os due to pressure from Congress, without really addressing the training and pay/QOL, did not pass my common sense check. Pretty much no other country in the world requires that minimum time for ATP licenses and ICAO has addressed training through MPLs (it's been in effect for only a few years and the jury is still out on that one but nonetheless it's a good effort at modernizing airline pro pilot training) so I don't see a reason why we cannot harmonize minimum times and training requirements with them. Heck, even the Asiana crash should have been a wake-up call to the idea that thousands of hours flown is no match for proper training in a specific type of airplane, to include what the automation will do or not do based on flight modes.

The pay/QOL issue currently in place at regional airlines in my opinion is of the own pilot union's making by bowing to the "regional airliner" scam that airline execs were able to implement and expand on, simple as that . . . fix that issue as well and the "pilot shortage" goes away like magic!
 
They could make a restricted ATP have those requirements, making it closer to how the Europeans do it.
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Which would severely defeat the purpose of the ATP IMO...unless a pilot candidate was put into a crj sim from day one.
 
Beech90 said:
Which would severely defeat the purpose of the ATP IMO...unless a pilot candidate was put into a crj sim from day one.
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I tend to agree, and personally don't think any significant chqnges will happen. The FAA rarely moves in a manner that could be construed as making things less safe.

If anything happens I bet it will be a change in the requirements for taking the ATP written.
 
SpiraMirabilis said:
I tend to agree, and personally don't think any significant chqnges will happen. The FAA rarely moves in a manner that could be construed as making things less safe.

If anything happens I bet it will be a change in the requirements for taking the ATP written.
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Or just remove the ATP requirement for 135 commuter operations in small multi engine airplanes. It's absurd to make a guy driving a Navajo get training in a level D jet sim as a prerequisite for that job.
 
Cóndor said:
the Asiana crash should have been a wake-up call to the idea that thousands of hours flown is no match for proper training in a specific type of airplane, to include what the automation will do or not do based on flight modes.
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What the Asiana crash should have been a wake up call to is the lunacy of the idea that you can train people to safely fly airplanes who spend very little time actually flying airplanes. Enter MPL...training people who don't even have a minimal amount of experience actually flying airplanes to press the right buttons in the right order and get a banana...I mean paycheck. The more automation you put in, the more likely it is to be misunderstood. That's where you fall back on your basic airmanship. Like, you know, when the AOA/Airspeed is in the red...you need to go faster or the houses start getting bigger. "There are some things you can't change...some peckerwood's gotta take the beast up, and some peckerwood's gotta...LAND the sonofabitch. That peckerwood is called a...PILOT".

But by all means, let the Metric-Managers cite their Human Factors manuals (never having flown so much as a kite, themselves) and let's see how that plays out.
 
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SpiraMirabilis said:
What I figure will happen is about the time I am competitive at a major airline (or they are desperate enough) the whole system will switch to ab initio and then I won't be able to get hired because I have too much experience.
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The irony of this will be US carriers shipping their ab initio students off to India or Africa, when the bean counters realize that it is cheaper to run training there.
 
drunkenbeagle said:
The irony of this will be US carriers shipping their ab initio students off to India or Africa, when the bean counters realize that it is cheaper to run training there.
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Some MBA will earn his bonus if he puts two and two together and bypasses the middleman and just hires Indian or African "cadets."

(But actually it is incredibly expensive to get your ratings in India, and that isn't counting any of the bribes you'll need for the DGCA officials to make sure your paperwork doesn't take months slash years to process.)
 
SpiraMirabilis said:
Some MBA will earn his bonus if he puts two and two together and bypasses the middleman and just hires Indian or African "cadets."

(But actually it is incredibly expensive to get your ratings in India, and that isn't counting any of the bribes you'll need for the DGCA officials to make sure your paperwork doesn't take months slash years to process.)
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1) It will not matter what it costs, as the clever MBA will roll all of those fees into a training bond, paid back from salary deductions, for life.
2) The MBA, if he/she is good, will buy a large share of the foreign training provider.
3) Just hiring foreign cadets? Surprised it hasn't happened yet. My guess, regionals will lobby for an H1-B like program, where they get a foreign pilot for 5 years. They legally have to pay them what they would pay an American (next to nothing), so everyone is happy there.
 
Boris Badenov said:
The more automation you put in, the more likely it is to be misunderstood.
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I'm with you on that one . . . unfortunately every freakin' aircraft manufacturer seems hell-bent on replacing pilots with computers and while that happens we have to learn and know those systems inside and out better than the hardware/software engineers that created them! I for one would take the mushiness of cable controls telling me that the aircraft is about to become a one-way elevator if I don't lower the nose and put b@lls to the wall any day over having a damn fly-by-wire system tell me that in a perverse robotic voice!
 
I applaud the sentiment. But even with all of the bells and whistles being misunderstood, if these dudes had paid even the scantest amount of attention to either the AOA or the Airspeed, they'd have been fine. No matter how hard we study, no matter how in-depth we get with the Systems (I'm not an Engineer, are you?), pilots are going to have problems with the automation. More often as there's more of it (as we have already seen). The thing is, I sincerely believe that your average Private Pilot could have landed that airplane with less damage and no loss of life. The investment in reminding pilots how to, you know, fly, is far less than the investment in instituting quadruple checks on their competency with automation, and gives more reliable returns, as well. "Hmm, not sure what this damned thing is doing...*click* (warning tone) guess I'll just have to land it myself." Why is this so hard? It's why we're there.
 
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