How many regional pilots can REALLY meet this requirement?

mikecweb said:
I think some 121 guys might fall victim to the "I'm only flying a Navajo, wake me up when it's the checkride" and for that they are stupid.
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I think that's what happened with the guys who didn't make it through Cape training. They got into the "Oh, it's just a 402" mentality, partied every night, then found out too little too late that they were expected to hand fly to ATP standards again with round dials.

But really, it's not hard. I see gung-ho SPIFR 135 guys on this board run their mouths constantly about how 121 jet pilots aren't as good. 99.8% of the time, those same guys have never flown jets, and are simply parroting what others have told them. Unless you're completely incompetent (and shouldn't be flying professionally anyway), no professional pilot should have problems checking out on steam gauges.
 
This also applies going in the reverse. Glass/FMS isn't hard either. I think a lot of the motivation behind the freight guys running their mouths(myself included on occasion) is because of all this emphasis on glass and FMS experience. It's ridiculous.

To make things a bit less biased, I know for a fact I'd have issues with trusting the automation initially. This would probably increase my workload, not reduce it. Regarding jets, not having the "stop on a dime" ability in the air would take some getting used to as well I'm sure.
 
Dugie8 said:
Excellent summary ppragman!

The whole "Part 91" leg home thing. Check out your OpSpecs, A001 paragraph (d).
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Agree on the first point..

Is that where the feds reference the operator receiving any compensation for the leg (ie empty but charging or it) and what exactly contitutes a 91 flight?
 
dasleben said:
I think that's what happened with the guys who didn't make it through Cape training. They got into the "Oh, it's just a 402" mentality, partied every night, then found out too little too late that they were expected to hand fly to ATP standards again with round dials.

But really, it's not hard. I see gung-ho SPIFR 135 guys on this board run their mouths constantly about how 121 jet pilots aren't as good. 99.8% of the time, those same guys have never flown jets, and are simply parroting what others have told them. Unless you're completely incompetent (and shouldn't be flying professionally anyway), no professional pilot should have problems checking out on steam gauges.
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As one of the .2% that HAS, you'd be amazed at how many 121 jet pilots struggle at hand flying, and that's with an operational FD. Make them fly raw data, like we had to on a recent CQ event, and it gets REAL ugly, REAL quick. I know you'll come back and say that they were just rusty and with some practice, they'd be fine, but at our airline, sampling from CQ first looks showed quite a few crewmembers that struggled with hand flown approaches, with and without a FD. I say that most of those that struggled were never really good at basic instrument flying in the first place and their weakness is masked by the automation on our jets.
 
A-300F4-622R said:
As one of the .2% that HAS, you'd be amazed at how many 121 jet pilots struggle at hand flying, and that's with an operational FD. Make them fly raw data, like we had to on a recent CQ event, and it gets REAL ugly, REAL quick. I know you'll come back and say that they were just rusty and with some practice, they'd be fine, but at our airline, sampling from CQ first looks showed quite a few crewmembers that struggled with hand flown approaches, with and without a FD. I say that most of those that struggled were never really good at basic instrument flying in the first place and their weakness is masked by the automation on our jets.
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Indeed, I did the SPIFR thing for a couple years as well. Certainly helped my overall technique. A few months back I had to hand fly a full departure, vectors, ILS to mins raw data in the sim...stuff I used to do for a living, every day. After a year and a half of flying heavy international, it took a few minutes to get my scan back. But, it came back.

I really try to hand fly without the F/D as much as possible these days. I know I'm not the firebreather I used to be, but I do what I can. Sadly, I've seen more than a few people get nervous about reaching up and turning off the magic.

Required viewing for anyone flying automated aircraft:

 
dasleben said:
Indeed, I did the SPIFR thing for a couple years as well. Certainly helped my overall technique. A few months back I had to hand fly a full departure, vectors, ILS to mins raw data in the sim...stuff I used to do for a living, every day. After a year and a half of flying heavy international, it took a few minutes to get my scan back. But, it came back.

I really try to hand fly without the F/D as much as possible these days. I know I'm not the firebreather I used to be, but I do what I can. Sadly, I've seen more than a few people get nervous about reaching up and turning off the magic.

Required viewing for anyone flying automated aircraft:

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It came back because you probably had a pretty good scan to begin with from your SPIFR days. More 121 jet pilots than you think never had one to begin with.
 
This has nothing to do with flying freight early on or not. It is individualistic as well as your airline's culture towards automation. I get to play in the box every 6 months at CAE, most of the instructors there are hesitant to let us hand fly the sim. I do it anyway, as do my other cohorts. There is an infection of "use the automation as much as possible" out there and then people are getting all surprised when folks don't have razor sharp hand flying skills.


This stuff isn't hard and the skill isn't born of fire whilst flying SPIFR, inverted throught a thunderstorm, in icing conditions, with one engine failed while doing an NDB partial panel to an AM tower 2.65 NM from the end of the runway. It's born from being a professional and taking some pride at being good at what you do.
 
Dugie8 said:
This has nothing to do with flying freight early on or not. It is individualistic as well as your airline's culture towards automation. I get to play in the box every 6 months at CAE, most of the instructors there are hesitant to let us hand fly the sim. I do it anyway, as do my other cohorts. There is an infection of "use the automation as much as possible" out there and then people are getting all surprised when folks don't have razor sharp hand flying skills.


This stuff isn't hard and the skill isn't born of fire whilst flying SPIFR, inverted throught a thunderstorm, in icing conditions, with one engine failed while doing an NDB partial panel to an AM tower 2.65 NM from the end of the runway. It's born from being a professional and taking some pride at being good at what you do.
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Sounds fun! WOULD crash! It would be glorious however and a cigarette would be lit up! :D
 
dasleben said:
I think that's what happened with the guys who didn't make it through Cape training. They got into the "Oh, it's just a 402" mentality, partied every night, then found out too little too late that they were expected to hand fly to ATP standards again with round dials.
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To be truthful, it is "just a 402", the problem is that guys don't really know what that means. While it's pretty much a standard medium sized twin, that fact in no way means that it's wise for them to slack off and not take the training seriously. And too, that can apply to any airframe.

But really, it's not hard. I see gung-ho SPIFR 135 guys on this board run their mouths constantly about how 121 jet pilots aren't as good. 99.8% of the time, those same guys have never flown jets, and are simply parroting what others have told them. Unless you're completely incompetent (and shouldn't be flying professionally anyway), no professional pilot should have problems checking out on steam gauges.
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I could see where a guy who started on G1000s, and stayed with that for all his flying could run into problems initially working with steam gauges. However, "checking out" implies that he'd get some requisite training and time practicing first before getting any kind of evaluation, so to that point, I agree with you.

And as a member of the 0.2%, I think 121 guys are subpar. :D :sarcasm:
 
Fly_Unity said:
Great clip. Im going to steal this and send it to our pilots to watch in our monthly training.
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What I find equally great about that clip, is the lack of finger pointing from this gentleman at his peers. He fully accepted the lion's share of the blame on behalf of the training department. The culture had bread these "children of the magenta line". I will argue that one is responsible for their own "upkeep" but when your job is put on the line during training events, I can understand the desire to cooperate graduate and slowly become assimiliated to the line of thinking and not even realize it.
 
A-300F4-622R said:
As one of the .2% that HAS
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Not to pile on, but, as I mentioned above, I've flown pistons, TPs, and jets. Not under 121, so if that matters, ignore the rest. And it was a relatively simple jet, too. So. But it did have dual FMSes and another guy and glass and two AHRSes (sp? ...whatever those are). And I'm afraid that it seemed to me that you could tell pretty easily who was going to poop the bed when things went pear shaped based on what they'd done prior. *shrug*. Abandon the missperception that I have a dog in this fight regarding my ego...my ego is unshakable, regardless. ;)

What this is really about is Airmanship. Its value, its basic nature, even what "it" is. And I don't think it's unreasonable to talk about it rather than, whatever, how many jets one carrier has gotten from the other, etc etc. In point of fact, I think it's amongst the 10% of stuff we talk about on here that has some legitimate connection to "Jet Careers". Whatever those are.

Certainly I've flown with guys out of a 152 who were excellent pilots. Not just when things went right, either. I think I might very well be walking around talking (and typing) because one of those guys reacted properly in a tight spot. But that's not exactly exhaustive. And I'm afraid that my general experience has been that in the aggregate, guys who haven't flown crappy airplanes in terrible weather and had the natural, requisite number of near-emergencies those conditions tend to cause aren't going to be as useful in a near-emergency as guys who have. Again, *shrug*. All I have to report is what I see.
 
Boris Badenov said:
two AHRSes (sp? ...whatever those are).
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Attitude and Heading Reference System. Pronounced "Ay-Harz." The plural would be pronounced the same. In other words, you had "two AHRS" or maybe "two AHRS units" but not "two AHRSes."

See, I'm an old school piston twin driver with new school glass cockpit expertise. BOOM! Virtually a god of aviation right here. Feel free to admire me, A-300.



But in all seriousness, nice post.
 
jrh said:
Attitude and Heading Reference System. Pronounced "Ay-Harz." The plural would be pronounced the same. In other words, you had "two AHRS" or maybe "two AHRS units" but not "two AHRSes."

See, I'm an old school piston twin driver with new school glass cockpit expertise. BOOM! .
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AHRS in some planes, HARS in others. Same thing all around.
 
jrh said:
Oh, I learned something new. Is HARS more commonly used in the military or transport category aircraft or something? I've only heard of the magic boxes referred to as AHRS. A quick check of Wikipedia's avionics acronyms includes "AHRS" but not "HARS."
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Thats because you're referencing wikipedia. :)

HARS is what an AHRS is called in the A-10, as part of the CADC. I don't think it's necessarily mil-specific, I think it's just what Fairchild and some others have called it in the past. Ive always known it as a HARS, since that's where I first used them and I still reference it as-such to this day; but by far, the more common nomenclature is AHRS in the aviation world as a whole.
 
Boris Badenov said:
Certainly I've flown with guys out of a 152 who were excellent pilots. Not just when things went right, either. I think I might very well be walking around talking (and typing) because one of those guys reacted properly in a tight spot. But that's not exactly exhaustive. And I'm afraid that my general experience has been that in the aggregate, guys who haven't flown crappy airplanes in terrible weather and had the natural, requisite number of near-emergencies those conditions tend to cause aren't going to be as useful in a near-emergency as guys who have. Again, *shrug*. All I have to report is what I see.
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Realizing you nearly killed yourself or worse, a plane load of passengers, because of a decision you made out on your own does sort of change the way you approach things.
 
ppragman said:
Kids...Excursion Pass, ashccck! Flash Back!
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The worst is when you don't realize until the adrenaline stops just exactly how dumb what you did was and how close you came to balling it up.

Or, uh, I imagine that's what it would be if I'd ever had one of those moments.
 
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