Seggy
Well-Known Member
Article in Air Transport World...
http://atwonline.com/aeropolitics-regulation/article/losing-its-luster-0429
Discuss...
http://atwonline.com/aeropolitics-regulation/article/losing-its-luster-0429
Discuss...
Losing Its Luster
- Thread starter Seggy
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E_Dawg
Moderator
I did a major skim job on that but overall there are rewards to this job that can't be found anywhere else. Lots of areas need improvement yes, and that is true of any career. I do think that the overall trend with regionals will be increased QOL; it may not seem like it now but before long even your stereotypical apathetic regional pilot will realize it is no longer a "commuter" style stepping stone gig. And with age 65 retirements around the corner, plus the age of some of the pilot groups (AA) 2010 really isn't all that bad a year to learn how to fly.
aloft
New Member
Riddle grads as the standard for what a regional FO should be? I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.
Then there are gems like this in the reader comments:
Simply more whining from the Instant Gratification Generation. These kids expect to have FO jobs waiting for them upon graduation from college.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from poor judgment. The point of 1500+ hours isn't the experience itself, but the acquisition of sound aeronautical judgment--which no Riddle or UND classroom can teach.
Bumblebee
Commodore
:yeahthat:Some are good and some sucked...and some had a bad attitude because they thought they were above it all already!
But in no way is that a correct assessment.
true that... a bag of luck into a bag of experience....
Polar742
All the responsibility none of the authority
I'll say it again, just because it seems to go unchecked on this website.
Experience is important. No one will argue with that.
However, everyone seems to overlook the importance of education.
You can not tell me that two pilots with 1500 hours, and the same path to get that (for example both CFIs to 1200, then Single Pilot from 1200 to 1500) are the same if one has a formalized education and one does not.
Experience does not supplant a good education. A good education does not supplant experience, but it enhances the experience you build because of a very solid knowledge base as one gains experience.
BobDDuck
Island Bus Driver
The trade off that I see is that the Riddle guy had a VERY limited allowance on what they were allowed to see while learning to fly and CFI in that first 1200 hours. Not to mention you get inbreeding among the instructor base (meaning students that learned from Riddle Instructors go on to become Riddle IPs themselves and "new" perspectives don't ever get introduced). ATP has a similar problem. The guy that did the FBO/Non Formalized Education Route has the potential to have seen all kinds of other stuff in their training and IP time.
As far as the classroom "knowledge" that somebody who went to a flying University may have gotten... Some of it may be very useful but honestly, I don't see very much being helpful in day to day safe aviation operations.
True story...
I was flying with a pretty new FO (just out of UND actually) from one southern "-ville" or "-boro" to another when we lost our long range nav setup. Turns out it was stupid mistake we could have fixed in flight but neither one of us caught it. Anyhow, we notified ATC and switched to short range nav (VOR to VOR). The FO then proceeded to lecture me on how at UND he learned all about how a VOR works both the ground units and the airborn receivers, which I actually found kind of interesting. I had a very basic knowledge of the system but his in depth knowledge was impressive. However, when it came time to decend into whatever -boro we were going to (actually, it was Charlotte) and we were given a crossing restriction, he was completely lost at how to ensure we would get down in time. Normally the FMS tells us all that but as it was broken he had to use "old school" math and figure out a 3 to 1 decent ratio. He had no idea how to do it. Even after I prodded him a bit he still didn't know.
There had been two breakdowns in training. It was something that UND had never taught him and it was something that the current airline had failed to make sure he'd learned at some point.
I'm not saying that a Ma and Pa FBO CFI would be any more or less likely to teach that sort of thing, but saying that a "formalized education" leads to better pilots is something I don't agree with.
EDIT: I probably should have asked this first. Do you mean formalized AVIATION education or just a formalized, when to college and learned a lot of life lessons and matured a whole bunch sort of education? I can give you buy in on the latter, just not the former.
dasleben
That's just, like, your opinion, man
As a Riddle grad myself, I agree 100%. I don't see it so much from the PRC folk (where I graduated), but Daytona...man, many of those guys really do have an attitude. My company loves to hire low-time Riddle grads as FOs (usually along with that JetBlue bridge program), and while most fly fine, they'll sit there in the crew room bragging to everyone how they'll be at JetBlue in 3 years. That gets old really fast, particularly when it comes from a 250 hour guy who's probably never flown an ILS to mins.
Hit the nail on the head. That "inbreeding" is probably my biggest gripe with that flight program. Students are brought up to believe that 600/2 is unsafe, and that you should cancel if there's a thunderstorm within 30 miles of the airport. Of course when they become instructors themselves, well, that gets passed right down to their students. Nobody dares question anything, and nobody gets any real experience. Instead, I get the low-time FOs sitting next to me on passenger revenue flights, just thrilled to be in the clouds. :dunno:
KLB
Well-Known Member
I have to admit that some of the Riddle grads do walk around with a chip on their shoulders. They become humbled quickly on my side of the industry when they find out that their flying aptitude is no different from anyone elses in that first week of sim training.
The biggest thing that I disliked about my college training program is that it looked down on thinking outside of the box. It was an overly standardized training enviroment and very restrictive. There were only this certain number of airports you can fly into and etc....
Hernandezcfi
Well-Known Member
I have a hard time believing that. Let's say one of those two pilots went to college and the other started his own business right after high school. The college grad had good grades and now has a piece of paper that says he is smart and has a business degree. The other guy ran a successful business and learned how to deal with employees, customers, economics, government (IRS) and everything else that comes with the real world. Does that make the college grad a better pilot?
As a Riddle-Daytona grad as Monday, I completely agree with what you're talking about. DB more so than PRC on the attitude because its the "main/big" campus. All kids care about is being rich, going to Florida, and flying. They get here, party, and slack off which causes the above problems. And I'll be honest, I've never flown an ILS to mins (870+hrs) unfortunately.
As far as inbreeding is concerned, its SO true, and I'm a product of that too. However, my personal opinions agree with you. I don't think 600/2 is unsafe. I try to make things as realistic as possible with students because they don't usually get that kind of stuff. As a part-timer, I've had 1 student of my own go all the way through in the past 2 years, and a majority of my flying has been with random students whose instructors are too lazy to schedule them. It's scary some of the things I've seen.
"Nobody dares question anything, and nobody gets any real experience." - Probably the most accurate statement about Riddle....ever.
So, what was that person studying in school? He was studying economics, government, management, etc. The guy with the degree hasn't been sitting in a closed room with his thumb up his butt for 4 years, he's been learning things too.
Please don't think I'm knocking real world experience, I'm NOT. My dad has been a successful small business owner since 1975, and he has exactly one semester at a 4-year university. However, please keep in mind that when one is in school, they're learning things too.
Personally, I'm all about a wide variety of ways to learn. I advocate both book learning AND real world learning. I think they're both important. Book learning opens you up to ideas & concepts that may never have crossed your mind. Real world experience gives you the hands-on experience with real-world consequences that is essential too.
ppragman
FLIPY FLAPS!
I completely agree. About the only real pertinent information I've learned in college (including the aviation classes that I've taken) that has real world application to flying that I might not have been able to learn somwhere else are study skills. And frankly, you can learn those in any degree program, or with any kind of technical education. Some people learn them in highschool. Information about systems and procedures can be learned. Stick and rudder on the other hand, is the product of experience or natural aptitude only. Judgment is strictly the product of experience. You can fake good judgment early on by flying extra conservatively, but every now and then you screw up and are forced to learn something about how to fly the airplane and make decisions for yourself. That is to say unless you go through a program for 1500hrs that's so restrictive that you experience nothing other than 5000 & 5 and hood work. If you have that base, or go to an airline at 500hrs or less, where the aircraft is operated precisely to a specified profile and exactly inside the center of the envelope far from any edge you might not experience things like the stall buffet in the turn to final, or the effects of icing on a small piston twin, or the crushing blows of really rough turbulence in bad weather. Every one of those experiences is an experience set that grows your total bag of tricks and allows you to function more safely.
Things to remember, single pilot time is good. As is actual experience flying in commercial operations.
ppragman
FLIPY FLAPS!
To be perfectly honest with you, its not that I haven't learned things in the University system, its that those things are things that anyone with the time and motivation could look up and learn for themselves. There's no magic knowledge that comes from college. All of that information is public domain, or if proprietary, within the grasp of most people to purchase. If you wanted to learn how to integrate functions of complex numbers using the Cauchy-Integral formula, you could. It would just take you time. If you wanted to learn how Malinowski's interpretation of functionalism applies to Trobriand islanders and the Kula Ring, you could too, you just have to find it and read it.
College in the modern age is to broaden the horizons of students, not to really teach them anything. And for those students who already have the desire to learn, or have sufficiently broad horizons, college is simply an obstacle to prosperity required by the constraints and stigmas associated with not having a four-year piece of paper. What college really is showing to the employer (who doesn't give a damn about what you know, he's hiring for you for what he's going to train you to do) is that you can complete something. Flight training doesn't give you that level of respect because there are places where you can complete flight training in 90 days and have 1500hrs in a year and a half or less. You can sit on a tack for a year.
Polar742
All the responsibility none of the authority
That's all true, but on the same time your guy who had the potential to see stuff, may or may not have seen it. Inspite of all of the "inbreeding" problems, and I agree with this assessment, you have a very consistent product turned out. Now, that being said, you also could say the same thing with "inbreeding" at any company that flies airplanes, whether it's an airline or a FBO, or anything in between.
Again, a true assessment. The second part of your paragraph can be applied to many professions. I'm sure engineers don't derive calculus equations every day either. However, the point of an education is to give you a foundation of knowledge to draw from. As you gain experience, you may or may not use the skills everyday, but those set the basis for correlation of knowledge down the road. I've yet to see an accident report to say "Pilot appeared to have too much training in [insert subjet]." All to often, and in an accident very popular for discussion these days, you see "Pilot did not have appropriate training in [insert subject].
And for each story of this, you can find one of a pilot that came up "the hard way" and gets lost using automation or flies broken airplanes or fails a line check due to complete lack of knowledge of how a pneumatic system works, or does some cowboy crap "because that's how I did it in the [insert airplane type and operation operated under a very loose set of rules].
I mean a formalized aviation education in an institution of higher learning. College. In a similar manner of other professions.
Non-accredited "aviation academies" don't even enter the conversation.
Find an airport operation of any type, and you'll see the same. It's not a certain college specific. Go to any instructor room, or the next place where everyone seems to go from that place.
Look at that operation too. It's a very large operation with lots of different skill levels. They have to find an optimum level of safety.
Remember, primary training (PPL, Instrument, CPL, Multi) to set a skillset so where you can build off that as you gain experience. Is a freshly minted instrument pilot able to get the white slip, then go bomb off through lines of crap and be IMC until they hit 200-1/2? Yes. Is it safe? Or should they go out, bust through a couple stratus layers, do some on top in the clear flying, fly an ILS down to 400-1 or 600-1 at first?
Then again, military flight training in the lower levels seems to have the same type of restrictions.
I don't disagree, however we have it wrong in this country. The guys with 30 years of flying should be teaching fundamentals. However, it doesn't work that way. Hopefully, one day, I'll have enough in the bank that I can quit the 121 stuff, and go CFI once I've accumulated a vault of knowledge.
You seem to be confusing running a business with flying a plane. There are both skill sets that one can learn via experience alone (as my grandfather did successfully, completing no more than a 9th grade education) or via the education-experience route as an individual like Warren Buffett.
I don't understand why everyone thinks a lack of academic knowledge is OK in threads about primary training, then bitch about the lack of training in threads about airline pilots.
Screaming_Emu
Well-Known Member
As somebody who went to UND I know that I was taught the whole 3:1 thing multiple times in my 5 years there (did the victory lap). I think where training like UND and Humpty Diddle fail is turning book learning into practical application. But then there are some things you simply cant teach in a warrior, arrow, or seminole.
The 3:1 thing really only comes into play on an arrival. How many times have you flown a STAR in a piper?
So in reality, a good mixture of both is what I think its the best route. Go to a big school, build a solid foundation, then get the hell outta there and go get some practical experience somewhere that you're not on a short leash.
People who graduate form these schools and then go on to instruct is what I call inbreeding. There are a lot of people at theses schools who have never flown outside of the 3 or 4 states that surround these schools. They come up with things that are "important" and get their priorities all wacked out (like the guy who asked me what the pressure inside the strut of a warrior should be). Something I have no way of knowing...or any way of checking during my preflight.
Hernandezcfi
Well-Known Member
Not really. You implied the pilot with the college degree would make a better pilot. Don't get me wrong, I do believe having a solid academic background is a very good thing. While I think the study habits developed in college can help facilitate the learning of new systems and other complex aviation knowledge we all need, I just don't think it has any bearing on a persons ability to competently command an aircraft.
dasleben
That's just, like, your opinion, man
I wouldn't say that. The 3:1 rule is also excellent for helping with descent planning in the terminal area, even in smaller piston aircraft. For instance, I use the 3:1 rule on a daily basis in a 402, and we don't go above 5,000' on the routes I fly. It's a good rule for maintaining situational awareness and keeping yourself from ending up too high/fast close in to the airport. I "mentor" new SICs on the 3:1 rule, and even 6:1 because we descend unpressurized.
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