A lot of you guys are hung up on the ex airline pilot part but forgetting the only reason why a ton of retired guys are still alive is because of 121.
Take all the safety nets away and the crazy wild pilots get to be crazy and wild in the 91 world and bam.
91 gigs like this have zero written FOM, or anything that could be called a manual. Literally nothing on paper.
And just wait until you find out the mx history of a 1980’s jet that was on its last owner until the scrap yard.
I don’t disagree at all. However, knowing that he was prior AF and retired from Delta, he at least was not inexperienced and at least knew the right way to do things.
When I was still working we had "mixed results" (being polite) when hiring retired airline pilots.
One thing I noticed when I started flying with the 30+ year airline career guys is they very often chaffed under newer procedures and standards and yearned for the days of yesteryear when they could cut corners or fly closer to the edge. They longed to be unencumbered by "stupid new limits because young pilots these days can't handle it" when, in reality, it was those older crews flying to close to the performance edge that caused those restrictions in the first place. A great many of them did things improperly because "that's how we did it when I got on this fleet in 1999..." and don't keep up with policy and procedure changes. They aren't the best at recognizing that their long, safe career came not because of their great skill but because the people writing the paychecks had a far better appreciation of the skill level of the average pilot. These are the same guys who spent their life thinking they knew better than everyone else and instead of listening to experts invested all their money in Iraqi Dinars and four ex-wives and have to work to make the alimony payments. Good decision making skills are not what I generally expect when I read accident and incident reports that talk about the "retired airline pilot" unless it's some guy having a heart attack in his custom home built or million dollar Cirrus.
I've dealt with Career 121 pilots going to 91 or 135 on several occasions.
The ratio of good to bad was around 10%/90% with the attitude toward the new job the deciding factor of their success rate.
IF they thing "91/135 is BELOW my skills and experience" Then they will hit the wall (or a mountain) and bail out suddenly with a "This isn't what I signed up for" departure.
Their confidence is WAY higher than their skill level they don't quiet understand how alone they are about to be.
Also their motivation is another key factor.
You get a Delta pilot that aged out, but still owes money to 3 wives and 7 bad investments, his desperation will severely affect his performance.
You get a guy who just wants to keep the skills up, success is much more likely (almost 30%)
121 decision skills and CRM is usually vastly superior with few exceptions while Cargo dogs are vastly better at systems and basic survival.
In order of scary in 91/135 ops
1. Owner Operators (91 usually)
2. Airline Pilots (Furloughed)
3. Airline Pilots (Retired)
4. Air Force Pilots
5. Rookies, right out of school
6. Army Pilots. (Rotorcraft)
Not sure what it is about Army rotorheads... never scared me. You'd think they'd suck at IFR.
(it takes a shock collar set to maximum to get bush pilots to use a [fornicating] checklist)
((same with fighter pilots))
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