Regional Airlines Seek Reduced Minimum Pilot-Experience Mandate

[SKYROCK]

From my perspective, I could name a thousand great pilots that look at all of the items he complained about as "no big deal, I want to be a submarine captain, lets go fly jets" that would gleefully trade him positions.

I don't want that attitude to spread virally through the company.

Don't worry, ALPA has devised a clever mechanism for getting rid of people, its been in existence for 80 years, but you won't hear much about this in the daily read. The program operates below the radar. Its criminal but operates in a shroud of secrecy, cloaked in benevolence, impossible to bust, and very effective for removing people the company wants gone.

 

[derg]

Don't worry, ALPA has devised a clever mechanism for getting rid of people, its been in existence for 80 years, but you won't hear much about this in the daily read. The program operates below the radar. Its criminal but operates in a shroud of secrecy, cloaked in benevolence, impossible to bust, and very effective for removing people the company wants gone.

Man, I don't know if it's the iced tea, but I'm just not following you on this.

 

[TWP]

FIFY

If the problem was Colgan's training problem, then the solution should have been to improve it, not make changes that affect the entire industry. National solutions to individual problems usually create new problems.

It's not an individual problem. The airlines can only train so much and if they truly held a strict standard at the regional level, the "wet-commercial" guys would have never made it in anyways. I don't care how good your training was, you are not ready to be flying a 50+ seat passenger aircraft before you have experience. Whether or not 1500/1000 is a fair number is subjective but I think we can all agree on the following; not having a minimum hour requirement above and beyond "commercial-multi" is unacceptable. Allowing airlines to hire whoever they want when they are desperate for pilots is a formula for disaster.

 

[mshunter]

I think we can all agree on the following; not having a minimum hour requirement above and beyond "commercial-multi" is unacceptable. Allowing airlines to hire whoever they want when they are desperate for pilots is a formula for disaster.

That all depends on how sharp the guy in the other seat is. But yeah, it ain't good.

 

[A Life Aloft]

Man, I don't know if it's the iced tea, but I'm just not following you on this.

He's still whining about AA.

 

[SKYROCK]

Man, I don't know if it's the iced tea, but I'm just not following you on this.

No worries, its very complex. I hope you are enjoying your long island.

Basically, I'm trying to prevent suicide and possibly mass murder in the future.

 

[Avalon781ML]

Some markets do in fact. Savannah subsidizes B6's flights to JFK, and CMH pays Southwest for their SFO (or OAK - can't remember) service. These markets would certainly love to have mainline if they can get them.

The more interesting trend is airports selling out to Allegiant, which in turn makes them less desirable to other carriers (mainline or regional). Kinda like when you were playing Sim City and your town was so broke that you started building nuclear waste sites and what not, and then nobody wanted to live in your city anymore.

I don't know if Allegiant is the problem in this scenario. Being a primarily vacation oriented carrier they only service cities once or twice a week typically... and then only fly to vacation destinations... and don't have connection travel available. Allegiant also has a pechant for going into distressed/dying markets soooooo.... if a city's travel options are truly negatively affected by Allegiant I'd be very surprised.

 

[derg]

No worries, its very complex. I hope you are enjoying your long island.

Basically, I'm trying to prevent suicide and possibly mass murder in the future.

It was really more of a Lipton iced tea with a touch of sugar! Long Island Iced Teas are for underage drinkers that don't know any better.

The second sentence sounds kind of scary, man.

 

[ChasenSFO]

It was really more of a Lipton iced tea with a touch of sugar! Long Island Iced Teas are for underage drinkers that don't know any better.

Real men drink AMFs. The resulting blue tongue attracts females.

 

[Roger Roger]

Real men drink AMFs. The resulting blue tongue attracts females.

An AMF seems like it should be a glass of rainwater with a shot each of jet a, turbine oil, and glycol.

 

[ChasenSFO]

An AMF seems like it should be a glass of rainwater with a shot each of jet a, turbine oil, and glycol.

That's about right. Gets you drunk fast and tastes good, all you can ask for. (I'm cheap).

 

[Autothrust Blue]

An AMF seems like it should be a glass of rainwater with a shot each of jet a, turbine oil, and glycol.

 

[Zapphod Beblebrox]

This push comes just as the report on the Air Asia flight comes out. A very automated aircraft, (A320), goes into alternate law. This was due to the cap pulling circuit breakers in an unauthorized manner and tripping off the autopilot. The F/O does not notice unusual attitude that is developing and over-corrects when he does. Two pilots fly a completely serviceable and airworthy aircraft into a full stall, can't figure out how to get out of it and ride it into the ocean killing all on board.

The F/O was probably trained in the MPL method, that is he has very little PIC stick time in any type of aircraft but has a lot of simulator time. He was taught how to rely on rote procedure with little knowledge of why he is doing something and he was startled and perplexed when the automation didn't do what he thought it was supposed to do.

If you grab a-hold of the little stick thingy and and put the little nose of the airplane on the ADI a 2.5 degrees and set about 85%N1, the Airbus does just fine. The wings and engines don't know that the computers have taken a nap.

That's what reduced fight hours with an emphasis on simulator training buys you. Someone who doesn't know the first action when confusing things happen. They are too busy trying to figure out what the ECAM says or trying to remember what procedure to apply.

The first action is always maintain aircraft control and fly the airplane. A pilot should always have some vague idea of what that is required terms of pitch and power to keep right side up and level when things go wrong.

 

[ChasenSFO]

As far as I can tell, only long-term good has come from the 1500 Hour/ATP rule. I'm not worried about the sim ride thing at all, as if the airlines are this desperate there is no way I'm going to pay 100% out of pocket for that by the time I get to 121 quals. Would all the people in my shoes who are crying for 250TT mins to fly a shiny jet around like the $19/hr wages and pre-117 rest rules to come back too? Now all the regionals have the same minimums more or less, the crappy one's will have to pay more to make up for the QOL to still bring in applicants. That's already what we're seeing, right? Yet I hear nothing but whining from the guys working on their ratings I come across about how hard it's all gotten. Hard. Sure. Get your first time building job buzzing around with foreflight or CFI up to 1500 hours then have a realistic chance of getting hired at your airline of choice where you may easily end up flying 4 hour legs monitoring autopilot from MSP-SFO. Versus back in the day where guys would move across the country doing crap jobs away from home with no cellphones or interweb to keep up with their loved ones, then move on to be doing 6-8 legs at the commuters with no autopilot, flight director, flight attendants, and sometimes trim for pennies on the dollar for years until they were hopefully picked up by a major.

This job is getting better and better. Shut up, and just thank the people who are there for making it what it has become for the 121 pilots of tomorrow.

 

[Boris Badenov]

^ That's a string of righteous posting right there.

 

[ChasenSFO]

^ That's a string of righteous posting right there.

Just sick of it. The other day, my commercial-rated friend wanted to do an XC to practice "navigation" and give me some hood time. Sure. We hop in the Tiger, and he says, "Wait, there's no GPS?!". "No, there isn't we'll use VORs". "But I wanted to plug everything into the GPS and fly all the waypoints that's what my favorite part of IFR training was at ATP and how the airlines fly". I showed him "pilotage" on the way back by plotting visual waypoints, and it was the first time he ever did an XC like that and it made him nervous.

Yeah. So. There's that new generation of pilots. Everything that isn't easy is hard. And scary.

 

[mshunter]

I showed him "pilotage" on the way back by plotting visual waypoints, and it was the first time he ever did an XC like that and it made him nervous.

Yeah. So. There's that new generation of pilots. Everything that isn't easy is hard. And scary.

That was my favorite part after leaving ATP.

"Let's go fly."

"Where we goin?"

*shrugs* "We have the airplane for 4 hours. Let's handle a chunk of your hood time. I'll get you good and lost. Then, we'll take off the hood, and you can figure out how to get back, by looking at the ground. Oh, and your electrics have 'failed.' Good luck, we're all counting on you."

 

[scooter2525]

That was my favorite part after leaving ATP.

"Let's go fly."

"Where we goin?"

*shrugs* "We have the airplane for 4 hours. Let's handle a chunk of your hood time. I'll get you good and lost. Then, we'll take off the hood, and you can figure out how to get back, by looking at the ground. Oh, and your electrics have 'failed.' Good luck, we're all counting on you."

I love that kind of flying.

 

[mshunter]

I love that kind of flying.

It's called "screwing off." Since I started flying passengers, I have only done it less than a handful of times.

 

[Hiboglossi]

As far as I can tell, only long-term good has come from the 1500 Hour/ATP rule. I'm not worried about the sim ride thing at all, as if the airlines are this desperate there is no way I'm going to pay 100% out of pocket for that by the time I get to 121 quals. Would all the people in my shoes who are crying for 250TT mins to fly a shiny jet around like the $19/hr wages and pre-117 rest rules to come back too? Now all the regionals have the same minimums more or less, the crappy one's will have to pay more to make up for the QOL to still bring in applicants. That's already what we're seeing, right? Yet I hear nothing but whining from the guys working on their ratings I come across about how hard it's all gotten. Hard. Sure. Get your first time building job buzzing around with foreflight or CFI up to 1500 hours then have a realistic chance of getting hired at your airline of choice where you may easily end up flying 4 hour legs monitoring autopilot from MSP-SFO. Versus back in the day where guys would move across the country doing crap jobs away from home with no cellphones or interweb to keep up with their loved ones, then move on to be doing 6-8 legs at the commuters with no autopilot, flight director, flight attendants, and sometimes trim for pennies on the dollar for years until they were hopefully picked up by a major.

This job is getting better and better. Shut up, and just thank the people who are there for making it what it has become for the 121 pilots of tomorrow.

I couldn't agree more, and I find all the whining and belly-aching about the ATP rule tiresome as well. I was going through a collegiate aviation program at the time it was passed, and there was plenty of weeping and gnashing of teeth about it from my classmates. I will never forget a presentation that a classmate of mine gave for one class, which basically amounted to a 30-minute temper tantrum about the ATP rule. He said that is was "bogus" that the ATP rule would improve safety, and that Sully Sullenberger was "against pilots" since he expressed support for the law. The sense of entitlement was just sickening. Then there's a co-worker of mine who, when I told him I was Pro-ATP rule, asked if I really thought I was a better pilot than when I first got my Commercial Certificate...well, I guess if he didn't learn anything from the hundreds of hours of experience after obtaining his CPL...

And you are spot on with the bolded part. Everyone who whines about the ATP rule seems to think that before the ATP rule, you would be hired by a regional as soon as you got your Commercial, when in reality that was not at all the norm except for a few brief periods. What you describe was almost always the norm. But those who complain about the ATP rule always seem to think that they would have been hired by the airlines immediately after their CMEL checkride before the rule, even though that was a reality that pretty much only existed in 2007.