Regional Airlines Seek Reduced Minimum Pilot-Experience Mandate

[z987k]

I love that kind of flying.

I've got a mag compass that kind of works and a map in my airplane. The paper kind. The AK version of the AF/D to. I sometimes forget to turn the master on, because there's really no need for it unless I need to make a radio call. Which is rare.
Amazingly we can go burn 4 hours of gas and end up everywhere we want to go.

 

[alaskadrifter]

I've got a mag compass that kind of works and a map in my airplane. The paper kind. The AK version of the AF/D to. I sometimes forget to turn the master on, because there's really no need for it unless I need to make a radio call. Which is rare.
Amazingly we can go burn 4 hours of gas and end up everywhere we want to go.

My old Taylorcraft didn't have an electrical system. The first time I flew from ANC to Naknek solo I did so without a GPS and just a sectional. All on less than 20 gallons of fuel. But this is the way it was a little less than 20 years ago. GPS is a useful tool in the toolbox for sure.

 

[z987k]

My old Taylorcraft didn't have an electrical system. The first time I flew from ANC to Naknek solo I did so without a GPS and just a sectional. All on less than 20 gallons of fuel. But this is the way it was a little less than 20 years ago. GPS is a useful tool in the toolbox for sure.

I promise you can still do it. I have an ipad, but I've forgotten it in the truck a few times and that's no reason to turn around and spend what'll amount to an hour.

 

[Flying Saluki]

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.

It's an individual problem in the sense that airplanes are not dropping out of the sky right and left because they hired low time pilots or because they had poorly trained pilots. Flagship wasn't doing their due diligence in pilot hiring, and so we got PRIA. Colgan had a poor training program and so now we have the ATP rule. These were not industry wide problems. But now we have an industry wide "solution" that may very well put some companies out of business.

 

[TWP]

It's an individual problem in the sense that airplanes are not dropping out of the sky right and left because they hired low time pilots or because they had poorly trained pilots. Flagship wasn't doing their due diligence in pilot hiring, and so we got PRIA. Colgan had a poor training program and so now we have the ATP rule. These were not industry wide problems. But now we have an industry wide "solution" that may very well put some companies out of business.

Totally anecdotal evidence, but the stories I hear from friends/colleagues about terrible flying skills in FO's and Captains leaves me to believe it is an industry wide problem. It's not just about planes not falling out of the sky, it's about the exposure to risk of planes falling out of the sky. You can have a couple lucky years of crappy pilots relying on automation to save their butts, but that doesn't mean the exposure to risk wasn't there the whole time. In each of those cases, luck ran out. It should NEVER be about grabbing from the luck bucket, they should always be pulling from the skills bucket.

The fact still stands, it is not OK for it to be legal to hire somebody at an airline with a brand new commercial-multi. There HAS to be a number and frankly, I'm perfectly fine with the 1000/1500 rule. I was OK with it before I crossed that threshold in my own logbook.

 

[Polymox]

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 is exactly the thinking that you get with simulator training, and it is wrong. You have to break the stall just like they taught you when you had 10 hours.

Most of the AF447 crash sequence had them 7.5° nose up at TOGA power, and believing that the airspeed and VSI instruments were erroneous. In everyday flight, that is a perfectly acceptable pitch and power combination. But without recognizing the stall, it didn't work for them.

 

[derg]

Pulling back on the stick is going to "request" a positive-G load in normal law.

Direct law, is more like a conventional airplane.

 

[Flying Saluki]

Totally anecdotal evidence, but the stories I hear from friends/colleagues about terrible flying skills in FO's and Captains leaves me to believe it is an industry wide problem. It's not just about planes not falling out of the sky, it's about the exposure to risk of planes falling out of the sky. You can have a couple lucky years of crappy pilots relying on automation to save their butts, but that doesn't mean the exposure to risk wasn't there the whole time. In each of those cases, luck ran out. It should NEVER be about grabbing from the luck bucket, they should always be pulling from the skills bucket.

The fact still stands, it is not OK for it to be legal to hire somebody at an airline with a brand new commercial-multi. There HAS to be a number and frankly, I'm perfectly fine with the 1000/1500 rule. I was OK with it before I crossed that threshold in my own logbook.

I agree with you that the weakest link in the chain is the human one. The problem we have, though, is that the experience requirements are getting hiked up in an era where there seems to be fewer and fewer opportunities to get that experience. Consider the night freight/bank check run that used to be a huge industry segment, and one where a lot of pilots cut their teeth. Now that segment is pretty much gone, along with the opportunities for pilots to gain the flight experience that was so valuable. Historically, the gap between 250 and 1200 was filled with flight instruction, but that is dying too. Not many people can afford $148 for an hour of dual in a 152 (actual rates in my area). So, while I agree that having 10,000 hours of experience on the flight deck is the ideal, the reality is that the traveling public won't support that ideal with their fare dollars. Therefore we aviation professionals have to find another way to make it work. Arbitrarily requiring "X" amount of hours is not a viable solution in the current economic conditions.

 

[wheelsup]

I agree with you that the weakest link in the chain is the human one. The problem we have, though, is that the experience requirements are getting hiked up in an era where there seems to be fewer and fewer opportunities to get that experience. Consider the night freight/bank check run that used to be a huge industry segment, and one where a lot of pilots cut their teeth. Now that segment is pretty much gone, along with the opportunities for pilots to gain the flight experience that was so valuable. Historically, the gap between 250 and 1200 was filled with flight instruction, but that is dying too. Not many people can afford $148 for an hour of dual in a 152 (actual rates in my area). So, while I agree that having 10,000 hours of experience on the flight deck is the ideal, the reality is that the traveling public won't support that ideal with their fare dollars. Therefore we aviation professionals have to find another way to make it work. Arbitrarily requiring "X" amount of hours is not a viable solution in the current economic conditions.

I think that's a cop out. Yes, 135 night freight PIC jobs are down but you had to have 1200 TT, and 500 xcty to even be eligible for that. If you've hit that you've got a job that will get you to 1500 for the airlines.

Meanwhile, there are a bunch of corp 91 jobs opening up because guys are moving on to the airlines.

Meanwhile, CFI jobs at career schools are paying bonuses of many thousands of dollars to get you there. Maybe I'm a little jaded but when I started instructing in 2003 I had to move 900 miles to a place that was hiring, and that was only because I knew someone. I went through three CFI jobs in a bid to get TT and multi time (FL -> NJ -> FL -> NM). IMO there has never been a better time to be a CFI. There are lots of well paying, busy school hiring. Maybe not in your backyard, but cry me a river...

 

[Richman]

All the schools around here are croaking for CFIs. The run on pilots in 2007-2008 ate up a lot of "seed corn" before the ATP rule came into being.

I think a good portion of the kvetching is a blown-up version of "I don't want to instruct" that I heard back in the 80's by guys who were too lazy to take the road everyone else took. Some guys that blew it off and got lucky, and that job sweeping the hangar paned out into the right seat job when some fabulously unlikely set of events put them in the "hey you, with the broom" category, but far more often or not those deals came by familial connections of some kind. Sure the CFI ride is tough, but it made ME a better pilot, and more importantly, a better PIC.

The other important thing to consider is that the civilian version of ab-initio is NOT what the military does. NOT. EVEN. CLOSE. Comparisons between the two are absolutely comical, and, IMHO, is just someone trying to latch on to something that sounds similar so that the good results from one might rub off on another.

There are a LOT of competing interests here, and not all of them are aligned, or are as impartial, the way you'd think.

Personally, I think CFI time does everyone a tremendous amount of good. Learn how to manage a student, equipment, weather, management and yourself while consolidating what you've learned. Good multi-tasking practice, a good way to learn the "big picture" of what's really important, learn how to tune out people who's opinion doesn't really matter, and see how you handle yourself when weird crap happens.

I think Ernie Gann said it best in "Fate is the Hunter". Essentially, you really DON'T know how anyone is going to perform when the chips are really down until they are actually in that position. Sure, you can try to simulate it, but it is never the same. Ever. What the 1,500 hour rule does is provide a long vetting process. Make it through the gauntlet of bad students, personal economic distress, crap weather, nasty bosses and frangible equipment, and you've got some street cred, rather than someone who's going to pop a fuse when something happens that gets you off the procedure a scintilla.

Richman

 

[Zapphod Beblebrox]

That is exactly the thinking that you get with simulator training, and it is wrong. You have to break the stall just like they taught you when you had 10 hours.

Most of the AF447 crash sequence had them 7.5° nose up at TOGA power, and believing that the airspeed and VSI instruments were erroneous. In everyday flight, that is a perfectly acceptable pitch and power combination. But without recognizing the stall, it didn't work for them.

This refers to loss of normal law and mainlining control not stall recovery. It is because the F/O didn't do this to start that he ended up fully stalled. Had he adopted that pitch power setting at the outset there have been no stall. Once the stall warning sounded a complete recovery was required and that didn't happen. Of course that requires an emphasis on reducing the pitch attitude significantly.

I just did this scenario in the airbus simulator. First the aircraft is gotten into alternate law then a slow steady decay of airspeed which allows a lot of back trim. From the stall warning to full recovery takes an amazing amount of time. The trim is allowed to pretty much follow up to the full nose up stop which is what it will do if thrust is too low in alternate law as the aircraft tries to maintain altitude. You have to hold it up at the end but with significant back trim the aircraft must be pushed over to lower the angle of attack and most pilots lose at least 2000 feet. There is a surprising lack pitching moment at the stall in a 321 with an aft CG. It must be pushed to lower the angle of attack.The normal altitude loss for most pilots is 2000 to 3000 feet from FL370 to recover the airplane.

My earlier post is about adopting that pitch and power when the trouble starts and all the ECAMS and bells and whistles are just starting to fire. With that attitude and power you don't end up stalled. FLY THE AIRPLANE FIRST.

 

[TWP]

I agree with you that the weakest link in the chain is the human one. The problem we have, though, is that the experience requirements are getting hiked up in an era where there seems to be fewer and fewer opportunities to get that experience. Consider the night freight/bank check run that used to be a huge industry segment, and one where a lot of pilots cut their teeth. Now that segment is pretty much gone, along with the opportunities for pilots to gain the flight experience that was so valuable. Historically, the gap between 250 and 1200 was filled with flight instruction, but that is dying too. Not many people can afford $148 for an hour of dual in a 152 (actual rates in my area). So, while I agree that having 10,000 hours of experience on the flight deck is the ideal, the reality is that the traveling public won't support that ideal with their fare dollars. Therefore we aviation professionals have to find another way to make it work. Arbitrarily requiring "X" amount of hours is not a viable solution in the current economic conditions.

I'm placing my bets on airline cadet programs popping up in the near future!