Rocketman99
Frozen Guppy Manipulator
Not necessarily. How would you suggest "training" that?
So...Does Experience Matter?
- Thread starter Boris Badenov
- Start date
Not necessarily. How would you suggest "training" that?
z987k
Well-Known Member
You need to come fly out west where VFR is a valid and used tool because there's no IFR option.
kellwolf
Piece of Trash
I think it's a combination of the training at the airline (the number 1 answer to most questions was "You'll learn it on the line." Number two was "Don't worry about that, it's a CA thing.") and the low standards for hiring. There's not much experience to be had outside of the primary training environment when you're hiring guys straight outta college with 300 hours. Fuel management was never even mentioned when I was in initial training there, and it was mentioned just enough to make the upgrade course legal in the FAA's eyes.
There's always going to be a "spin up" period for new guys at a new airline, but I don't think the training environment can substitute decision making learned through experience like the example I was talking about.
I will say that the training program at Pinnacle, both for FOs and CAs, left a LOT to be desired. Sure, they could technically pass the checkride in the sim, but that's really all the training at Pinnacle did: prepped them to pass a checkride rather than actually function on the line. OE at Pinnacle wasn't really long enough to fully train someone to line standards, and depending on which check airman you got, you may just get a person that checked the boxes and signed you off.
TwoTwoLeft
o- - - - - - -l
The hell if I know. That's above my rank & pay grade. I would guess something scenario-based would be a good place to start.
Rocketman99
Frozen Guppy Manipulator
I don't know either. We have some scenario training in LOFT sims, but there's only one sim of that stuff. Hard to add in a bunch of stuff that isn't absolutely required to a training syllabus. The limiting factor is always $$$, umm I mean safety. Yeah, safety is always the key factor in airline training programs...
drunkenbeagle
Gang Member
Rocketman99
Frozen Guppy Manipulator
Said by the only pilot that ever came close to killing me
There's supposed to be engines on those dern aeromobiles, not that wind junk.
drunkenbeagle
Gang Member
TwoTwoLeft
o- - - - - - -l
It's all time & money. From the student pilot who doesn't want to shell out extra money for anything "not required" to large training outfits trying to squeeze as many slots in the sim as they can. SBT requires a lot of effort on the teacher to create realistic scenarios. It's not efficient but it is effective.
At the initial flight training levels there is a push for DPEs to conduct scenario based check rides instead of do & evaluate. This is an effort to build an additional check into effectiveness of CFIs to teach to the correlative level. So, who know's where this might go in a few years with the next wave of professional pilots.
You make two good points, and I would like to add another point in-which many previous airline/aviation accidents where cause by crews with quite a bit of training and experience.
ppragman
No pasa nada.
Thank you. And you're right, it's not the Colgan 3407s of the world that usually get guys, lots of guys with lots of experience get killed because of complacency or ignoring something trivial at the wrong time, or some other thing - and that causes otherwise experienced guys to fly into a mountain, or get a little too close to that cell, or get a little too slow on the approach. Another problem is variation, a lot of guys fly the same types of trips all the time. Just how properly did you set the Navigation equipment up? Did you verify that the canned route that you just activated hasn't been modified? Here are the things that kill guys (in no particular order) in my experience flying up in Alaska:
Culture - Experienced guys are worst at this, some call it mission mentality, but the culture of the place you work, or the people you hang out with. "You didn't make it in? WTF dude?" or "man, XXXX over there is a s-hot pilot, he carries the biggest loads into the shortest strips!" Most times we're our worst enemy. This sort of mentality is probably to blame for almost every accident in Bethel or Juneau for the last several years.
Lack of Experience - "Oh no, what do I do?!" at the wrong time. This seems to get guys with less experience, but there are other aspects to this. The old timers typically know how far they can push it before they get into trouble - the young guys don't (tying into the culture above) and pay for it.
Complacency - I see this all the time. You can't get complacent doing this job, but it seems that the more time guys have and the more times they've been to a particular place, the less likely they are to cover their own ass. The weather plays a pretty wicked role in this too, especially for guys with a lot of experience, "well, I can keep going a bit further, I know this river like the back of my hand." Add in ridiculous duty times, fatigue, and other causal factors and skipping something bites you. In most accidents I've seen this doesn't kill you, but it can.
Primacy - When I went to my first 135 job, it was a typical cargo gig - and I picked up some bad habits from it, took me a few years to shake those habits. Some guys never shake them, the habits being as benign as not pulling out the chart for your home airport that you shoot 3 or 4 approaches to a day, or others like inhibiting terrain because it's annoying - under the wrong circumstances those tend to bite you - and sometimes those don't pop up until years later, are never corrected at training events (sometimes because they don't show up, other times because of the culture).
I'd suspect that the big ones are complacency and culture. Lack of experience can be made up with a mentoring program, and primacy screwing you over is a long shot. Being complacent and pushing the limits so you can measure up is something that you have to push out of yourself, still though, get a few beers in me and I reminisce about my wildman days...sigh... but seriously, that's what got pretty much everyone I know.