When 1500 Hours Equals 10

Kingairer said:
I havent flown with anyone who has been underqualified. Pretty much everyone I fly with is X-Military or 5+Year regional pilot. I dont know who this 30 something 737 Captain at UAL is flying with, or maybe he just has an over inflated opinion of his own flying skills.
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Most of the issues I’m seeing aren’t necessarily with highly experienced pilots or those in the industry for long, though they aren’t exempt. It’s newer and fairly inexperienced or lower experience pilots, which surprises me, who don’t have that passion or desire. It’s just some rando job they happen to do and whatever is basically good enough, is fine. Mediocrity being accepted seemingly.
 
Kingairer said:
I havent flown with anyone who has been underqualified. Pretty much everyone I fly with is X-Military or 5+Year regional pilot. I dont know who this 30 something 737 Captain at UAL is flying with, or maybe he just has an over inflated opinion of his own flying skills.
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Not saying they are/were under qualified, but there were plenty of 20-early 30 something new hires at the majors in 2021-2022, many with not a whole lot of experience in either seat at a 121 operation. I'm sure the majority of them are just fine. This job isn't exactly hard. But the flood gates were opened, and those folks who were snapped up by the big 3 in that timeframe were also afforded (at least in delta's case), sub 1 year upgrades into certain fleets. 737, 220, and 717 being specifically the fleets.
 
FlyChicaga said:
Talking with some DPEs, there are some serious deficiencies in pilot training right now. I'm also hearing some interesting stories from friends who are simulator instructors and check airmen at legacy airlines. Is it because of the 1500-hour rule? Eh, maybe indirectly, but doubtful that's the full picture. I personally believe what we are seeing is a change in generational learning, and we are continuing to teach the way we've done it for decades hoping for the same results. The US flight training industry should consider a generational shift away from standard training methods and move into more simulator-based training, especially with VR and AI. In a simulator you can expose a student to an array of experiences they would not get flying in VFR-daytime conditions repeatedly as a CFI. Build decision makers through artificial experiences. Those artificial experiences can then be used as a building block for actual flight operations. If we are training our airline pilots only on simulators, can we not do the same with the rest of our pilots? Some young students who turn into CFIs may not have the confidence to be good teachers. Why force them?

A side benefit of this shift towards VR-based simulation training would be a reduced cost to obtain pilot certificates. Fuel is expensive. If you could train someone for $20 an hour of simulator maintenance cost versus $143 of airplane rental cost, that opens up aviation to a potential whole new group of candidates. Potential students from low-income communities now could potentially afford to get their certificates and start down a path to a lucrative aviation career. This industry would be diversified as a byproduct of this. There is likely a large group of potential outstanding instructors out there who maybe lost their medical and would enjoy teaching young pilots part-time to stay in aviation.

A week ago I had an opportunity to fly a full-motion VR-based helicopter simulator. It was incredibly realistic. I fully believe you could train a pilot in VR using a similar system and reduce the number of actual flight hours by two-thirds. That saves fuel, the environment, and will produce a better pilot due to increased decision-making ability by sheer exposure to abnormal events.
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VR definitely has a place. I would like to see it used in systems training, and to replay ASAP reports etc. AS has it for learning flows but there is so much more potential there.
 
Roger Roger said:
VR definitely has a place. I would like to see it used in systems training, and to replay ASAP reports etc. AS has it for learning flows but there is so much more potential there.
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There is actually something that works on the Quest 2 and 3. I bought it for my Quest 2 just out of curiosity. It is for an A320 and apparently some airlines are starting to use it for flow training. It's called VRflow A20 made by the company below. Seems pretty promising and its really interactive and detailed.

vrpilot.aero

Virtual Reality Pilot Training - VRpilot

VRpilot delivers virtual reality based pilot training, such as the interactive and collaborative cockpit procedure trainer VRflow MCC.
vrpilot.aero vrpilot.aero
 
I decided to wait a while before posting on this. First - I thought the fourth paragraph was somewhat ironic, since the author of the piece isn't the blowhard in question...

Meanwhile, that left me perilously close to making sweeping generalities about the market trends, the effect of moon phases or any other vacuous topic I could use to fill space.
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Perilously close? You hit it square on the head. By proxy, but anyway....moving on...

Stewart's argument is buried in the pontificating - I think the point he wants to make (and fails, miserably, in the telling) is that he wants us all to know that Time Building Only Instructors Are Bad!

In any case - the '1500 hour rule' has zero to do with this. The article is....not helpful. It's a talking point that keeps cropping up and it smacks, to me, of laziness.

I had a lot more to say, but I'm going to let things unfold naturally.
 
SeanD said:
There is actually something that works on the Quest 2 and 3. I bought it for my Quest 2 just out of curiosity. It is for an A320 and apparently some airlines are starting to use it for flow training. It's called VRflow A20 made by the company below. Seems pretty promising and its really interactive and detailed.

vrpilot.aero

Virtual Reality Pilot Training - VRpilot

VRpilot delivers virtual reality based pilot training, such as the interactive and collaborative cockpit procedure trainer VRflow MCC.
vrpilot.aero vrpilot.aero
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You can put on a VR headset with a modern modest PC, buy MSFS and the Fenix Sims A320 and do the same thing lol. Except with way better graphics, and without pants.
 
killbilly said:
I decided to wait a while before posting on this. First - I thought the fourth paragraph was somewhat ironic, since the author of the piece isn't the blowhard in question...



Perilously close? You hit it square on the head. By proxy, but anyway....moving on...

Stewart's argument is buried in the pontificating - I think the point he wants to make (and fails, miserably, in the telling) is that he wants us all to know that Time Building Only Instructors Are Bad!

In any case - the '1500 hour rule' has zero to do with this. The article is....not helpful. It's a talking point that keeps cropping up and it smacks, to me, of laziness.

I had a lot more to say, but I'm going to let things unfold naturally.
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How do you teach dropping a wing? My CFI allowed that to happen organically during stall during Commercial. He said during slow flight stay off the rudders, use ailerons after I dipped the wing and almost spun us. He said that most training planes are inherently stable (especially the DA-40 were we in) he said push the nose forward. Or just let go of the yoke and it will stabilize. I tried it and he was right. But power on stalls was my weak point during training, because they honestly scared the • out of me. We were nose high and slow and the controls were squishy and could easily lead to a spin, if not properly stabilized. Learning that gave me the confidence to be able to do stalls in general, better and with more confidence.
 
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ChasenSFO said:
I mean you can put on a VR headset, buy MSFS and the Fenix Sims A320 and do the same thing lol. Except with way better graphics.
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Had a 13 year old kid visit the flight deck the other day, and was telling me all about the PMDG setup he has with his sim rig, and he seemed very knowledgeable on flying A350s and 777s. He pauses, for a moment, looks around the flight deck carefully (he's sitting in the CA seat) and says, "I don't really like the A220."

Non-sequitur, but funny, I thought.
 
ChasenSFO said:
I mean you can put on a VR headset, buy MSFS and the Fenix Sims A320 and do the same thing lol. Except with way better graphics.

I don't see that replacing a full motion sim in any regulatory way. Then again, this isn't the "real world" we are living in anymore so, who knows?
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I don't think that, they'd replace a full motion sim. But they'd probably replace the paper tiger.
 
Maximilian_Jenius said:
How do you teach dropping a wing? My CFI allowed that to happen organically during stall during Commercial. He said during slow flight stay off the rudders, use ailerons after I dipped the wing and almost spun us. He said that most training planes are well balanced (especially the DA-40 were we in) he said push the nose forward. Or just let go of the yoke and it will stabilize. I tried it and he was right. But power on stalls was my weak point during training, because they honestly scared the • out of me. We were nose high and slow and the controls were squishy and could easily lead to a spin, if not properly stabilized. Learning that gave me the confidence to be able to do stalls in general, better and with more confidence.
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Exactly what you described, except I let it happen with my early private students. That was one of those things I always wanted to nip in the bud early. After they would fail to connect the dots on coordination (or, more accurately, I was failing to get through to them as an instructor) I'd take them up, sit with my arms crossed and let them botch the stall without intervening. 1 or two times with a quick, "what happened there, how do you fix it?" between them usually corrected it quick.

I found that if I got them confident on stalls - power on, power off, accelerated and falling leaf - early on - it made for a much easier teaching experience later, because they were WAY more confident with the airplane.

For what it's worth - on power on stalls - most of them would get enough rudder in the second time, but fail to release some of it as the nose came down - took me a while to figure out how to teach that part, too.
 
killbilly said:
Had a 13 year old kid visit the flight deck the other day, and was telling me all about the PMDG setup he has with his sim rig, and he seemed very knowledgeable on flying A350s and 777s. He pauses, for a moment, looks around the flight deck carefully (he's sitting in the CA seat) and says, "I don't really like the A220."

Non-sequitur, but funny, I thought.
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Good on you - I'm always trying to convince my kids to ask to go up. One is growing too cool for it, but the other is always down. Had a great UA FO on a delay last year who spent a lot of time giving my very tech inclined son an overview of the cockpit. She even texted me photos of him, which was nice.
 
Murdoughnut said:
Good on you - I'm always trying to convince my kids to ask to go up. One is growing too cool for it, but the other is always down. Had a great UA FO on a delay last year who spent a lot of time giving my very tech inclined son an overview of the cockpit. She even texted me photos of him, which was nice.
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It's one of my favorite parts of the job. I was an airplane nerd once. Good people encouraged me along the way. Want to do the same. If I've got a CA who is okay with it, I often tell the FAs that if anyone wants to visit, just have them come up after we land. For us, that's a better time than right before departure.
 
Murdoughnut said:
Good on you - I'm always trying to convince my kids to ask to go up. One is growing too cool for it, but the other is always down. Had a great UA FO on a delay last year who spent a lot of time giving my very tech inclined son an overview of the cockpit. She even texted me photos of him, which was nice.
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Some years back Gulley was in LAS and gave my nephew a personal tour of his Challenger. At the time my nephew was really into MSFS. That was so awesome for him to do that. Love that dude.
 
killbilly said:
Had a 13 year old kid visit the flight deck the other day, and was telling me all about the PMDG setup he has with his sim rig, and he seemed very knowledgeable on flying A350s and 777s. He pauses, for a moment, looks around the flight deck carefully (he's sitting in the CA seat) and says, "I don't really like the A220."

Non-sequitur, but funny, I thought.
Click to expand...

get-out-my-plane-get.gif
 
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