Having spent the past year or so coaching well over a hundred candidates from all over Australia going for the major domestic airlines the general standard seen of their piloting skills has been extraordinary good. Their hours varied from 2000 to 5000 so there is certainly no shortage of experienced pilots. All have done the hard yards in remote areas with many having startling stories to tell. All were keen to get out of general aviation into an airliner - and not necessarily for the money, either. In the majority of cases they had wide experience at night dodging thunderstorms in wet seasons and no radar either. That sort of experience is priceless and I hope the airlines fully appreciate this. But some don't. The accent on Human Factors at interviews is fine but it would be a great pity and a waste of hard won flying experience if some get knocked back because of a wrong answer in a theoretical flight planning exercise.
What disturbs me though, is despite such a highly experienced number of GA pilots out there sweating on flying for an airline, the cadet schemes are steadily forging ahead and fast tracking their CPL graduates into the second in command position of jets and turbo-props. In other words, pilots with long exposure to real weather decision making and good airmanship borne of scary nights dodging storms, are cast aside for pilots who have the spare dollars to bypass real flying experience and into a buy-a job scheme common in European airlines and in SE Asia.
The latest issue of Australian Aviation magazine at page 29, has a news update by a journalist Ellis Taylor in which he interviews the Managing Director of Oxford Air Training where cadet pilots start off on their route to the right hand seat of a jet.
The interview was quite tame and if the journalist did ask searching questions about the wisdom of having low hour cadets in the second in command seat, those questions didn't appear in the article.
A sample of extracts edited from the interview follow: "Oxford Air Training will offer a first in our region by equipping and fully qualifying graduates from our own cadet pilot training programme as part of our experienced pilot group. So with 250 hours they will be in the right hand seat of an Airbus A320.".
My comment: Passengers on those A320 will have no idea that the second in command on their aircraft is merely a junior apprentice - despite having nominal legal qualification. Should the captain be incapacitated (birdstrike in the face, maybe) then the passengers are in the capable (?) hands of a 250-500 hour cadet. Maybe that explains why the the OAA spokesman chose his words carefully using the words "right hand seat of an A320" - rather than "second in command of an A320".
Experienced pilots know the real difference. Passengers probably don't.
Of course, as these inexperienced cadets build up hours on type the initial risk factor diminishes but there is no denying that for the first six months their captains will be flying virtually single-handed. Is CASA concerned? Not really. As long as it is legal. Of course, in preparing cadet training programmes, the airlines would have known this and conducted a risk analysis and what with the money saved have found it is safe.
While on the subject of airline flight safety. The latest issue of Flight International editorial comment has this to say: "Many airline operations and training departments look at someone else's accident and see it as just that: someone else's. It does not relate to that."
It would interesting to see details of overseas airline accidents where the cadet second in command was a factor in the cause of the accident. It would be nice to be certain that CASA is already way ahead of us and already researched these accidents and decided it wouldn't happen in our own backyard. No worries, mate. This is Australia.
Last edited by Tee Emm; 20th Jul 2010 at 14:19.