Experience commensurate with age???

[P1 Forever]

Hi all,

What do the airlines mean when they say minimum 2500hrs and under say 50 years old with experience commensurate with age?

Thanks in advance,

P1.

[pa28biggles]

P1 Forever,
They are saying that if you are 50 years old, you must have twice as much (ish) experience than an average 25 year old for example. Though the rule wouldn't be strictly true, they probably wouldn't want a 40 year old with 250hrs.
One of the speakers (I think the gentleman from Britannia) at the Flyer flight training show at Heathrow in November said that this too.

[P1 Forever]

Thanks Biggles!

[FlyingForFun]

They are saying that if you are 50 years old, you must have twice as much (ish) experience than an average 25 year old for exampleSo an average 25 year old would be expected to have twice as much experience as an average 12-and-a-half year old, then? :D

FFF
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[XL5]

Excellent use of deductive logic triple F. You'll go far!

Back in the days when I sifted through the piles of CVs arriving in the chief pilot's office it became obvious to those of us in the training department that experience commensurate with age was indeed a valid element in the initial selection process.

We of course realised that at birth a potential candidate could only have zero hours and used this solid foundation as a baseline from which to extrapolate the age/experience criteria. At age 20yrs we'd expect 20 times the hours at birth, at age 25 yrs 25 times etc, etc.

There is surely a management job lurking in your future triple F! Best have your suit ready.

[FlyingForFun]

Yes, I think that, even with the kind of deductive logic that I'm using, I could do a much better job of managing than many managers I've met!

I was trying to make a serious point, though, albeit with a not-very-serious example. I would expect an average 50 year old pilot to have far more than double the hours of the average 25 year old pilot. But of course Biggles' example was deliberately over-simplified, and gets the point across perfectly adequately without pedants like you and me picking holes in it. ;)

FFF
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[pa28biggles]

Ok, not so good explanation, you know what I meant though! Thats why I used the word experience rather than hours FFF :ok:
Ok here's a better explanation. They would expect you to have as much experience as the average line pilot of a similar age, even though there is no such thing as an average pilot.

[alexb757]

But you are all forgetting one very important point here....and that is because of the volatile nature of the industry with many layoffs/redundancies every few years, very few pilots have a "perfect" career record in terms of employment and hours. In fact, I know several pilots that have not flown for several years because there WERE no opportunities for them to do so!

It is becoming more the norm, that pilots will at one time or another find themselves in lean times and they will lose a job or two or three....so, experience commensurate with age is only a semantic that assumes that eveyone should be save and not experience job losses with subsequent "loss" or stagnation of hours - time does not stand still but your career certainly can! In short, it assumes an ideal career track and industry and we all know how ideal and stable the airline industry is! Frankly, it is not a very good measure. Don't get me wrong, hours are what we measure experience by but there are far better means of selecting potential candidates than hours according to age. That is certainly not fool-proof.

Some companies do stipulate this and I understand why they do it. However, I stand my initial observations that it is a rather arbitrary rule assuming an ideal situation in a far from ideal world. I think if the airline business was not so prevalent to the ups and downs and maybe another more realistic criteria used, then this would hold more water. I think it's more a question of having a rule for the company to screen candidates out, rather than a hard and fast qualification to have. After all, what is an "average" pilot of a certain age supposed to have? What about someone starting a second career at the grand old age of say, 34? That person is likely to have far fewer hours than one who started at 24? Does that also mean that on the age basis, the older candidate is not capable of making it as a professional pilot? I hardly think so. Think about it. If this was a really "MUST" have qualification, wouldn't every airline be doing it?

[pa28biggles]

alexb757,
I totally agree with you.:)

[scroggs]

'Experience commensurate with age' does not assume that an individual has been flying since 20 and racking up 900 hours pa ever since! I think you'll find that these figures are in the right ballpark:

Under 25-ish: nil (or sufficient for an fATPL)
At 30: 1000-1500 hours
At 35: 2000-2500 hours
At 40: 3000-3500 hours
At 50: 5000 hours+

This is not a hard and fast rule, just a ballpark figure for you (and airline recruiters) to hang a hat on. As you can see, these hours are far less than would be expected of someone in continuous airline employment. Don't get too exercised by it!

Scroggs

[pa28biggles]

Scroggs,
Thanks, those ball park figures are quite handy. :ok: It shows that you cant just get a fATPL, do 20-30hrs a year to keep current (if one can keep current with doing 20-30hrs/year) until a job is sought. It may be best to crack on with some instructing - if there are any instructing jobs...

[Pilot Pete]

Biggles

I think you have just hit the nail on the head.

PP

[alexb757]

I beg to differ - the figures you give are quite conservative and acceptable. However, I have not seen any airline out of those that give this as one of their requirements, have anywhere near these figures. Check out China Air for example, you may be surprised.

When you consider all the various other requirements that some carriers stipulate and you come across this in addition, it is no surprise that some people will sigh and move on to another airline, one that is more intersted in perhaps personal attibutes and attitudes rather than nice, neat logbooks.

In the past, I have flown with 9,000+ hour pilots (Capts & FOs) who were pretty poor on the airmanship, zero CRM and a general pain in the ^%$#@!. Hours do not maketh the man necessarily. I'll see if I can find the article I read in an American aviation journal some years ago on the subject of hours, experience and what type of hours even. I recall it was a real eye opener and made me view pilot experience in a totally different light. By the way, it was written by a senior major airline captain who sat on the interview board of his airline, but was NOT the final decision maker.

[The mole]

pa28biggles:

By definition we are ALL average pilots. BTW according to Scroggs I am about 1000 hours behind!

[scroggs]

Alex, I can't hope to produce a table that will work for all airlines! The figures I quoted are reasonable ball-park ones, but of course some airlines will have different ideas about this. I imagine that if China Air were looking for considerably more hours then they have decided that they want people who've been flying professionally since their early twenties. It's their trainset, so they can stipulate what they like!

Whether hours are a reasonable basis on which to select pilots is a moot point, and you could argue it till the cows come home. However, as a filter to reduce the number of applicants to a manageable level, and to ensure that you (the airline) can find what you're looking for from those applicants you interview, it's perfectly reasonable. If airlines opened all posts to all pilots, we'd need thousands of interviewers, sims and secretaries - it ain't gonna happen!

Scroggs

[Bealzebub]

I agree with Scroggs, there is no definition to this. As with so many things, common sense has to applied to the interpretation.

Experience doesn't just means hours and it is a little blinkered to think it does. Obviously hours provide some measure but experience has wider meanings.

For example if an airline has 3 candidates one of whom is 32 years old with 2000 hours, the next is 32 years old with 3000 hours, the third is 35 years old with 3000 hours. Whose experience is commensurate with their age ?

Now if you look at the CV's and discover that the first applicant has completed 10 years in the Air force where they might have ordinarily completed around 200 hours a year. That experience would with many airlines be considered of high value and indeed would be commensurate with age.
The second applicant may have some 400 hours of training time followed by instructing experience for most of the next 2600 hours. The hours might be commensurate, but the experience might be considered lacking.
The third applicant has 400 hours of training time followed by some instructing and air taxi time for the next 1000 hours. This was then followed by 1200 hours of time on a medium sized turboprop airliner with a regional carrier. The last 400 hours being on that carriers jet fleet.

It is not unreasonable to assume that applicants 1 and 3 might be more desirable to a jet charter airline on the basis that their "experience" is commensurate with their age. Obviously there are any number of examples that can be cited, however the point is that experience is made up of many factors. It also depends on the level of experience that the company is seeking, and that level of experience should broadly be in keeping with the age range of the applicant.

All of these things are naturally dependant on "market forces". I don't think it just applies to aviation. If a hospital is advertising a job for a doctor with the same age/ experience criteria, then they might expect a 26 year old to be fresh out of medical school whereas they might expect a 35 year old to have some experience of medicine under their belt.