Originally Posted by
Rx7man
On the subject of training, what I find quite unbelievable is that every airline seems to have their own training procedures for a specific aircraft... Shouldn't there be just standard training dictated by the manufacturer of the aircraft and that should cover everything required.. there should be no need for carrier specific training other than perhaps some company policies, but nothing related to operating the equipment.
I do not disagree in theory, but IMHO, the reality is that the training standards dictated by Boeing have been catering to the lowest common denominator for years. They have a strong incentive to sell aircraft across the entire spectrum of airlines and countries regardless of the depth and quality of their aviation heritage. Requiring a higher level of demonstrated skills for the operator potentially translates into higher costs and lost sales.
Sadly, this thought process does not stop at Boeing. I recently had an opportunity to fly with FO who was relatively new to the 737. During our trip, we discussed a number of issues that had come out of the recent MAX crashes. During this conversation, he confessed that before these accidents, he did not even know the stab trim wheel had a stowable handle and had never been trained in its use. Think about that for a moment. Also consider that a freshly-minted 737 Captain would have received the exact same training.
After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I proceeded to personally give the FO the training he had missed. Afterwords, I shared my concerns with my Fleet Manager and told him in no uncertain terms that our training programs needed a thorough review. The Fleet Manager replied that this was already in progress, and stated that our training programs were constantly being reviewed for improvement. He added a telling remark, however, that stab trim malfunctions
had never been a statistically significant problem at our airline, implying of course that the training events our pilots are exposed to constantly needed to be justified by historical data. I told him that if the MAX accident had occurred at our airline, the family of those who perished would have been rightfully angered if it had come to be known that the crew had not been properly trained in a runaway stab procedure because the airline considered it to be a statistically insignificant event.
The degradation of pilot training and standards is a worldwide problem. It is being driven in large part by the beancounter mentality that attempts to justify every cost. Unfortunately this approach forgets that there are some costs that cannot be easily quantified, and eventually a price will be paid in bent metal and broken bodies. Sadly, even if the industry will not openly admit it, there seems to be an underlying assumption that there is an acceptable hull loss rate and that little will change until the body count goes up.