Originally Posted by
GreenBook
And what exactly does the 1500 hours on some 20 ton cessna without a yaw damper, VNAV or a decent fms teach you about flying a real jet in a real environment? Nothing. You learn while you do it. Good instruction and capable captains make even the youngest first officers into capable pilots. You need to start somewhere for sure, but why start on a turboprop that has nothing to do with a jet when you can just as well learn on a 737 or an A320
Many hours in a small plane can teach you how to fly. These are all machines with wings and the 4 forces, but crews seem to forget that. There are several recent accidents where crews spend time watching screens while the plane slowly departs from controlled flight.
i flew gliders, crop dusters, banner tow, single pilot freight, aerobatics... all in the first 1500 hours. I think I use the skills learned in those first 1500 hours every time I fly. The military does a great job teaching student to be qualified with low hours. The multi crew training doesn’t put you in many manual modes at the edge of the envelope, and there have been incidents where that lack of skill shows. Pilots are great programmers today, but start removing paths and lines and automation and the proficient skill set is diminished. It’s expensive to train to the degree that we’d all like. I have friends at Lufthansa who fondly remember starting out in gliders as part of their program. They believe it’s made them better pilots.