Originally Posted by
cessnaxpilot
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.
Well you make a good point about deviations from controlled flight, however, I think most people would agree that the overall loss of flying skills during an airline career has nothing to do with background and personal 'level', but more with company culture and what they do and do not allow. If you watch a few Justplanes on youtube and you see a crew autolanding an aircraft in LHR in cavok and 0 wind, then I think you could have spent 15.000 hours in a crop duster, you still will lose everything your learn. This is a culture problem, not a training or personal experience level problem.