Originally Posted by
Okihara
Many instructors have logged close to 1000 hours. As you say CASA would have the final say but I expect that things will change politically after this season's bushfires.
But what has being an Instructor got to do with Ag flying? 1000 Hours Ag time is totally different to 1000 hours instructing.
The Aussie requirement is for
1000 hours of Ag flying. You could have 20,000 hours of instructing and it would still be meaningless in terms of preparing you for firefighting.
I do think the 1000 hours Ag could be modified to include some other ‘relevant experience’ - military operations, mustering, aerobatics, mountain flying (not that Australia has any mountains of note) basically stuff involving stick-and-rudder skills low to the ground - but Instructing certainly isn’t relevant to firebombing. At the risk of offending anyone, I’d say most Instructors have very basic stick-and-rudder skills to start. They’re generally low-time pilots who don’t fly on the stick much themselves, they are in-fact mostly hands-off as they direct someone else flying.
In the USA, Canada and Europe, Firebombing pilots don’t have the 1000 hour Ag restriction, although in practice many have considerable Ag time. But then in the USA and Canada, there are more multi-crew firebombing aircraft where pilots can work as an FO on operations with a more experienced Captain, and hence build up relevant experience without doing Ag.