Originally Posted by
wiggy
Just to digress and to interject a bit of (I think needed) balance into the thread, because I'm getting a bit uncomfortable with some of the stereotyping of "newbies" I am reading.
By way of background I'm a current Longhaul P1. My route to that seat was via a little gliding, then flying training in the RAF, fast jet tours, then CFS - student QFI/Basic FTS QFI and then later at CFS itself instructing instructors. After that and whilst in my mid-thirties I took the DEP route into an airline that selected and continues to select by way of a multi day selection procedure.
Nowadays in my day job I am increasingly working (both on the aircraft and in the simulator under test) alongside sub-thirty year old DEPs who prior to their previous airline were probably trained by the likes of CTC rather than the military... I have also sat on the jump seat recently (short haul) behind a very young cadet very new to the airline, early training done by CTC/L3.....
My perspective on this, FWIW, is that there are actually a lot of very good, very competent young pilots out there flying the line.
I accept I may be lucky in that the airline I work for weeds out the ham fisted slow thinking candidates during it's selection process... perhaps it would be helpful to find out where the outliers, the "2000 hours, can't land a 737/A320 pilots" are working and avoid those airlines...
Now, deep breath, back to the topic...
Ah! Wiggy you give yourself away! Fast jet flying must be the nearest thing to gliding I guess. Some years back after I had retired from flying gliders I met a fast jet pilot also long retired from the cockpit. We decided to see if flying was like roller skating something you never forget, and to do this cheaply we signed up for a week at our local gliding club. I went solo after about four trips mainly because I had never flown plastic gliders before, and they were much slippier than the wooden ones I was used to. My friend had several thousand hours in Sea Harriers some of them shooting down Argies in the Falklands. He went solo on the second day. I think that says it all for our handling skills, SA, and airmanship.