Originally Posted by
FlyingStone
Pilots new to airline flying are usually drinking out of a firehose, as everything is new to them. From check in, weight and balance, paperwork, PAs, etc. - let alone flying an aircraft 40 times heavier what they previously flew. And there's so many things to cover, Cat 2/3 approaches, NPAs with various levels of automation, manual flying, etc.
Seasoned captains with experience on type? Sure, couple of days so they get used to the different papers and checklists, and off they go. New first officers whose last aircraft was C172? No way.
But that's not the case. They've done over double the amount of time in the sim and have lived and breathed the A320 (or 737) mass+balance, CAT 2/3, NPAs etc during that time. My airline has a well established MPL program (not sure, but I'd be surprised if there are any bigger ones globally). It's 50 sectors minimum here, which is probably 100hrs or more of flying and obviously more as required. After that, they'll have a number of restrictions that won't get removed till their command. Half crosswind limit, no contaminated runways, no autolands as PF, minimum 400m RVR, initially restrictions on reduced flap landings (they go after about 6 months).
The reality is we just don't have an aviation sector that would cater to what seems
absoultely necessary on the otherside of the atlantic. The safety data shows it doesn't matter anyway, the European skies are not more dangerous. Clearly not every training department/program is as robust as the next one, but saying 'no way' seems to be entirely emotional rather than logical when the evidence doesn't seem to exist. If the concern is this great, I'd never get on a European aircraft again as there will be few (none?) that operate without these sorts of cadets.
I can think of countless incidents where very experienced crews made some elementary and often catestrophic mistakes. On the other hand, I struggle to think of many where a freshly minted cadet was the fundemental reason for an incident - one which an average experienced guy would have saved the day. Obviosuly we're looking at this one from the UAE involving a cadet, but it still doesn't seem like a mistake that an experienced crew would be immune from, neither was it initially detected by a very experienced trainer.