Gentlemen,
I find it hard to believe I have to defend my skills against neophytes and dreamers. Yes, I am trained in the USA, but born and raised in Europe. Came here to pursue avaiation at a time when no one was doing any hiring in Europe, one thing led to another and ended up staying.
I have flown all over the world and have never had any problems, whether it be with R/T, flying approaches or weather. In general I found the wx briefings in Europe to be better than the US, but the actual wx no different. An ILS is an ILS. Flying in Africa is worse than South America and so on.
Are americans substandard pilots, I strongly disagree. As someone mentioned there are differences in presentation, but are our skills below par? No, the accident statistics does not support such a finding.
Flying is a mixture of knowledge and experience. It helps to know the why's about thunderstorms and also to deviate around them.
Too many people in here are bashing just for the sake of it, without any real reason or justification. Why is that, what does it accomplish? Maybe it makes them feel better about their "skills", who knows, I for one certainly don't care for it. Yes, it does seem that the sentiment is americans cannot fly, but then again, how many americans have actually responded to this thread? Perhaps that is because we do not care about a few #ssholes that have big mouths and small brains. 'nuff said!!!
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It's been real, it's been fun, but it has not been real fun