Twotbags,
Absolutely right on most counts - but beg to differ on the quality of z-t-h candidates. Yes, most of them obviously lack experience - which is very much one their qualities!
Experience comes in several forms, but for our purposes we can cut it down to 2 types: a) Relevant experience and b) Irrelevant experience. B) may be further sub-divided into two categories: b)1 Irrelvant but harmless/neutral experience and b)2 Irrelevant but undesireable/hard-to-correct experience.
Now, with the present training system (where you learn to fly using bugsmashers), a disproportionate amount of time is used practising stuff that will have absolutely
no relevance for professional airline transport (carburattor ice/eingine failure in SEPs/stall recovery in SEPs/VFR com procedures/grass field operations etc.) but is necessary to get more or less safely throgh training, i.e. the form training takes necessitates these skills to be learnt. This clearly falls into the "useless but harmless" category.
Next, our self improvers (of which I'm one) go off to gain experience as 2P in a light turbo-prop, flying in a small company. SOPs? Command gradient? CRM? Get the dictionary, please! Of course, there are some really great, professional small-scale operators, but they are the exception, and even in the orther sort of companies, you find a lot of professionally minded pilots and trainers alike - but how often do you fly with them? In other words - 2000 hrs. on a B200 with an operator that may or may not provide the best background to a professional flying career - that
may or
may not leave you with either "relevant" experience or "irrelevant, undesireable" experience. And they may (or may not) for that very reason constitute a training risk.
Last bunch I worked for, I had the pleasure of line training both varieties - with the noticeable exception that the guys with experience were all type rated & had about 500 hrs. on type. When line training was completed - we tried to compare training files
And without exception - the guys with experience on type had more trouble and the less steep learning curve. Obviously, they
flew the aircraft better - but they
operated it to a lower standard (e.g. I'd rather see a z-t-h type do a nice stabilised approach at 160-to-4 instead of people trying to do 170-to-3 and demonstrate interesting ways of slowing down the aircraft "because it saves airborne time") I'm sure that this picture is now much more equal for the group in question - after another 500 hrs. Yet - the point remains: the first 500 hrs. the experienced guys had flown don't not show today. After 7 months - they're on an equal footing with the z-t-h guys&gals.
Experience needs to be quantified & weighed against what role the new hiree is intended to fill. If you fly charter ops on a relatively simple aircarft (73X?) into many different, difficult & limiting airports - I'll go for the t-prop hand any old time (because they handle the aircraft very well). If you fly scheduled ops into cat A airports only on highly automated equipment (A32X etc.) - I'd say the z-t-h candidate offers the best risk/benefit ratio - horses for courses, 'spose.
How about setting up some sort of evaluation agency/bureau where you can pay up, register & take psycometric & simulator tests & get scored on a comprehensive matrix that would show your strong & not-so-strong areas? Then airlines can easily see how their personality matrix fits with individual candidates & use that to decide who they want to call for an interview & do their own evaluation on - instead of just saying "Oh, you got 2000 hours of Kingair time - we are not interested, sorry"! It comes down to the fact that it depends on individual abilities & psycological profiles weather you will fit into a given airline job or not. Some people will shine through, no matter how much BS they have been fed by various captains/companies/instructors - others need exactly the right growth & stimulation environment to develop their abilities.
Both kinds of people make excellent pilots - and both types deserve a decent chance
Brgds fm
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