Pay - Pilots need more than bread and water
I was in NZ recently and looked at both aeroplane and helicopter happenings.
Seems they have the same issues there as we do in Oz.
The Australasian HAA is now getting stuck into the insurance companies who exclude low hour pilots, and there are plenty of these.
We are asking the question, why? I can find no evidence to exclude a low hour pilot who is supervised by the boss correctly.
Basic questions are:
Regulator, school and testing authority issue a licence to fly on commercial operations.
But insurance company, and in turn the boss say the new graduate ain’t good enuff!
So what is happening?
The industry rejects the regulator's licence - is the whole training system stuffed?
Meanwhile, the HAA is tackling this on two fronts:
1. Ask the insurance companies why they exclude new graduates, and
2. Help the CASA with their training reviews.
My personal dream (before I hand over the HAA to a new team), is to bring the regulator, safety authorities and the insurance industry around a table and ask why we have this historical bias?
If it is left over from WWII days, then we are making progress.
If they are right, and we are wrong, then we have to improve the training system and establish some form of assistance to low hour pilots, by mentoring, work experience, etc.
As I know this is a very emotive and topic, dear to many wallets, what are your thoughts?
Constructive comments only please, we gotta get this right!
We hope to have a working group up and running soon, and your input is very important to our work. We are all volunteers! Our target is to have the mess sorted out by September 2006, (our next major event), to bring into the open our working groups recommendations.
What do you think? How should we all handle this problem?