Scroggs
I disagree, and feel that a comparrison with military training is not very accurate.
As an officer you had command training, possibly before you ever reached an aircraft. In addition you had been selected for you aptitude, and trained with a view to going straight into command.
Comparing my experience in military flight training to my experience in civilian flight training (having been chopped at AFT I was still inexperienced) the civvie training is very different. The student at my civilian school (no longer in existence) was very much trained to follow a well-worn path to the test. Even after this, having more than 100 hours P1 and well over 250 hours I felt that when it came to commanding a light aircraft as an instructor or under IFR, flying to new destinations and across international borders I was having to work very hard. Had I not experienced that command time it would have been very tough indeed. I cannot see that being suddenly dumped with a multi-crew aircraft when your Captain comes down with gastroenteritis is going to be much easier!
The other problem is that line flying many jet piltos get extremely little hands-on flying. In some airlines there is no option to get more than a few minutes per flight. Those skills are going to degrade much more quickly as they become based on less experience.
The point of flight training is that initially it is not task specific; this is fortunate when the task can change so drastically. I mentioned Gimli already, but how about Sioux City? The Baghdad Airbus? Other accidents that didn't happen because the aircraft felt wrong, not because of any particular, identifiable piece of training? You are experienced enough to know how an aircraft should feel and some of the ways it feels wrong and why. This feel for flying develops rapidly over the first few hundred hours flying and is vital to both Captain and FO. An FO with only 60 hours under his belt is not going to have it!