I think my comment has been received in a different manner to that intended. That is always the trouble holding a discussion in type as opposed to face to face.
The question is at what point does the low houred S/O or F/O become more of an asset on the flightdeck, rather than a hinderance?
I meant
in the eyes of someone who believes that they
shouldn't be there with 'low hours' and it doesn't actually reflect my view, hence the smiley (which obviously didn't clarify enough!). I refer you to my previous post and this comment
Don't think I am anti-250hr guys, I am not....
Topslide
I'd agree with this to an extent, but if my view of things differed from the Captain's I wouldn't be happy to 'go along with it' unless I had an explanation as to why their decision was correct, and visa versa.
Again, I think it is the written interpretation here. I am talking generally, when it is perfectly acceptable to do something in one of several different ways, that all comply with the SOPs. As an F/O I often found myself hearing a brief and thinking 'hmmn, I wouldn't do it that way myself', but being perfectly happy to see how the captain did it. And quite often I learnt something new, but it didn't mean I sat there queitly whilst the captain compromised safety!
I fly with good Captains who understand CRM and are happy to come to a joint decision on things, and not just impose their will without consultation. Our job is not to just sit there and take what the Captain says as gospel. Everyone is human and everyone makes mistakes....even people who've flown single pilot.
I am interested as I would like to know where anyone has intimated that pilots who have single crew experience don't make mistakes? Or that they don't apply good principles of CRM and consult in decision making when they become captains on two crew aircraft?
How happy do you think Pilot Pete's 'punters' would have been to know that he was flying them into potentially dangerous situations (by his own admission) on his own and with no one else to fallback on if the situation dictated? I'll bet not all of them would have happily flown with him.
Well, by getting on board the aircraft when there was only one pilot onboard meant they KNEW there was no-one for me to fall back on. They still made the conscious decision to stay onboard. Indeed they were told at the booking stage that the flight would be single crew. I am not sure how you quantify the 'potentially dangerous' situation. I would have thought that every time they get into ANY aircraft the average passenger assumes that they are going flying into a potentially dangerous situation. So they made their decision by accepting the terms of the charter and getting onboard and then staying onboard, with only one pilot. Now if you meant would they have been happy if they knew I only had 300hrs then I could see your argument....
Concerning my comment re the sim being the sim...you mention
tis true...and a light twin is not even the sim.
Again you are missing the point completely. No-one is trying to make out that flying single crew in a piston twin is akin to flying a sim. The point is about FLYING EXPERIENCE and not about how well one can master known scenarios that you know are coming in the sim, which is different from the real world.
If you re-read my post 1/2 way down page 3 I have tried to put the case
for and against low houred pilots in jets and I will re-iterate that I am not against this practice
per se, BUT you have to look at the weakest link when it comes to safety and I have given a few examples of some actual situations that I have experienced when flying with brand new S/Os in their first few weeks on line. I have not experienced any similar situations with direct entry F/Os (minimum unfrozen ATPL). I do not 'tar' all 250hr pilots with the same brush, nor do I claim that all airlines that have them are the same. What I have tried to do is give a balanced view and I have come to the conclusion that someone with more experience, be that from single pilot ops, turbo-prop two crew experience or whatever other commercial flying, increases the safety on the jet flight-deck (which relates to the original question posed on this thread).
PP