Originally Posted by bad credit
An experienced pilot is just as inexperienced to an engine failure at V1 as a 200 hour pilot when it happens for real the first time. Experience gives you the capacity to deal with the problem but everyone has passed the same sim tests to deal with it. Experience obviously counts for a hell of a lot. Is that not why you have a captain and a first officer?
Your first statement (within this quote) is incorrect. By the time I had my first engine failure at or near V1, I had practised the situation in the simulator several hundred (or maybe thousand) times. I had also dealt with engine failures and other -real - emergencies on many occasions. That experience was invaluable in dealing with that situation. At the time of that V1 failure (acually, about 10-15 knots before V1) I was an FO on a B747 with 385 passengers on board taking off from Manchester. It was quite an interesting few seconds!
That said, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with line-releasing a pilot to fly, say, a 737 with around 350-400 hours. As long as the training system is rigourous enough to ensure that the student gets the maximum benefit from the training, and has the integrity to set and enforce minimum standards below which a student is removed from that training, then the airline should have every confidence that the new pilot will be able to operate to a certain minimum, but acceptable, standard, and will gain experience, knowledge, and usefulness as time goes by - until he or she is deemed ready for a command.
There is, however a great deal to be said for gaining experience in smaller, and, yes, arguably less reliable aeroplanes. Once on a modern jet, it is probably fair to say that the kind of emergencies practiced in the simulator are unlikely to strike most pilots. However, a great many testing situations
will occur, of the type which can't be carried out in the sim - and it's here that experience is invaluable. Whether it's dealing with turbulence in the cruise, or lack of ground equipment on arrival, or any one of a myriad of situations which affect a pilot's daily life, you'll learn more, and faster, on that TP commuter than you will on an A320.
At the end of the day, those of you expecting to work in UK are extremely lucky that you can hope to have a choice of what to fly; there are many parts of the world where such a choice would be seen as pure luxury! Ask any Antipodean, for instance.
Scroggs