Topslide 6:
Your clarifications made more sense to me.
When people deduce their own conclusions about sweeping statements which simply try to contrast various levels of pilot experience, hundreds (thousands?) of misunderstandings have emerged over the years on Pprune and other websites, "Flying" and "Aviation Week & ST" magazines. Maybe even in the old "MAC (now AMC) Flyer" and the Navy's "Approach" magazine. Your accurate comments, along with those of Alpine Flyer etc explained your thoughts and put them in better context.
Some pilots' comments regard views from the (our own) past, looking forwards. Older guys are sometimes misunderstood because readers therefore turn the perspective "clock" backwards-but this is often not the intent, or the thinking.
An average (or less..) pilot can become average, maybe much better after various types of experience (more aircraft and city-pairs with weather).
The more natural younger pilots who are really aggressive learners and much more astute (FE and/or First Officer) observers than I ever was, naturally become quite excellent pilots after many years.
Many of us simply feel that almost everyone gets much better with age etc-but-this does Not imply that many young pilots are not quite good, whether as GA Instructor, airline FO, Captain, whatever. Therein lies at least one common misunderstanding.
I appreciate your diplomatic effort to explain the perspective of a younger, highly capable pilot.
We had a guy who made CV-580 Captain at the end of his (first) year on probation! Extremely rare here for a large airline in the mid-80s.
He was considered a very natural pilot(still is), always in tune with common sense and procedures. He always sees the big picture from various angles.
Last edited by Ignition Override; 28th Aug 2007 at 04:09.