Originally Posted by Pugilistic Animus
I'm standing by for my thrashing
Hi PA – don’t hold your breath while waiting … I’m not generally into such reactions - although I have been known to respond somewhat caustically at times…
I don’t generally disagree with your comment about not desiring less experienced pilots in the cockpit. Unfortunately, I am old enough to remember the times when pilots were recruited with the bare minimum flight time for CPL in the US. Admittedly, the time these chaps
DID have was in an airplane, it is also true that a good share of that time was as “an instructor.” Please know that I’m not denigrating all instructors here; however, it is also true that in the middle 1960s a pilot going to work for US airlines (e.g., Eastern or Northeast) often was hired with 220 – 250 total hours, where up to 200 of those hours were logged while “instructing.” I’m sure there were some exceptions, but generally an instructor with 60 or 70 hours of total time is there primarily to log time - and the only “instructing” that is carried out is limited to keeping the poor student from killing himself while he learns to fly. In my book that doesn’t necessarily add a lot to a pilot’s ability – either decision making or aviating.
In the US, the wartime footing that the US maintained during the Viet Nam conflict, and the aviators required to service that need, also provided a flood of very highly experienced pilots when their military obligation was completed. No doubt, the world’s militaries will continue to supply
some of the commercial pilots – but not very likely in the numbers that were seen in the late 1960s through the 1970s. Corporate operations may supply others, but, again, the numbers won’t provide a very large portion of the need. Also, the regional airlines may provide
some additional resources – but that would be limited. The question here would be where would those operators recruit replacements? Overall, I think this means that the desired “experience” of new-hires in national airlines is not likely to be there as it has been. What options exist? Future pilots will be a necessity – until the traveling public is willing to climb on board an RPV – and those pilots will have to come from some place … with whatever experience they have. Certainly,
some will be from the instructor ranks; but, even with former military, former corporate, and former regional, that still leaves a sizeable portion of the need that will be unaddressed. Hence … MPL.
The value of the MPL, as it is currently described, will be, like pudding, found in the proverbial “eating;” (from the old adage “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”). MPL advocates may wind up “eating” their words – but then again, they may not. I think almost everyone today recognizes that good simulation training is really good training – and is probably better training than what would have been received in the airplane – IF done correctly. I only use the words “probably” and “IF” here because not all simulator instructors know how to use simulation to its maximum extent. Some of these folks tend to do in the simulator exactly what they would have done in the airplane. Unfortunately, that limits the value of the simulator rather dramatically.
Suffice it to say that the only time things should be “simulated” when training, is when training is accomplished in the airplane. One should never have to resort to “simulating” anything when using a properly built, tested, and qualified airplane flight simulator - and when the capabilities of simulation are used, it should be to capitalize on the time factors involved. Simulators are a trememdous "time shifting" mechanism and can increase the concentration on any aspect of the flight training syllabus - when understood and used correctly.
Will MPL work? I cannot answer that definitively. However, should it
not work, there will have to be a substitute generated if, indeed, pilots remain a necessity.