Flying Without Wings - TIME
Liu Chang isn't your typical airline pilot. The 24-year-old from Harbin, in northeast China, trained in biology, doesn't have a driver's license, and cannot legally fly a small Cessna. But in November he'll be qualified as first officer on a Boeing 737.
Chang, who likes to be called Stanley, had never even flown as a passenger when he saw an ad seeking trainee pilots for Xiamen Airlines. A bit bored by biology and lured by the prospect of a big pay rise, he applied for the job. Eyesight was the strictest test he needed to pass. "Experience," he recalls, "was not important."
The experience is coming today in Brisbane, Australia, where Stanley and five other trainees from Xiamen and China Eastern airlines are part of a trial that Boeing, through its pilot-training subsidiary Alteon, thinks could change the way pilots are trained worldwide.
The radical idea is to teach novices to fly a modern jet airliner in a little over a year. Unlike the traditional route to the cockpit, this course places limited emphasis on flying real planes; instead it focuses on training in simulators and teamwork. "Each person finds different things difficult," Stanley says of the challenge of handling the switches, knobs and screens in front of him and the responsibility for a hundred lives behind. "For some it will be memory, for others it will be handling skill. I had never driven a car, so motor skills — handling skills — were not very good. The first landing [of a propeller plane] was hard, but after practice I can do it."
The trial is being closely watched by the international airline industry, which is expected to add more than 29,000 planes in the next two decades. Alteon says that will require 18,000 new pilots. While the U.S. has a pilot surplus, most other countries — and especially China and India — are struggling to keep up with demand.
The big question is, is it safe? Historically, someone wanting to pilot a passenger jet tended to start on small planes and move up, a process that might take two or three years, perhaps longer. The Air Transport Pilot's Licence needed to captain a passenger jet requires extensive flying experience: at least 1,500 hours in countries like the U.S. and Australia.
Programmed Emergencies
alteon claims pilots from this course — which can train a novice in 13-15 months — will be more competent than their conventionally trained peers. Stanley and the others have had 95 hours in a single-engine plane (14.5 hours solo) and will have done 260 hours in simulators by graduation. They won't qualify to fly small planes, but once they satisfy their airlines with a dozen take-offs and landings in real 737s, they will be licensed as first officers in passenger jets. "To train to be a commercial airline pilot, you don't need to cross the country on your own in a little propeller plane," argues Roei Ganzarski, Alteon's sales chief. "All those hours flying alone don't necessarily prepare you to be a better airline pilot, to work in a crew environment with a large, fast jet."
It's a philosophy reflected in the International Civil Aviation Organization's multi-crew pilot's license (MPL). Introduced in 2006, this was the first major change to licensing since 1948. It requires some training in small piston-engined planes — as little as 10 hours solo — but the bulk of the required 240 hours' flying is done in simulators where emergencies like engine trouble and storms can be programmed in.
Not everyone is convinced. "We have concerns about how individuals would react in an emergency," says Lawrie Cox, industrial manager at the Australian Federation of Air Pilots. "It's easy to do in a simulator, but when you are confronted with it, it's an entirely different situation. You don't have a depth of feeling." Simulator training, he says, "is a short-cut process because of the world-wide shortage of pilots ... and the view we have is you can't beat experience."
Qantas is also wary. Chief pilot Captain Chris Manning sounds unenthusiastic, saying the airline sees "no advantage" in the MPL. Manning's view disappoints Captain Ray Heiniger, a former Qantas chief pilot and director of training. "This is specialised training," says Heiniger, who now works with Alteon and helped train the Chinese students on Diamond-40 propeller planes. "We train them specifically for the right-hand seat of an airliner from day one. They are taught multi-crew skills so they operate as a team. In the end, it will produce a better-trained pilot."
Thoughts?
Is this the future of airline pilots?
As I personally aspire to make it into the airlines, and I wish to make my way through GA, I had particular gripe with this comment:
"Roei Ganzarski, Alteon's sales chief. "All those hours flying alone don't necessarily prepare you to be a better airline pilot, to work in a crew environment with a large, fast jet."
So going by his example, gaining flying experience such as a GA single pilot IFR, limited avionics, flying an approach down to minimas in driving rain, with only yourself to keep you alive, apparently is not as good experience as someone who has learnt to fly via sim work ? It wont make you a "better" airline pilot?