Spot on man..................
Bealzebub,
I want to commend you on your observation-boy is this following statement of yours ever the truth!
“The flight deck of an airliner can be an artificially comfortable environment where the world waiting to bite you, can seem a lot further away than it might really be.”
Isn’t it amazing how we can drone along for years and thousands of hours staring at the same gauges/instrument/FMS and it all feels so very comfortable and routine. But it doesn’t take very much and the whole thing becomes a strange raging beast! The American 757 in Cali comes to mind, as do many other accidents. I have seen this same scenario happen many times in the simulator with experienced crews.
Listening to the final few moments of a doomed airliner’s ATC communications I am struck by how often the crew is mere seconds away from death and they have no idea that they are about to perish.
MPL or no MPL, Ab-initio or not, self-improver or military; the political and financial forces driving MPL will not be persuaded by the likes of me. “Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward”. Captain, your work load is about to go up again.