PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Growing Evidence That The Upturn Is Upon Us
Old 2nd Sep 2009, 10:46
  #2950 (permalink)  
Wee Weasley Welshman
 
Join Date: Feb 2000
Location: England
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I think the whole experience vs accident rate is an equation that doesn't reflect the facts.

This year CFIT has been overtaken as the number one cause of accidents by pilots doing a Spanair and forgetting to set take off configuration or a Turkish and just ignoring the primary flight instruments and crashing on short finals.

I can't recall a single airline disaster or serious incident where the lack of hours by the co-pilot was cited as a contributory factor in the last twenty years in Europe. The insurers seem very relaxed about it. Low experience Captains is a different fish kettle because sometimes the SOP's or the manuals don't cover the situation at hand. Experience is the only thing to fall back on then.

Hours don't mean what they used to. With the highly prescriptive SOP's and the electronic monitoring of most airlines fleets then the ability to just operate exactly by the book is enough. Not that that is easy in itself. Operate to the manual, obey every SOP and even with 250hrs you really can't go far wrong.


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