hawker750
I’ve been out of town for a few days, sorry for the late reply.
Congratulations on a long and productive career! You have my upmost respect for having persevered for 30 years in one tough competitive business.
Like you I have also served as an instructor at the airline level having trained and evaluated hundreds of crews. Honestly at our airline the bottom percentage that you mentioned is only a fraction of the 10% you mentioned. They tend to weed themselves out long before they ever get this far along.
I suspect we probably agree on many more points than we disagree.
We disagree on the level of skill required and the percentage of the population possessing the ability to command a jet airliner. My reference to a 737 departing Cameroon at night with thunderstorms surrounding was referring to a specific accident that illustrated my position. I have lived and flown in Africa, so the region is of personal interest to me. Pilot training in a cross cultural setting and especially cross cultural CRM is of special interest to me.
In any case I am more than a decade younger than you and I have never run any sort of company nor employed a single pilot. So perhaps in a decade or two, with a little more experience, I will have come around to your position. In the mean time we just deferentially disagree on a few points.
Thanks for the interesting discussion.
Respectfully,
Northbeach