Well trained low hour pilots....
Where are these guys and gals?
Every School will claim they do a perfectly good job. In truth for most of the schools priority number 1 is to make money not to improve safety - despite the blurb in their advertising and their sales pitch to airline HR depts.
If entry requirements were more strict and the students were taught the required skills (as per Military Flight Training) rather than merely assessed to an FAA/CAA standard then I would agree that the quickest minds and most teachable students would become reliable and excellent pilots.
But a 150 hour MPA or 250 hr approved CPL/IR is NOT enough and these junior pilots who are thrown into a 60 tonnes electric jet will require constant monitoring by Training Captains and later Line Captains, which increases cockpit workload during critical flight conditions. In the main we see youngsters entering airlines who are good at Playstation games and programming Glass cockpits, able to pass standard engine out proceedures in a Simulator and fly an automatic ILS, but unaware of attitude flying, emergency roll rates, mach buffet, and manual engine spool up times for go-arounds.
Simulators are good for proceedural work but again (as NASA is studying and the Cranfield University FORCE report discovered), they are limited when it comes to teaching basic jet handling skills. Yes emergency proceedures can be tested but it is now where near as good as real unusual attitude flying - Singapore use LearJets, a few US schools have Extra 300s and UK airline Thomas Cook used to use JEFTS (T67M260s) to give pilots real spin awareness. Sadly, here across the pond, we have seen the approved schools remove their aerobatic trainers to save running costs. So the best a new pilot can hope for is learning on the line.
Most Line Training captains can see the potential in good junior pilots but they also vary in the amount they will allow the youngsters to do. Sitting in the cruise on autopilot, monitoring R/T or programming an FMS with the occaisional auto throttle "manual" landing in low cross wind, dry runway conditions is NOT enough.
I would trust the military low houred guy to fly a Chinook into Afghanistan under fire more than a low houred MPA rated pilot with a dead Captain next to him, organising cabin crew to strap the old boy in whilst he's transmitted a emergency call to foreign speaking controllers on a blustery winter night.
So I don't blame the cadets for wanting to progress quickly up the ranks to heavy Jet flying but the way they get there should be scruitinised more thoroughly. Most cadets in the UK jump the turboprop option by buying a type rating on a 737 /A320. That is like skipping a real world school for a couple of years where useful skills (e.g.: dealing with weather, low level icing, basic raw navigation on needles, etc) could have been learned for when things may go awry later on.
In the end it is down to the rule makers, Flight Schools and Customer Airlines to demand more from the training pipeline. A structured apprenticeship route makes more sense than rushing through the basics.