I have difficulty understanding this. Someone please help me. Fighter pilots are in trouble dealing with the complexity of of flying an Airbus?
Well, most everybody has some trouble with the increased complexity of modern automated airplanes.
Not not necessarily in flying, but in programing and supervising the automation. It's not an intelligence question (unless you're talking about a Marine
), it's an experience question in airline workload management. Everybody had some trouble programing the old FMS units when they were new on the equipment. The point is that single pilot fighter experience is very different from CRM transport work. Most all fighter pilots make great airbus drivers in about six months or so imho. But until you knock out at least one season on big iron, you're still in a pretty good learning curve. You're still easily saturated (at least in the third world). Now if you haven't studied the books, because you were somebody's squadron buddy, you can be a real handicap to a new (on the airbus) Captain.
Maybe that problem is not widespread. Maybe it only happened to me. I am not indicting fighter jocks; I'm merely pointing out that it was a problem many of us first time captains complained about. The former airline F/O's were sharp and watching a new Captain closely helping him along as a real asset to crew safety, whereas many of the fighter guys were still on the big airplane learning curve. That's life in the cockpit. Don't take it personally.
So I'm not convinced by arguments that the F/O was competent based on his past Fighter Squadron experience. Are we flying Mirage fighters here? No. That type of flying doesn't necessarily make one an asset in a bus.
Remember reporters, all these speculations by us are exactly that. We have nothing to go on without ATC radar tracks, Flight Data Recorders, and Cockpit Voice recorders transcripts.
Fly safe everyone,
CC - out