Thanks for getting this thread back on course.....
Guppy does have some interesting points, granted, but he admits to having zero experience in airline training departments, airline safety departments and airline operations in general. As he sates, airlines just didn't overly attract him. So be it. But he denies what we in airline training departments, airline safety departments and airline operations have witnessed and continue to witness over time. He has however argued based on his own experience (smaller [commuter] turboprops, corporate aviation and freighters [747 classic??]). Arguments are lined with ridicule and abuse from his own interpretation. Disagree, certainly! Seek to ridicule and abuse, no.
No where did I ever state that technical questions are REPLACED by "What do your parents think about you becoming a pilot?" I merely stated that they have now been included. He argues I did, and labels me a liar. Hence the backlashes.
This thread is about the dying breed of airman and airmanship in AIRLINE operations, as the title states.
I chose to use CX as an example as I have close colleagues there in senior training roles. CX have deliberately ignored the successfully interviewed applicants with many thousands of hours experience, most with jet experience. In their stead CX have deliberately recruited based on a cadetship ideology where ZERO flying experience is required. This permits them to offer T's & C's far, far below those offered to the successful candidates prior to the GFC (some 50% less). Recently these 60 successful candidates were offered a job as SO based on the same T's & C's as the cadet pilots: all this after waiting for some 2.5 years!!! All but one refused, I am told.
To deny airlines therefore actively SEEK lower time / experienced pilots is to deny the blatant obvious.
The point made by "Safety Concerns" is valid. My point is that airlines do follow (their version!) of these regulations and procedures. They have shown to be able to do so by ignoring applicants of higher standard (subjective point, perhaps, but I' take the QF Second Officer with 8000 hrs experience over someone with zero, 175 or 200 hrs). The regulations are upheld, but the bar is effectively lowered. My 2 years at AI as a TRE/I on the B777 fleet was shocking in the extreme. I had to resign as my conscience and integrity dictated.
Technology grows exponentially. In the words of Mr Earl Weiner (late 80's, early 90's pioneer of CRM), "Automation is dutiful yet dumb". Meaning if programmed incorrectly that same automation will quite happily and extremely successfully plough that aircraft into the side of a mountain. So, give me a pilot who has the knowledge, experience, hours, and training to know when the automation has failed the crew by either human error or software/hardware error....and then to competently know how to handle the situation to achieve the most successful possible outcome.
I can believe I can teach a "average" person from the street to take off and land a B777 within 4-5 hours in the sim. They will learn wrote what to do, and of course conduct an autoland (nil failures). They will have little to zero background KNOWLEDGE or EXPERIENCE to comprehend WHY they are doing what they are, but by pure definition one may argue that this person just took off and landed a B777. Give me another few weeks and I can run through some scenarios: normal and non-normal. In 2 months is this person an "airman"? Some believe yes.