ATSB rubbish single pilot IFR experience when it comes to being an airline pilot.

[Centaurus]

ATSB have just published its incident report on a B717 that approached high and tight towards Runway 30 Alice Springs during which the stick shaker operated on two occasions. Report No. AO-2008-064 Incident date September 2008. Two years and six months to get the report out. Same old - same old.

As usual, ATSB do a well researched piece of work. But one wonders at one of the comments made therein, when explaining why the captain stuffed up. Apparently the captain some time earlier, needed more command hours to meet the minimum command time to qualify as a captain on the 717 and so he took extended leave to pick up single pilot command time on light twins.

Now in Australia, single pilot IFR on light twins is the normal route for pilots hoping to be ahead of the mob trying to get into a big airline (well, big by Australian standards, that is). From that, we assume it is considered high value experience and airlines prefer to recruit from that pool (apart from the low hour cadet policy now in getting up and going).

But the ATSB report seemed to infer that single pilot IFR command experience brings with it its own problems when it states:

"The PIC’s exposure to a significant period of single-pilot operations during the year prior to the incident had the potential to have adversely affected his ability to operate optimally in a multi-crew, high performance aircraft."

This flies into the face of every airline's recruiting policy in Australia for the past 50 years or more, where single pilot command flying on light twins was considered a highly favourable attribute to have when a pilot applies for an airline job. In other words decision making time in all weathers.

Bring on the MPL and the cadets. Seems they can be trained to operate optimally in large high performance transport jets as they have not been contaminated with useless command time on single pilot IFR ops. Well, just cast your mind back to some of the Asian, African and Middle East jet transport crashes where low hour first officers were involved, and think again.

What started off as a well written ATSB report on this 717 stick-shaker incident, is to my mind, shot to pieces by such an ill considered comment inferring the captain's single pilot (command) previous experience "had the potential to have adversely affected his ability to operate optimally in a multi crew high performance aircraft."
Hello? Hadn't he already flown as F/O on a 717 and been trained to operate optimally in a multi-crew high performance aircraft? That must also have included significant training in a simulator as well as line training.

In other words, previous command experience flying single pilot IFR doesn't mean a thing to a scribe in ATSB.

Nothing in the ATSB report about the crew doing heads down programming of the FMC at low altitude when they should have been looking outside instead of staring at flight directors on a sunny day.