PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - FAA seeks to raise Airline Pilot Standards
Old 6th Mar 2012, 08:04
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Denti
 
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No, just not being able to follow an approach and crashing into hillsides, First Air last year for example. Or within a month an Arctic Sunwest Charters twin otter.

And remember, although flying is much more important in canada than elsewhere, it is extremely thinly populated, in fact it has just above half the population of france, not to mention all of europe which is around 500 million against 34 million. In that light there is really no doubt that accidents per hour, airmiles, or population is not all that much different between them, and europe has used cadet pilots in their major airlines for the last 60+ years as the norm.

We had a few notable stalling accidents lately and yes, that is certainly a concern. Much of that is more a problem of training than anything else. I know of airlines that did the bare minimum of stall training and others that do it as integral part of their retraining every 6 months. Sure enough you do not hear any of the latter ones stalling either. Even if they employ MPL students as the norm and only take in outsiders after very thorough retraining in times of need.

As per the list above:

Colgan pilots stalled despite extensive instruction and GA time before flying an airliner. Three turkish airline pilots did the same despite very extensive military experience which is on this site usually seen as the possible training par none. Three AF pilots did the same, all of them with GA experience beside their main job. I can't comment on the other accidents as i haven't read their reports recently and do not remember how their pilot corps were set up, however flight time as sole quality measurement is rather doubtful if you see those three accidents alone. Thorough and indepth training however could have prevented all of those accidents and that is what we have to demand from regulators and airlines alike.
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