IMHO anybody approving of such MPL or similar programs is simply adding a nail into the coffin of future safe operations.
Without wanting to go into details of why such training, and by the way a lot of today's training in general, is not adequate enough, I simply want to state here, that the flying skill of the FOs I flew with the last 5-10 years, has gradually deteriorated. Not the human quality, not the general aviation knowledge!
It's a simple observation, please take it as that.
Todays sops do not allow a gradual increase of flying skill. Too many restrictions for FOs, too stringent sops to execute other than the highest automated approaches and too many hidden (management) threats to skippers if something goes only slightly wrong, makes that any even slightly special conditions are handled by the skipper, almost every approach goes ILS down to 200 feet.
These FOs then go through upgrade in the same system. They come out as sops performing monkeys and within sometimes one year they run around the ops-centre as TRIs. Logically enough they continue to preach the same very restricted sops and propagate their extremely limited experience, admittedly with their extremely profound knowledge of the AOM and sops, to the newly admitted MPL cadets.
It's a vicious circle and no one wants to break it.
When something sad happens (i.e. AF 447), the involved are very rapidly counting out the standard of training. It was just the individual pilots that screwed up, even if the whole crew was involved. But the training is called as up to regulatory minimum and the airline, the regulator and in close cooperation the manufacturer wash each others hands ..... and together they go one step further in cutting cost and training.
It's a vicious circle and no one wants to break it.
If the older, mostly more experienced pilots start pointing at the deficits, there is a huge, well armed lobby (especially financially) to cry them down.
As skippers, it has been said before, we are more and more confronted with a pilot to our side who is not capable of replacing us. A simple incapacitation might be handled, the autopilot with the FMS and ATC will allow a safe landing. But if we are at 70N30W and confronted with difficult multiple system failures, the new generation FOs are more of a burden than a help, because of their lack of experience. I cannot let them fly at high altitude without AP (lack of skill), risk and damage assessment is a stranger to them, so they are mostly tasked to do the electronic checklists. Now we know how many traps are incorporated there, so we have to follow up very closely that they do not screw up . Again, I do not dare stating why, but it's an experienced observation.
To conclude I reiterate that it is not the human or intellectual quality, it simply the lack of training, time-wise and hours on the real thing. By the real thing I not only mean the final airliner, but the initial goat that had to be dominated, the first underpowered twin with EO and the hours in a aerobatic donkey!!
All this is fatally missing on the belts of today's aviators. And it shows.
Last edited by Gretchenfrage; 20th Nov 2012 at 02:42.