Much of aviation has adopted the "Just Culture" so, as you say, it's about looking at the causes and lessons to be learnt
Correct. It useful too keep in mind that reason for applying just culture is purely pragmatic: it helps us to learn from others' mistakes that would be swept under rug in punitive culture and so makes flying safer. It is not there to cater for someone's increased sensibility and is definitively not get-out-of-jail-free card.
I'm not entirely sure that the recent trend of recruiting inexperienced crew has disproved the need for experience or, to be more accurate, a balanced recruitment policy.
I am afraid current aviation policies (not just recruitment) will eventually end up in disaster and when it happens, there will be plenty of old hands whose battle cry "More experience in cockpit!" will be picked up by politicians. IMHO it would be wrong.
The myth experience=quality comes from general aviation. As it is usual with myths, it begins with something substantially true but eventually a bit of embellishment and misapplication here and there gives us something useless for all practical purposes yet considered to be holy writ (e.g. stalling when turning downwind). In general aviation, unfortunately, experience is often the only way of acquiring skills and knowledge. It is not so in structured training environments where there is ample opportunity to teach pilot everything he needs to know and verify whether he is able to apply the learnt but what is extremely important and often overlooked, even before the training starts, air force or airline have the opportunity to select those brightest, aptest and the most motivated to eventually fill the seats. I think shrinking the candidates' pool is that's the area that will hurt us most in the long term. Western airlines are more and more laying training costs on individuals while offering pretty unattractive T&C so those most suited to become a pilots will be far better off in some other walk of life. Whether those who beat financial besides training obstacles and get installed into front seats will be good enough remains to be seen.
Aircraft are so reliable now that they can mask many of the pilots failings and its only when the unexpected happens that that lack of experience coupled with inadequate training comes home to roost.
'Tis an old cliche that flying is 99% of boredom punctuated by 1% of sheer terror and pilots are paid for coping with that 1%. Problem with idea that lack of experience causes accidents is that very old hands have flown their aeroplanes into mountains or were unable to perform simple task such as: if ASI doesn't work, reject takeoff. Also some pretty new pilots coped with emergencies successfully. While experience does make a better pilot, it is not always so and it isn't only way of making a good pilot. When proverbial hits the fan, pilot quickly needs to know what happened, what he needs to to and to perform it as perfectly as possible. With todays aeroplanes most failures are now not once-in-a-lifetime but once-in-20-lifetimes events so one has to learn from others' experience. Capt Sullenberger was very inexperienced in A320 ditching, which didn't prevent him from pulling it successfully the very first time he made it.
The lack of RHS experience also puts great pressure on the LHS occupant who flies with them day in day out.
Again, it is competence, not experience and I'd say enthusiasm towards work and flying is better indicator of one's capability than hours in logbook.
It's interesting to note that one LCC is changing its recruitment policy from one of cadets only to a cross section of backgrounds.
Being jaded cynic, I'd suggest it's because they couldn't find enough bodies to fill the seats.
Of course I'm wrong. They are fully committed to safety and all their policies and actions reflect so.
Of course in the old days we had much more opportunity to handle aircraft manually but we also tended to stuff it up,every now and then, and crash. So they increased automation and safety systems to address this
With idea we won't get tired of constantly fling and so will be fresh to takeover when George packs up so we can work longer and weirder hours. Also I blame the unions of yesteryear for not redirecting the pay of F/Es that were made redundant to pilots - after all we are now doing their job when all the automatic systems niceties fall apart.
That was okish because we had a background in the forces or came through the self improver route so we had a base of experience to fall back on.
Peacetime forces pilot is very desirable and very rare post so forces can be picky and choose those best suited for the job. It is oft the quality of raw material, not the experience that makes the difference. As for the self improvers, while they are mixed lot I admit most of them are maintaining strict self-discipline while having the holy grail of airline seat in sight. There are some things applicable to Pawnee that are useful in 320, there are some that are not. As long as one can tell which is which, he'll be fine.
The way LCCs have used the cadet system has changed that so its a double whammy
Exactly. Cadet scheme is generic term, we have to be careful to avoid painting everything with same brush.
We can only hope that the politicking stops and they address it properly. A naive hope I fear.
I am afraid that politicians of today have only two modes: passivity and panic reaction and I can't tell which one is worse.