The Less experience - the less "Bad habits" you accrue. Discuss

[Tee Emm]

The latest Aviation Week & Space Technology has a letter to the editor; an extract from which says:

"You do not need 1500 hours to be an airline pilot. In fact, the less time you have the better because you have fewer bad habits to overcome. Many high-time pilots - both civil and military - arrive at the airlines with careless habits and attitudes that must be remedied."

That myth has been peddled for years. Let's forget for a moment the outrageous generalisations by the writer. But he echoes a point of view I have seen countless times on Pprune when it comes to the subject of why do airlines often prefer to hire low hour pilots into the second in command seat of a jet transport rather than draw from a pool of experienced candidates? Perhaps the most common theme used by recruiters is the assertion that experienced pilots carry with them bad habits into an airline. This begs the question what specifically are these dreadful habits that have the potential to cause death and destruction to airline passengers?

Is it a tendency from their early flying training on light singles to bounce on landing? Will they carry that over to landing an Airbus? Or how about the same pilot has a bad habit of speaking too fast on the radio? Or being a crop duster skilled in low flying, does it follow he will naturally be tempted to indulge in a bit of low flying in a 777 if he gets a job as an airline pilot?

Or maybe if he is a charter pilot used to unserviceable automatic pilots and thus skilled at hand flying in IMC, he will be tempted to hand fly his A380 in IMC at 40,000ft? Or how about if our airline candidate flew F18's doing deck landings on aircraft carriers, maybe he would bring him a bad habit of applying full power on touch-down and instinctively do the same on touch down in his 737.

Where does all this nonsense stop? All candidates joining an airline will usually undergo a type rating in a simulator. That applies to a 200 hour cadet as well as a 5000 hour ex military or general aviation operator. I have yet to hear of specific "bad habits" from their previous employment that have to be unlearned or "remedied" that would otherwise have the potential to cause an accident in an A320, 747, 737, Dash Eight or a B787.

For too long, this unfounded perceived fear of "bad habits" going right through an airline career despite hundreds of simulator check rides and line training, has been used as an excuse to avoid the hiring of experienced commercial and military pilots in favour of a 200 hour cadet with no experience outside of a flying school environment.

If the real reason behind hiring cadets direct from flying schools is cost cutting, then why don't the hiring agencies say so. But please don't put up the feeble excuse it saves the airline from spending time and money knocking out the bad habits allegedly inherent with experienced candidates.