Basic training
As we all are aware there are hundreds of pilots with the frozen ATPL/IR plus MCC looking for their first airline job. The job adverts normally state 500 hours turbine etc.
My point is that in all other professions the student at the end of training has the necessary qualifications and experience to do the job .Look at the medical, dental, legal and accountancy professions. This does not seem to be the case in civil aviation where all the basic training up to IR is solely related to single pilot operations. At the end of this training there is an add-on course lasting 8 days called MCC. I would say that most students embarking on the JAA ATPL route aspire to be airline pilots and therefore necessarily will eventually be operating multi-pilot aeroplanes. Would it not therefore be more advantageous to be teaching and operating multi-pilot operations from a much earlier phase in the flight training. I am presently an ERJ145 simulator instructor but have done considerable MCC training. My experience of the MCC training (and I am sure many of you will have experienced this) is that it is a process of unlearning previously drilled single pilot habits. It is probably true to say that the vast majority of IR examiners and instructors except perhaps for simulator instructors have never flown for the airlines and have therefore never been in the real world.
My belief is that if this fundamental problem were to be addressed the ‘Catch 22' problem of what the flight schools turn out and you pay £30,000 - £50,000 or more to obtain and is not what the airlines want could be rectified.
As is the case with any learning process the first method you learn tends to be your preferred method. When you learn long division at school the first method is the method you prefer and when a subsequent teacher tries to show you a better method you reject it.
This is the case in airline pilot training today where we are all taught to be single pilot operators and then have to learn a new method of working as a team
In the days when your first airline job would have been on a DC-3 with a similar cockpit to a Seneca then the present system may have worked, Today the modern cockpit and method of operating in a multi-pilot operation has no resemblance to a single pilot Seneca so I would argue the system has to be changed.
I would guess that a tiny percentage of professional pilots operate single crew IFR so would it not be better to make the standard initial IR a multi pilot IR and a specialist course carried out if you require a single pilot IR.
Were the airlines consulted when JAR-FCL was drafted as regards what they wanted from a newly qualified pilot?