Should Average Pilot Experience Levels Of Each Airline Be Public?

[peacekeeper]

I think it is in bad taste to make a tragedy like this fit to an ongoing argument about Cadets to prove a point. This tragedy had nothing to do with experience levels, it was affected by mental health and a policy that allows for a single person to be left on the flight deck. It could easily have been the Captain who did the same if he had been the one suffering from a very deep mental instability (remember the Jetblue Captain). The company I fly for changed the policy on toilet breaks immediately and I'm sure many others have as well. There will probably be tighter control on mental health checks both on annual medicals and during recruitment now and this again will address the direct problem that caused this incident.

As for experience levels, there is no doubt that having experience in the area of operation you fly is important. I have often thought that we do things the wrong way around in aviation. The procedural and automated world of airline flying is very clear and can be well trained in the simulator, flying older turbo props requires more hand flying and better raw data IFR skills, and instructing requires experience to pass onto a student. However the pay is in favour of the reverse order. A new pilot has to get experience in one of these areas or come from a military background, he/she will be inexperienced when they start and could likely have passengers onboard. The training environment of an airline is a good place to start in my opinion, once of course they have been through strict selection, a CAA approved training course and a thorough line training programme and passed to the companies standard. Then it comes down to trust in the airlines training programme.

I went through the instructor, turbo prop, Jet route and can speak from experience of flying with many cadets who all seem intelligent, well trained and willing to learn. I also fly with many experienced FO's who come from different backgrounds who are a vital part of keeping overall company experience levels high.