how valuable are older turboprop hours

[74Freight]

How useful is experience on an "older" turboprop (eg HS748, Shorts360, F27) towards getting a jet job?

I have seen quite a few lads come to us over the years with about 1000 hours instructing and after a year or two manually flying approaches to minima in bad weather after being up all night, go on to a jet job.

This seems to have slowed a lot recently, is this perhaps because
a) the chance of loosing all the automatics on eg an A320 is so remote as to make this experience irrelevant, or
b) so many low hours pilots, instead of following this route are paying for ratings plus time on type and are therefore more attractive to jet operators.

It is good to see companies like Thompsonfly and Flybe sponsoring cadets again but a lot of our chaps have applied to these and similar airlines and not even been called for assesment, they seem to prefer those straight out of training.
Any opinions?

[Luke SkyToddler]

Disagree ... I think the recruiting market is just fine.

I don't know what company you're at mate, but for example (according to rumour I hasten to add) about a dozen Jetstream 31 drivers from Eastern have handed in their notice in the last few weeks alone, because they're all off to Britannia / Thomson / Easyjet / Dragonair / Globespan etc.

One of the drivers who left my company recently, was told straight from the recruiting horse's mouth at Easyjet, that they like pilots from our little outfit because they have rock solid hand flying skills (unlike people who've gone straight onto fully automatic aircraft with 200 hours :{ )

I think if there are less people being taken on from the night freight / steam driven turboprop market it's due more to the relentless rise of CTC and the self sponsored type rating, and the obvious economic advantages that ensue for the airline.

[Wanabee,Gunnabee,Am]

From personal experience I have to agree with 74Freight.

I have over 1000 TP hours (20Tonnes +) and find that cadets are being favoured in most airlines. This is purely economical as the are cheap, often being paid £10K less than normal F/Os. Even Easyjet, who have not replied to me after filling in their application form on 3 seperate occasions over 2 years.

In a commercial world experience seems to count for nothing.

[74Freight]

Your experience is exactly what i have noticed recently, quite a few of our chaps have similar hours (1000hrs medium/heavy turbine) a lot with command hours.
I would hope that this would earn you the right to at least be called for assessment even if they then decided that you were the wrong person.
is the ready made F/O with rating+100hrs paid for on type the preferred candidate?

[Wanabee,Gunnabee,Am]

Quite right, I don't feel I have a right to a job, just that I feel that I have earned an opportunity.

I heard recently that M@narch had an incident with one of their "cadets" and a nose wheel landing. Also I heard that another charter operator is finding that extra line training is necessary for their cadets.

Like I said before experience no longer seems of any value.

[MJR]

I can concur with that too, recently heard from a very good source of a CTC cadet being binned during line training with a large well known charter company. Perhaps youth and training currency is not the be all and end all that recruiters might believe.

cheers

MJR