SIA and premature command promotions?

[RetiredTooEarly]

Possibly only third hand rumours so in no way am I suggesting it is true but ..........

From a couple of mates still flying with them, there appears to be some concern that with the loss of the vast majority of expatriate Captains, there is a rush by management to promote many inexperienced and somewhat junior First Officers into the left hand seat!

This is often sour grapes from those Skippers who had to "move on" but maybe someone can clarify this thanks?

[etops777]

Not true! Presently it is about 11-12 years to command!

[wonderland]

Total hog wash.

[Stallone]

haha, what rubbish rumour

12yrs for local guys

[etops777]

haha, what rubbish rumour

12yrs for local guys

Stallone

Do you work for the airline? Don't think so..

[Eyes only]

Spending a career as an FO on the 744 and A380 an SQ FO would be lucky to average one pilot flying sector a month over 12 years.

To expect any person to be able to handle an aircraft to certified limits, with degraded systems, and poor conditions with this level of inexperience is a recipe for disaster.

Despite logging thousands of hours in the cruise, they would be lucky to have hand flown the aircraft for 3 hours over a dozen years.

[JammedStab]

Don't they have a bunch of short/medium haul flights on heavily travelled routed in the local area. Maybe Jakarta, HKG, etc for the big planes as well. Some companies do.

Do the new guys start out on the smaller planes and then move up or straight onto the ULH aircraft sometimes.

[parabellum]

An FO on the B747-400 freighter should do better than 1 sector a month. Due to high ZFW, common in freight ops. most of the sectors are nine hours or less, average three trips per month should yield between three and six sectors a month.


No idea about the A380. In the days of the A310 an FO could build hours and handling sectors quite fast.

[Weary traveller]

Interesting reading above. What's SQ policy of continuing approaches after advisement from tower of microbursts? SQ was the 'only' aircraft brave (?) enough to attempt an approach into VHHH this morning in the aftermath of a T8. Was advised twice by TWR of microbursts whilst on the ILS. Continued the approach anyway until he experienced the bleeding obvious. Been a while since I've heard such an agitated voice on the radio when he advised tower of the missed approach.

[Veruka Salt]

Weary,

Not wanting to contribute to the criticism of SQ here, but I too have to question why anyone would even attempt an approach with a MINUS 50 kt microburst alert on the ATIS. I watched in amazement as SQ1 shot their approach on Flightradar24, particularly with CX/KA having cancelled all ops.

VS

[wisecaptain]

Well I remember a time when an SQ f/o doing command ck on a 2 eng varient they operate asked me what I would do in the situation he was given in a penultimate command check ride........after take off eng low oil pressure leading to QRH eng shut down. Then other eng Fire warning so followed QRH = Eng shut down. What would you do? Try Eng relight on Oil pressure eng asap !!!!!
His response and subsequent Fail...............glide to available airfield. 10 yrs in long haul means diddly squat if your not trained properly by your airline !!!!!!:mad: