The Multi Crew Pilots Licence (MPL)

[PPRuNe Towers]

Last One? 18 years and 3 months - but no cadets on board.

They'd both done the hard yards and the performance in that flightdeck that night totally changed UK training. Checking really did become training for everyone - not just the cadets.

Rob

[haughtney1]

Jeez Rob, its hard to believe Kegworth was that long ago......

Wasn't the skipper an "old school chap" much in the same vain as you could find bashing around the Kimberly/bush in a C210?

[PPRuNe Towers]

Kegworth indeed mate.

I fear it appears we all seem to operate under the auspices of tombstone agencies. No root and branch change until we pilots kill people on an industrial scale.

Rob

[wrongwayaround]

Let me get this straight,

Alteon can train and issue a MPL with only simulator training. Which would mean graduates get this MPL with never stepping in an aircraft?

In the future, will an airlines entry requirements be

1) MPL


If this is true... I think it's a concern.

[Capn Bloggs]

Cunning,

I was keeping the "skygods" term for those aces in fog land. Geez they must be good. But then, their FOs only have 200hrs so it can't be all that difficult.

Rob,

No root and branch change until we pilots kill people on an industrial scale.

That's generally because current methods/policies have been tried and proven, and aren't not knee-jerk reactions to, eg a short-term pilot crisis.

As has been pointed out, the USA and Aust don't need this fast-track stuff. Give me a 2000hr Bras FO any day. WHEN the day comes when there are NO FOs AT ALL, then perhaps we'll start lowering our standards. I see no reason to do that just yet.

[PPRuNe Towers]

Question for you Bloggs,

Are they actually standards though? Or entirely the result of the local market? You'll find exactly the same comments as yours running through Canadian forums on PPRuNe and AvCanada. Brit/Euro tool using cultures transposed to giant ultra low population continents.

Would these threads be runnning on this forum if the market wasn't changing fairly radically in OZ and following the European/US experience?
For many reasons, at some point airline managers simply create a system that fills their seats with the mix of right seaters they think they want. Boeing Alteon is just a symptom but as it is being openly marketed it's the one you guys notice.

The actual significant movement happened more than 50 years ago and the new licence ramps up the process to use the invisible fleet of airline owned level D sims sitting already amortised and paid for around the world. Boeing are just looking for a minor piece of the action with copycat smaller airlines and privateers.

While most of you may not agree with me you are noticing changes and kicking off these threads - not me. Change, change you are all now noticing is getting your attention and the forum has consistently reflected that in recent years.

Many of you know that you share the sky with Lufthansa cadets, now senior captains and effos who were flying Bonanzas in Arizona before you did your first cross country and Cheyennes long before your first pastoral job. I think the only thing you can point to in their record is, err, a wet runway overrun accident.

The new licence isn't a kneejerk thing flung out as a shock measure. It's been built on the back of the flying records of thousands of cadets and includes those who have now been retired for more than twenty years. They worked a full airline career of 30 plus years and you didn't even notice.

Like I said earlier, it's different, that's all just different.

All said and done though our respective views are immaterial - you are watching the market in action. It's a juggernaut and other than a major war can you see any significant market modifier to change what you are all noticing?

Rob

[redsnail]

G'day Rob,

Just a tad curious. Some time ago you had a campaign going about the low houred guys self funding a eg 737 rating and paying for hours. From memory you were against it saying that you'd rather have an FO next to you that had done some time instructing and flogging around the skies in a turboprop.

Now you appear to be talking in favour of the MPL? I realise that the two are slightly different in that one person has been specifically trained for that airline's ops and one's just forked out a lot of cash. However, you could say that both pilots are still low houred. Is it the experience or the training that makes or breaks the deal?



I believe many airlines that historically had cadets tended to farm them out to their t/prop divisions before bringing them back to the jets. I can't see any problem with that concept. My personal opinion is that going straight onto a jet means the cadet does miss out on some experience (and fun). Is it relevant? Who knows? Surely any exposure to weather and operational difficulties and challenges is better than none? Again, that is my own opinion.

Simulators are a great tool. I recently did my London City training in a sim. However, while the training was useful and prepared me reasonably well it certainly didn't compare to doing the real approach.

What isn't mentioned often and many European wannabes don't realise this is that the CAA are quite strict about the number of low houred pilots versus experienced crews in any given company.

So, while the MPL will apparently fill a gap I feel that there'll still be a need to hire experienced crews. Our company is about to experiment with cadets. They'll be getting quite specific add on training that an "ordinary" low hour pilot wouldn't receive. (Note, these cadets aren't being paid to train, they have to find a rather large some of money to do this).

[Jet_A_Knight]

Many of you know that you share the sky with Lufthansa cadets, now senior captains and effos who were flying Bonanzas in Arizona before you did your first cross country and Cheyennes long before your first pastoral job.

Alteon aren't saying anything about the MPL pilots going ANYWHERE near a Cheyenne.

[YesTAM]

With the greatest of respect, and with my corporate strategy hat on, the MPL, as I understand it, is a method for increasing corporate control over a company's pilot workforce and thereby reducing terms and conditions, thus making it very desirable. It's about lowering the market value of pilots, thats all.

As I understand it, the MPL is specific to an aircraft type and configuration, and specific to a company. What that means is that if you leave the company, you effectively have no licence anymore, and thus sharply reduced bargaining power.

Of course someone else can hire you, but then they have to "convert" you to their standard of MPL.

In other words, you are locked into your employer and change is very difficult because your skills are not easily transferable....or at least thats how I understand it.

[cunninglinguist]

This is my take on the MPL, in Australia might I add.

Currently there is no shortage of guys/gals with a good GA background, plenty of multi command some on T/Props.

GoD et al have seen the MPL as a great way to get pilots for the right seat, pay them all and know that they will be going nowhere in a hurry ( to quote Jimmy ) as with little or no command time and a handful of FO hours on a jet, the O/S boys wont exactly be beating a path to their doors.
They will be moulded into a model ( insert airline name here ) pilot and continually reminded how lucky they are they did'nt sit out at maningrida for 2years, and will probably be quite happy to sit there for 6,7,8,10 years unlike the wave of experienced drivers currently gracing most right seats in QF,JQ,VB.

The poor bugger in the left seat is the one that will suffer as he operates single pilot IFR, probably at times he does'nt really want to ( after a DN return, back of clock, crap wx in ML, you know swiss cheese ).
Cant speak for the 73 clan, but can tell you that enough GA pilots struggle ( initially, 6-12 months ) to come to terms with the Bus, partly because of the rooting around that is required at the business end of the trip, thanks to Dick and QF ( airspace and speed restrictions ).

We don't need an MPL in Oz at the moment, but will probably get it, and for all the wrong reasons :hmm

As an aside, I would be interested to know if the likes of Lufthansa were putting MPL types with a captain that was 2 years ago bashing around in a metro ( that is NOT a dig at anyone here ) and 2-3 years before that was signing up at his/her local flying school for TIF.

Stats are great, you can make them do or say whatever you want ( ask Bracks )

[PPRuNe Towers]

You are correct Yestam and the silver tongued polyglot - and that's the reason why the Boeing Alteon stuff is a chest beating sideshow - a pointless execise unless you are joining a national flag carrier or legacy company for life. Within those carriers this is something already well established for a couple of pilot generations. Gann's 'tyranny of the numbers,' the seniority list ensures stability whatever the mutterings. The actuaries, analysts and insurers get positively moist over this and reward this proven, safe progress over the decades. And it is that group, not the authorities, that make these cadet schemes possible.

As you are finally realising - the law, past practice and morality is not restrictive in putting sub 500 hour people on the flight deck - it is actually the insurers who both allow it and constrain the mix, the proportion of them at any one time. The market, not the national authority, is in control. Even as a PPL it is the insurance industry that actually controls what you can own and fly in the States - not the FAA.

Here in the UK we are getting the first whispers that insurers are asking to look at rosters very seriously at at least one very significant company. Rosters and flight time schemes signed off by our CAA as acceptable would appear to be causing them some concern.

However, of more significant concern to us at the Towers are the similar but far more worrying changes for engineers in Europe. Your licence is locked into the company not your pocket. The tombstone agencies are passive in the face of economic pressures from operators and purely reactive to safety issues. Searching on the word 'Chirps,' the UK confidential reporting system, will lead you to the reports on commercial pressure faced by engineering staff. It makes dire reading.

As to Reddo, she's not daft. She already knows my idea of a top effo is one who's turbopropped two euro winters and a full year in the Canadian Maritimes. But I never got to make the choice in airline service, then again, neither did the poors sods stuck next to me.

Rob

[desmotronic]

It amazes me how pilots lament the spiralling T&C's on the one hand and yet support the practice of lowering professional standards for new entrants. It's obvious the latter has a direct causal relationship with the former.

[Erin Brockovich]

Yes it does. The practice of lowering experience minimums and potentially professional standards is just a symptom of the industry’s initial reaction to the problem. Just not the ideal one – Yet.

Awol57, I don’t think anyone on the pilot shortage thread was implying that a 250hr MPL in the RHS of a jet (possibly carrying your family & friends) was an ‘excellent thing’. 250hrs and thrown straight into a Baron IFR at night, is not an excellent thing.

There is no substitute for real experience. Whether it was gained by yourself or watching others deal with real situations on the line as part of a crew. I just don’t think the RHS of a jet is the place to learn from scratch.

I’m also pretty sure that most of us realise that training someone to fly a modern jet requires good relevant training as opposed to total experience. Say by the proposed MPL scheme? Here is the important point. That might work with all things going well – but what happens when it doesn’t. This has been brought up a few times now and no one from the pro MPL brigade has given a straight answer. The fact that ‘it has been done over here for years’ is not what I’m after. This is Australia – few radars, navaids, support etc. Generally if the sh$t hits the fan you are by yourself with not many options.

What sets us apart from other professionals is our day to day responsibility and duty of care. The fact that a few minor oversights can lead into a pretty serious situation very quickly. If anyone honestly thinks someone with a bare MPL can safely do their job just as effectively in all situations then we all don’t deserve the money! The shareholders win, and then travel by train.

The reason some of us are getting a little excited is that eventually the shortage will improve T&Cs. The minimums can only drop so far. The MPL is still a pipe dream and Alteon can’t even pump out the demand for VB crew at the moment.

[Jet_A_Knight]

Putting these kind of pilots into the system only erodes the safety margin that automation and the quality of modern transport aircraft have brought to us; a bit like driving faster in wet weather because the car has ABS.
Or ducking under during a bad wx circling approach because 'there's 300ft terrain clearance to play with'

[KRUSTY 34]

Windows has been known to Crash!

[Pollution IV]

The MPL sets a new low in both professional aviation standards and in responsible legislation.
The justification for its implication is specious indeed… more demand for air travel means more pilots required – rather than making the career more attractive, the powers that be simply look to a short-cut, short-sighted cost effective solution. They may argue that the industry is expanding too rapidly to afford the traditional methods of growing an airline pilot, however, what efforts are being focused on other aviation sector necessities ie. ATC, LAMEs etc – none that I can see. Are they saying to the ATC and aviation maintenance industrial bodies that they must also reduce their training timetables and adopt a scheme similar to MPL? If not, then why not? I’m not saying they should be - quite the opposite. I’m just trying to provide some perspective on how ridiculous and unsubstantiated the requirement for MPL is. Does it make sense to reduce the training and expertise for the people at the sharp end of an industry that is quite unforgiving of error? Airspace/air route volumes and facilities at nearly all major airfields in the world are already near maximum capacity. Throwing even more acft into the mix with lesser trained, less experienced crews is simply a recipe for disaster. How any intelligent person could endorse this process is truly astounding. Aren’t the politicians and Department Heads who are pushing this act through parliament frequent fliers? I wonder who they would choose to do their next medical procedure, legal counsel or electrical wiring…the experienced professional who graduated from a reputable school/college and earned his stripes the old fashioned way, or someone who is ostensibly doing one third of the tried and proven training/apprenticeship for his profession – surely there’s no difference to worry about there? It angers me that a high profile profession like piloting can be steamrolled like this on the basis of pandering to corporate greed.

The snow job that the public are being fed is also quite impressive….

“Because training is focused on airline discipline and operations every training lesson is relevant, minimizing the amount of negative training – the learning and unlearning inherent in the traditional training path.”

The airline discipline they speak of is merely a veneer that facilitates the efficient interaction of crews who have probably never met before the flt. SOPs work well in normal ops and in simple emergency scenarios. Once a complex or compounding emergency eventuates or a time critical problem rears it ugly head (eg Sioux city DC10, Winnipeg and Azores fuel starvation/glide incidents, 4 eng flameout due volcanic ash, A300 ldg Baghdad after SAM hit, loss of air data/IRU info etc), the usefulness of airline SOPs reaches its limit. Prior experience then kicks in to save the day and that fallback safety net is exactly what they will eradicate through MPL. Almost anyone can be trained to fly a modern jet acft under benign circumstances, (they even sent a dog and a monkey into space before the astronauts), but it doesn’t mean that they are truly qualified to do the job.

Technology cannot replace the need for good piloting experience, nor can the simulator be used to completely replace actual real world flying. It is a great skills and specific mission trainer but it lacks the realistic difficulty, distractions and confusion that is evident in virtually all real life emergencies.

“The MPL training program is similar to the training program the military uses for their pilots;”

False. Military pilots are a highly screened group who are given 230 hrs of actual flying in 2 different acft types (RAAF uses CT4 piston and PC9 turboprop) at a cost of approx $2 mill AUD. Pass rate is traditionally between 60-70%. They are then sent to an operational conversion (eg C130 Hercules) where they first experience around 80 hrs simulator training over 4 mths. This training is interspersed with actual acft flying and the final assessment (IRT) is done in the sim and the acft to ensure the student is competent in handling real world flying under duress. Only then is he/she let loose in the RHS and only with experienced trng Capts for the first few mths. Their performance throughout their Coplt time is closely and continuously monitored in a squadron environment where problems can be quickly detected and rectified. All of this trng is delivered by highly type experienced Flying Instructors who have themselves completed a 4 mth exhaustive course on Flying Instruction and ~ 2 yrs of instructing at the Flying schools. The Instructors’ performance is also annually reviewed by a separate external agency (CFS) to ensure standards are maintained. To say that the MPL resembles this in any way is ludicrous.

The airline trng system (and in turn safety of operation) relies on the fact that new F/Os have either had lots of previous flying experience, or in the traditional cadet scheme, have spent many years watching how its done from the middle seat as an S/O. Some airlines which have a far more direct process for cadet trng to the RHS, have strict limits on their ops. In fact, my airline regs limit them to 1000’ cloudbase and 10kts x-wind and I can tell you that the average Line Capt is quite relieved about that. Our cadet scheme affords the guys 230hrs of actual flying training and around 6 mths of simulator trng on type. At the end of all this they are only base level competent to fly a circuit or conduct an IAP under normal conds. The airline sim trng system has severe limitations (time and money) and will always be inadequate for trng abinitio students.

If MPL does not represent a degradation in safety and standards, then why don’t they just modify the requirements for an ATPL, or simply drop the requirements for qualification as an F/O to CPL standard? Actually upon further consideration, I’m sure MPL is a great idea…as long as it’s only used to train cruise S/Os – this is all its good for.
MPL is a disaster for this industry and it’s paying passengers deserve better.

[bushy]

Two million???

If they cannot treach someone to fly a PC9 for less than two million I have to wonder about the competence of the organisation.

[OzExpat]

So are the proponents of this system saying that insurance companies will take over as the effective regulator? Heaven help us all. I guess it's okay in countries that also have fairly safe and fairly efficient long distance bus and train networks, but what about countries in the developing world that have none of those fall-back positions?

They will all want to grab onto the MPL.

Rob, has any of that 50 years of experience included countries in the developing world?

[GaryGnu]

Command Status

Wrongwayround,

How will MPL holders be able to get command status on Air Transport aircraft?

The legislative changes that allow the MPL also alter the ATPL experience requirements such that the 250 command hours (that in practice is really 100hrs PIC and 150 hours ICUS) is replaced by 500hrs ICUS for an MPL holder.

In effect the MPL holder (which includes a type rating) gets a job with a carrier that has ICUS provisions for when the F/O is the handling pilot. The MPL holder then carries out their job so that they gain 500 hours ICUS and 1500 hrs Aeronautical Experience (which is now gained on a 1 for 1 basis for co-pilot time) and they have an ATPL.

Whether they have command criteria depends on the airline but they certainly have the ATPL!

All this is achieved with a minimum of 10hrs total command time in aeroplanes(or less with CASA approval).

I understand the philosophy of the MPL. THe question I have is whether the reduced experience of actual flight hours and command time that an MPL holder has is mitigated by the altered training methods utilising Threat and Error Management (TEM) and good simulators.

[Centaurus]

In effect the MPL holder (which includes a type rating) gets a job with a carrier that has ICUS provisions for when the F/O is the handling pilot.

The danger here is that MPL pilots will quickly start to log ICUS merely because the captain lets them handle the flying from the RH seat. This then gives a false indication of real in command under supervision. There is no shame in being a first officer as far as logging of copilot hours is concerned - although some seem to think so. My view is that before MPL pilots are permitted to legally log ICUS they should have done a minimum of 2000 hours logging as copilot time in their log books. It is absurb to have an MPL pilot logging ICUS soon after he gets a job in the RH seat when in fact he is still learning on the job to be a fully competent copilot.