Spot on Mr Hat
 

Mr Donohue is not the Chief pilot but the 2IC of the Airline and as far as his ability to represent the airline on flight safety matters, if you read his biography (just Google him), he holds the rare distinction of being the only non-pilot to hold the position of Senior Vice President Flight Operations (and On-Board Services) for United Airlines. So I suggest the Herald Sun brush up on their facts. united.com - Press release detail

Still, 2 pages? Really! Even if Senator H. can't control his aspirations as an amatuer comedian , it is a fairly high level forum and it is a serious (deadly) subject.

Mr Hat

There is no link to last Friday's hearing, they are simply not available but if you have a hunt around on the web broadcasting area of the aph website you will find a number and email you can use to obtain (purchase I think) a copy.

Certainly would be worth a few dollars I think.

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The Kelpie

The transcripts are sent to the parties concerned to check for errors so they would eventually be available on the Senate website.

I'm surprised that Borghetti hasn't learnt the lessons from Dixon that you need to have the pollies on side if you want favourable considerations for your business at some point in the future.

The Kelpie, I think we are in broad agreement but where we differ is that I don't think there will be an overabundance of people wanting to be airline pilots in the future for all the reasons that you and others have posted.

Nor do I think it is a good thing for young aspirants to go off and get a mountain of debt. I really think that the airline cadet pilot scheme as offered by the better overseas airlines (or the original QANTAS scheme) is preferable where there is a shortage of applicants.

Centaurus, yes my comments were a generalisation and you have far more experience and knowledge of the airline industry than I but my comments were based on a conversation I had with a senior QANTAS C & T captain. He was explaining the reason why QANTAS recruited pilots with lower experience levels than other Australian airlines.

PLovett

I think we are on the same page.

I am sure that you will find that if the airlines are required to fund cadetships then these arrangements will become a thing of the past in Australia.

All the 'spin' presented to the inquiry so far has focussed on how cadets produce a better product than the GA route and that they are 'safer' or at least as safe. If the Senate Inquiry endorses the cadet route subject to strict rules, including that the airline must run courses in house, sponsor all but say 50k and take the risk on training outcome then I am sure that we will soon see a u-turn on this stance.

As it stands Cadets are taking a huge risk, either they do not realise this which suggests that they do not have the required maturity to operate an aircraft ,or, if they are aware that they have an attitude to risk taking that has no place in a flight deck.

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The Kelpie

Just out of interest what was the background of the crew member responsible for taking the 747 cross country in BKK?

Also, as an aside, it's one thing to put a green cadet in the back of a widebody for four or five+ years as Qantas has in the past but this should be clearly seperated from the RHS on an A320 in domestic ops. Fact is you may half learn some simple procedures in a few hundred hours but you could never gain the depth or experience you get from the military or GA. Fact.

Centaurus, I have nothing but the highest regard for your experience and willingness to continue to share your wealth of knowledge with the community. You may however - as was the case a while ago with your input into the discussion regarding the use of modern Multi-Scan WX radar systems - wish to reconsider the examples you use to illustrate the point you're putting across. On many modern airliner equipped with carbon brakes, the recommended taxi method - in fact the only practical way to manage the residual thrust - is to allow the aircraft to accelerate up to 30 knots (where congestion is not a factor) - and then using A SINGLE application of the brakes to slow it down to about 10 knots, before allowing idle thrust acceleration up to 30 knots again -and so on.
The idle thrust on the GE 90-115B that I fly is simply too high, particularly in a light aircraft to "ride the brakes" to maintain what you would traditionally call a "normal" and steady taxi speed.

Serious Question:

How much duty time do Airline Companies give to pilots to prepare Safety reports?

Kelpie - answer is nil, naught, zip, none!

.....same for FO's, SO's & even CC.....half the time you're expected to bugger around with third world company remote access sites to even download the forms!

The management theory is simple - without inputs the SMS and the regulatory reporting regime is arrested......so therefore the concept is to make it as difficult as possible for crew to report.

...exception is of course unless embattled airline has done a deal with 60 mins for a puff piece to deflect the hard questions, in which case the answer is "all the time and whatever support that you need."

As I said before if the good Senator's Bill gets up - the key will be WHO will manage and respond......aviation's version of ICAC with an iPhone/iPad incident reporting app seems like a good idea to me!

Looking forward to the 19th.......!!

AT :E

PS: Info from CC - The Orange Emperor and his Jester were again seen well dug in enjoying P class onboard a 380 headed for SIN ......obviously the JQ 330 service & comfort is not quite to their liking!

Airtags

Hmmmmm a particularly relevant fact for the inquiry I think!!

Is the recall on Saturday 19th March??

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The Kelpie

Good point. The last thing a pilot feels like doing after a 12 hour day is spending 20 mins of his or her own time filling out a seemingly minor system improvement form for something that happened ten hours ago, yet its this sort of info that builds the big picture for the safety people. Should be easy and done in work time, ie by filling out a pdf in the EFB during cruise and it sends with the EFB update.

Yet if you look at the advertisements for RFDS pilots and the Global Express corporate pilots, their flying experience requirements far exceed those of Qantas intakes.

There is something not quite right when these general aviation pilots with such solid command experience under their belts, are metaphorically laughed out of the Qantas interview room in favour of an Oxford Air Training cadet who has barely flown more than 150 miles radius from his own flying school and most of that time with the comfort of an instructor to look after him.

Since when has Qantas favored them for direct entry? As far as I know they would still need to go and build hours somewhere like anyone else.

Cadets are a different matter but as already stated they are only a relatively small % of recruits, who are assessed differently to your normal graduate from Swinburne/Oxford.

Either way the Qants recruit ends up as a S/O for a number of years. Let's not confuse this process with the Jetstar Cadetship system that IS as you stated above!

It is not that Qantas PREFERS lower experience but because of the S/O situation they can accept lower hours.:8

25/02/11 Hearing
 

Here it is finally!http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate...tee/S13559.pdf

Oh dear Oh dear Oh Dear

I think you have some explaining to do Bruce

....and you mr Rindfleish. You are supposed to be a chief pilot and you don't seem to know that the absolute minimum hours for a cpl is 150.

How can you say that your checked to line cadets have 300 hours and then say most of this is in the A320?? Do Oxford cadets do their cpl and instrument rating in the Airbus? It's the only possible explanation for your statement.

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The Kelpie

How many hours do they have on their first flight in an A320? I think the senators should be made aware of what they start line training with not how many hours they have at the end of line training.

As far as I know you still have pax on board when you are line training and still do the takeoffs and landings. I know I did on the 737 on my first of 60 odd sectors of line training. (60 something was the minimum number of sectors that you complete line training in at the time I went through) I'm sure if they said the first sector they operated as crew they had 200 hours of actual time in the aircraft on their first flight then the senators might be a little shocked.

SNAFU

You are spot on. I know a senator that may be interested. Drop him a quick email, I am sure he will be interested.

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The Kelpie

Just saw an advert for the 7.30 Report. A feature all about the QF pilots dispute on. Tonight (Tuesday 8March 1930 ABC1)
Let's hope it's done well.

Quote of the day.


CLASSIC!!!!