First Officer Licence
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First Officer Licence
Read today that Canada will accept 250 Hr Multi Crew Licence courses with 750 hrs of ground school.
Any one else think this is madness?
Personally I don`t think the way to avoid a shortage of pilots is to compromise on training and air experience. Hate to say it but I think the USA has it right on this one.
Any one else think this is madness?
Personally I don`t think the way to avoid a shortage of pilots is to compromise on training and air experience. Hate to say it but I think the USA has it right on this one.
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No - there is a shortage...it's in experienced Captains at charter outfits. There are, however, more than enough pilots throughout the country to fill all the positions should everyone have the required experience. With that in mind, this MPL will not help the situation, but rather will cause insurance companies to limit jobs further, making the situation worse down the road.
As for a 750 hour ground school; I can't even stay awake through a 60 hour initial - and I'm the one teaching it never mind a 750 hour course!
As for a 750 hour ground school; I can't even stay awake through a 60 hour initial - and I'm the one teaching it never mind a 750 hour course!
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What you people fail to understand is that the reason there are so many accident prone pilots in commercial aviation is due to the old school method of issuing pilot licenses to people that were not properly educated.
Before these new licensing rules were figured out the training industry only churned out a flood of new pilots who were ignorant of how to safely fly an airplane because they could be almost illiterate and still be given a commercial pilot license. The only criteria required was they could read and write and had been taught how to manually operate the machine well enough to demonstrate they could get it in the air and back down on the ground without wrecking it.
Fortunately the regulator now has people in positions of power who have figured out the training system they had in place generation after generation had bee focused on the wrong thing......teaching semi illiterate people to manually control an airplane has resulted in an unacceptable high accident rate.
So in my opinion the new requirements are a step in the right direction, sadly their ground school requirement of only 750 hours is way to low.
What is really needed is schooling to at least a Masters Degree in aviation but preferably a Doctorate of Aviation would finally solve this flood of inept pilots that we see in the market place today.
It would be a win, win for everybody with the new focus on ground school and less flying we would have less green house gases and a cleaner planet for our children to procreate in and thus supply more worker bees for the regulator to expand bigger and bigger until we finally have heaven on earth.....no more waiting for the second coming of Christ.
Then not only would we have safety in aviation but the pay would go up to the point pilots would not have to rely on food stamps to eat.
Before these new licensing rules were figured out the training industry only churned out a flood of new pilots who were ignorant of how to safely fly an airplane because they could be almost illiterate and still be given a commercial pilot license. The only criteria required was they could read and write and had been taught how to manually operate the machine well enough to demonstrate they could get it in the air and back down on the ground without wrecking it.
Fortunately the regulator now has people in positions of power who have figured out the training system they had in place generation after generation had bee focused on the wrong thing......teaching semi illiterate people to manually control an airplane has resulted in an unacceptable high accident rate.
So in my opinion the new requirements are a step in the right direction, sadly their ground school requirement of only 750 hours is way to low.
What is really needed is schooling to at least a Masters Degree in aviation but preferably a Doctorate of Aviation would finally solve this flood of inept pilots that we see in the market place today.
It would be a win, win for everybody with the new focus on ground school and less flying we would have less green house gases and a cleaner planet for our children to procreate in and thus supply more worker bees for the regulator to expand bigger and bigger until we finally have heaven on earth.....no more waiting for the second coming of Christ.
Then not only would we have safety in aviation but the pay would go up to the point pilots would not have to rely on food stamps to eat.
Last edited by Chuck Ellsworth; 24th Feb 2014 at 16:50.
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Fortunately, no MPL is ever likely to be issued to any Canadian pilots.
This licence is airline specific and is an airline sponsored program. The licence will cost the sponsoring airline $300,000 plus per candidate and will be worthless to the holder the day his airline lays him/her off.
What airline in Canada is going to jump on this opportunity?
What student pilot is going to sign a training bond for that kind of money?
Yes. This approach may work for an Air Force but an Air Force is a not-for-profit non-competitive proposition and most governments don't understand private sector competition or the value of money.
Transport Canada may have already issued some MPLs, but I think you'll find they were to foreign airline sponsored students.
...I rest my case.
Willie
P.S. sounds like I better sign up for some continuing education courses.
This licence is airline specific and is an airline sponsored program. The licence will cost the sponsoring airline $300,000 plus per candidate and will be worthless to the holder the day his airline lays him/her off.
What airline in Canada is going to jump on this opportunity?
What student pilot is going to sign a training bond for that kind of money?
Yes. This approach may work for an Air Force but an Air Force is a not-for-profit non-competitive proposition and most governments don't understand private sector competition or the value of money.
Transport Canada may have already issued some MPLs, but I think you'll find they were to foreign airline sponsored students.
...I rest my case.
Willie
P.S. sounds like I better sign up for some continuing education courses.
Last edited by Willie Everlearn; 24th Feb 2014 at 19:10.
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P.S. sounds like I better sign up for some continuing education courses.
My post was not about the MPL......which we both understand....it was meant to get the young-uns thinking.
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Chuck,
At the risk of finding out that your initial post was the pure sarcasm I hope it was and I'm being led down a garden path, may I interject to say that the pilots being produced by the colleges are a far more professional than I was when I had a newly minted license 14 years ago. Even those from the "pay-as-you-go" flight schools seem to have a wider understanding of aviation. However, should we move to a more "theoretical" based program than we have now, I fear we may lose some of those critical flying skills that those of us who are less educated (I am, after all, just a high school grad only getting around to doing his Bachelors degree) learned through trial and error.
If I may digress on a, semi-related, story. My (uneducated) uncle is a world-renowned expert in ornithology having a specific interest in owls. He never went to school for it; he just showed up back in the early 50's, showed some promise and 30 years later was head of conservation in for a region in Ontario, being asked to attend conferences around the world as a keynote speaker and setting up many an airports bird control program. Then one day a "fresh face" bureaucrat became his boss. A highly educated gentleman, it came much to his surprise that my uncle did not have a similarly fancy looking piece of paper hanging from his wall. He was a marked man from there on in. Five years later they gave my uncles' position to a 28 year old with a Masters Degree - downsizing and cost cutting they said.
Now, this young man had all the theory and education in the world behind him. He spent a lot more time than 750 hours in a classroom, but by god he had never spent so much as a minute with an actual bird (living at least). He had been told how hold your arm so an owl could land on it, but he had never had to overcome the instinctive fear of seeing a full-sized snowy owl or Gyr-Peregrine descend upon him, stopping at the last minute to land on a piece of flesh attached to him. He had never felt the rush of air on his face from a 47 inch wingspan.
This young man, much to his credit, worked through these issues and is well on the way to becoming himself a world-renowned expert. However, it had to come at the expense of real-world knowledge and experience.
Theory, in of itself, is a great tool. But I can read for years about hand-spinning a prop. Chances are though, I'd probably lose my arm on the first attempt were it not for that old, uneducated pilot driving his bare hand against the back of my head because I forgot that one little sentence that told me to "...place my hand on the front of the blade, don't grab it. "
However, I hope that this was all in vain and I have merely found a way to move 30 minutes closer to my next report time. Besides, Willie is probably right - no airline in Canada will pay the amount of money needed to get an MPL on the line...that is, unless AC or WJ get bought out by a Chinese company and we end up with 35 year bonds, having to pay for depreciation of the aircraft if we break said bond.
At the risk of finding out that your initial post was the pure sarcasm I hope it was and I'm being led down a garden path, may I interject to say that the pilots being produced by the colleges are a far more professional than I was when I had a newly minted license 14 years ago. Even those from the "pay-as-you-go" flight schools seem to have a wider understanding of aviation. However, should we move to a more "theoretical" based program than we have now, I fear we may lose some of those critical flying skills that those of us who are less educated (I am, after all, just a high school grad only getting around to doing his Bachelors degree) learned through trial and error.
If I may digress on a, semi-related, story. My (uneducated) uncle is a world-renowned expert in ornithology having a specific interest in owls. He never went to school for it; he just showed up back in the early 50's, showed some promise and 30 years later was head of conservation in for a region in Ontario, being asked to attend conferences around the world as a keynote speaker and setting up many an airports bird control program. Then one day a "fresh face" bureaucrat became his boss. A highly educated gentleman, it came much to his surprise that my uncle did not have a similarly fancy looking piece of paper hanging from his wall. He was a marked man from there on in. Five years later they gave my uncles' position to a 28 year old with a Masters Degree - downsizing and cost cutting they said.
Now, this young man had all the theory and education in the world behind him. He spent a lot more time than 750 hours in a classroom, but by god he had never spent so much as a minute with an actual bird (living at least). He had been told how hold your arm so an owl could land on it, but he had never had to overcome the instinctive fear of seeing a full-sized snowy owl or Gyr-Peregrine descend upon him, stopping at the last minute to land on a piece of flesh attached to him. He had never felt the rush of air on his face from a 47 inch wingspan.
This young man, much to his credit, worked through these issues and is well on the way to becoming himself a world-renowned expert. However, it had to come at the expense of real-world knowledge and experience.
Theory, in of itself, is a great tool. But I can read for years about hand-spinning a prop. Chances are though, I'd probably lose my arm on the first attempt were it not for that old, uneducated pilot driving his bare hand against the back of my head because I forgot that one little sentence that told me to "...place my hand on the front of the blade, don't grab it. "
However, I hope that this was all in vain and I have merely found a way to move 30 minutes closer to my next report time. Besides, Willie is probably right - no airline in Canada will pay the amount of money needed to get an MPL on the line...that is, unless AC or WJ get bought out by a Chinese company and we end up with 35 year bonds, having to pay for depreciation of the aircraft if we break said bond.
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Chuck,
At the risk of finding out that your initial post was the pure sarcasm I hope it was
At the risk of finding out that your initial post was the pure sarcasm I hope it was
Flying an airplane is not really that difficult but to survive you need to be exposed to many, many hours of flying under different conditions and even more important one must be able to make decisions based on your experience level and the risks involved in every flight you are planning and doing at the moment.
The sarcasm was genuine as far as the need for academic degrees is concerned, at least in my case formal education or the lack thereof did not seem to be a limiting factor as I managed to get through my career in aviation with grade eight as my formal education level.
