Ten years ago I went into Flight Ops to complain to the Chief Pilot of Training about my concern that mindless cost cutting was leading to a decline in experience on the flight deck, with specific emphasis on the stupidity of rostering two second officers on a four man long haul crew.

The rostering of two second officers on a four man crew was bad enough, but it was beyond belief that it was being implemented in an unrestricted manner, once again to save costs. For example, crew control was free to roster two brand new second officer (fresh out of basic pilot training) with a brand new relief commander and a brand new captain. What could go wrong?

As I tried to argue how idiotic this was his response to me was beyond belief. He asked me what I would have him tell the CEO (RH at the time)?

I looked at him stunned for a moment then slowly replied that he should tell him that it was unsafe! That it was his job to tell him that it was unsafe! That his position as a manager was moot if all he was going to tell senior executives was only what they wanted to hear!

I’m convinced that the reason for the decline in any great company would mirror a similar mindless cost cutting protocol. Penny wise and pound foolish.

I remember a conversation I once had with a grizzly old captain about whether he lamented the loss of the navigator in airliners. His answer was no, that pound for pound…he’d rather carry fuel.

I think this same logic should apply to employing weak flight ops managers afraid to relay real safety concerns to senior airline executives. Pound for pound….an airline would be better off purchasing fuel.

No, a 100% increase would put the CN back at COS99 after the 50% COVID cut.

Then discussion should continue on real COSILIV increases….

Dont believe the hype, and I know, “tell ‘I’m he’s dreamin…”

Sorry Raven, but give me two brand new SO's over 3 man long haul any day.

True my mate at EK says as 380 FO he’s clears 8200 USD pm with all the allowances and OT etc. But his kids go school for free, free housing and utilities. So he’s on about 66k HKD pm disposable income.

Not if that airline was CX and they had hedged.

Raven , you raise a very valid point , but safety sadly is driven by lip service and money .If RH was a manager of repute he would not have needed input from the training dept he would have taken action on his own on the merit of the issue.
so let’s take a worse case scenario , a brand new SO is on his own in the flight deck whilst the FO takes a toilet break . Explosive decompression occurs , the supplementary CA sitting in the jump seat has no Oxygen supply so has passed out by the time the FO tries to get back in .
Thus the SO may have to manage the entire process on his own not something that fills me confidence .

Joblow….I’ll take your example one step further. Time of useful consciousness at 41,000 feet in an explosive decompression is less than 10 seconds and requires pressure breathing oxygen. In your example, the brand new second officer and young cabin attendant in the cockpit fail to extract and get their masks on in less than 10 seconds….
The relief crew outside the cockpit will not have pressure breathing oxygen available to them as they attempt to use emergency door entry procedures to bypass the locked cockpit door and they succumb to hypoxia. The aircraft continues to fly until it runs out of fuel….

i raised this very scenario many times to Flight Ops management to no avail…..because…safety was their top priority.

Ever heard of the Auto Descent ? The SO will do just fine …

Only the 350 has auto emergency descent. The 777,747 & 330 don’t.

Will an overweight 60ish year old immersed in his Golf magazine be quicker than a 22 year old SO? I would call it a toss-up :-))

Well, given that on more than one occasion we've had unaccompanied SO's sit petrified and completely unreactive through TCAS RA's in the cruise, my money is on the 60 something Skipper every time!

An SO should have more exposure to emergency descents in training. This said, the problem is the lack of exposure to actually operating the aircraft, which also results in a lack of engagement on the job. It's one thing to know the procedure in the sim, and another to not get jittery when something actually happens and the guy in the seat isn't completely comfortable in the aircraft.

That statement is so wrong on many levels.
It makes me wonder if you are actually a pilot at all.

Perhaps you are not as smart as you think you are.

The odds of an explosive decompression in the cockpit are about 1/billion or even more. If that did happen then you'd have 10 seconds consciousness, BUT you'd probably die from frostbite, as well as your top lips being ripped off and your lungs exploding as 900kph wind hits them, plus you wouldn't be able to see anything anyway.. but a "normal" explosive decompression somewhere on the plane would still take a long time to suck out all the air, so the 10 seconds isn't really accurate and you would have plenty time to don your mask and get the old Captain and Co-Pilot to hurry back into the cockpit for any help you may need...

I'm pretty sure a SO can work out how to descend the plane without ripping the wings off her

God, some of you guys have absolutely no idea.

Please tell me you don't fly jets for a living!.....

Wow wow wow...

Who was it said "you better keep your mouth shut and appear stupid rather than open it and remove all doubt".

The levels of green lack of knowledge and understanding in some of the above comments are astonishing. I'd rather do a rapid descent all alone by myself any day than have one like these sitting next to me attempting to help.

If these are cathay pilots, it truly shows the scary low levels of knowledge and experience present on cathay flight decks today.

In the last 50 years, on western civil aircraft, how many sudden cases of loss of cabin pressure and subsequent application of 10-20 sec of TUC? Now consider the number of flights where it did not happen. Then consider the total flight time of all flights globally and put it in relation to the total time of a long haul flight with an inexperienced SO alone in the seat.

I think Magenta is not far off, less than one in a billion would be my guess.

Meursault
Now give us the stats on the chances of loosing an engine during a heavy weight take off precisely at V1…..

It’s the limited thinking like yours that led to the disastrous development of the 737 Max. How’s that working out for Boeing?

Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.