Infinte Type Rated Pilots it seems!!
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Come on, have you ever been to uni? Of those 4 years, most of it was spent having a good time, or if the person was unlucky - working in some kind of job to pay for the tuition and board. The work was mainly struggling not sleep through lectures amd maybe a few intensive weeks before exams. The 200hr guy also had to spend lots of time preparing for exams. I'm sure it takes a lot fo time to prepare for and pass all the PPL and ATPL exams.
Accountant - come on - the only time you ever face any challlenge is during month end (2 days), year end (1 week) and perhaps during an audit (also a week). The rest is just mundane tasks you can really master to perfection in a couple of days. So - for any given calendar year your accountant is really gaining experience for at the most 6 weeks.
I know of a few people who have set up and steered to success their own accounting firms, or have become chief accountants within less then a year of graduating. It all depends on the market.
Accountant - come on - the only time you ever face any challlenge is during month end (2 days), year end (1 week) and perhaps during an audit (also a week). The rest is just mundane tasks you can really master to perfection in a couple of days. So - for any given calendar year your accountant is really gaining experience for at the most 6 weeks.
I know of a few people who have set up and steered to success their own accounting firms, or have become chief accountants within less then a year of graduating. It all depends on the market.
And I'd say it's easier to pass the CPL, ATPL, CFI, CFII, MEL, MEI, CMEI exams than it was to pass some of my high school exams, and not as easy as some of my University exams, so I'd put them somewhere on a par.
But going back to the point, it's not about the day-to-day experience being an accountant, a programmer, a manager, a pilot, or any other profession, but rather about how you handle the exceptions.
You can write thousands of lines of code as a programmer, but if you can't debug a system critical application at 3 in the morning while the entire factory is shut down and loosing hundreds of thousands of dollars per minute, then you don't have true experience.
You can pass all your pilot exams, and be more talented in the airplane than Patty Wagstaff, but if can't handle a simple autopilot problem - see the recent news - then you're not truly experienced.
Again, we don't pay pilots to fly the plane, we pay pilots to handle the exceptions.
There are always exceptions, but it's not possible to believe that every 2000 hour pilot is as qualified as every 20,000 hour pilot.
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Come on, have you ever been to uni? Of those 4 years, most of it was spent having a good time, or if the person was unlucky - working in some kind of job to pay for the tuition and board. The work was mainly struggling not sleep through lectures amd maybe a few intensive weeks before exams. The 200hr guy also had to spend lots of time preparing for exams. I'm sure it takes a lot fo time to prepare for and pass all the PPL and ATPL exams.
Accountant - come on - the only time you ever face any challlenge is during month end (2 days), year end (1 week) and perhaps during an audit (also a week). The rest is just mundane tasks you can really master to perfection in a couple of days. So - for any given calendar year your accountant is really gaining experience for at the most 6 weeks.
I know of a few people who have set up and steered to success their own accounting firms, or have become chief accountants within less then a year of graduating. It all depends on the market.
Accountant - come on - the only time you ever face any challlenge is during month end (2 days), year end (1 week) and perhaps during an audit (also a week). The rest is just mundane tasks you can really master to perfection in a couple of days. So - for any given calendar year your accountant is really gaining experience for at the most 6 weeks.
I know of a few people who have set up and steered to success their own accounting firms, or have become chief accountants within less then a year of graduating. It all depends on the market.
I assume you are english? upon graduating from university you need to obtain a training contract with a firm to train to be an accountant, you need to qualify to be an accountant by studying either the ACCA, ACA or CIMA, these take 3 years of training on the job and taking ten or so exams at the same time. So for you to say you know people who have have become chief accountants within a year is the biggest amount of
I've ever heard. Please know something about a topic before trying to be an expert on the matter!
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the real fact is:
there are no job in the aviation market.
and the very few jobs around are given to people who know someone. So there is no point to talk about experience or license you have , because nobody care of experience any more. it s a free market, free world , where everything is authorized. you can pay a pilot 1$ an hour, or take chinese and ask them to sleep on the floor....ask copilots to poo in a plastic bag on cargo planes(Yes I did it), etc.
This market is fully f#$%^ and we got it in the brown hole. if you tell me that a pilot must have this or must do that to get a job on this or that plane..., You simply make me laugh...
the only solution is : do something else, enjoy life and forget commercial aviation like I do now.
there are no job in the aviation market.
and the very few jobs around are given to people who know someone. So there is no point to talk about experience or license you have , because nobody care of experience any more. it s a free market, free world , where everything is authorized. you can pay a pilot 1$ an hour, or take chinese and ask them to sleep on the floor....ask copilots to poo in a plastic bag on cargo planes(Yes I did it), etc.
This market is fully f#$%^ and we got it in the brown hole. if you tell me that a pilot must have this or must do that to get a job on this or that plane..., You simply make me laugh...
the only solution is : do something else, enjoy life and forget commercial aviation like I do now.
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The written exams might be a joke
But the practical and oral exam aint no child's play
But the practical and oral exam aint no child's play
Every JAA/EASA check ride i have had was a walk in the park. But the exams are harder, and there are alot more of them. Is this because they want you to fly the books better? Maybe. I always thought the exams were a way of weeding out those not commited enough. Each system has its good and bad points, but i prefer the FAA system overall, not just the training side, even though i am now regulated by the nice chaps in the Belgrano.
Cheers
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some airlines in Europe use the FAA databank for written entry tests, some JAA pilots even fail these tests. 20-25% fail I would say.
for me, it s a lack of real understanding. We have in europe too many pilots who got their license just by studying the questions/answers.
for me, it s a lack of real understanding. We have in europe too many pilots who got their license just by studying the questions/answers.
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Hi!
There are TONS of jobs for pilots now, and the shortage is accelerating steadily. Every month it gets worse for HR. I am GLAD I am NOT HR, especially in the next 5 years!!!
There are TONS of jobs for pilots now, and the shortage is accelerating steadily. Every month it gets worse for HR. I am GLAD I am NOT HR, especially in the next 5 years!!!
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Again, we don't pay pilots to fly the plane, we pay pilots to handle the exceptions.
I guess then that all my years as a Search and Rescue Captain must have been one huge, long exception then.
Pilots are paid to fly the aircraft as, even with all the new sophisticated gadgetry in the front, the automatic systems cannot cope with every variable that good old mother nature can throw at us. Not exceptions but just the inability of any logic system to be able to cope with potentially infinite variables and the wish to portray a comfortable flight to the paying guests.
Unlike accountants, programmers, lawyers, doctors etc. a pilot or the pilots are sometimes in the uneviable position where a screw up/misunderstood warning or complex multiple failures will result in something a little more catestrophic than a messed up balance sheet or an angry Factory owner. Doctors generally only get the change to kill one person at a time, pilots have the ability to do it by the hundreds.
Experience is a double edged sword. In my experience (!!!!) many failings in the past, including CFIT and routine systems failures have been caused by contempt and familiarity bred from routine and the ability to portray a malfunction as 'normal'. The junior Co, with his fresh, enthusiastic approach to aviation has often been the saviour of the crusty experienced Captain (Sadly I include myself in this comment!) as systems failures seem less complex to the Co than the Captain and the ability to feed accurate information from the system into the Captains decision making process is imperitive.
There is room for all levels in aviation it is just beholden upon the schedulers to ensure that the sum of the cockpit experience level doesn't dip too far.
Generally it has been well controlled in the past and will, hopefully, be so in the future.
WS.
Still hand flying, still being paid to fly. Even an Airbus without the damn computers is still an aeroplane (just).
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this market is dead due to : fuel cost, volcano ash, plane costs, training cost, ice, delay, mechanic failure, unfair competition,...
if you look the + and the - in the balance sheets, you will see that an airline can not run efficiently anymore.
3% profit in a good time, 0% in an average time, 100% in a bad time.
airlines can loose 10 years of profit in less 1 year.In 2001, airlines have lost all their assets.Just 3 months later, some have been out of business (chapter 11).
in 2009, it was 3 times worse.
this is why we see now all these new trainings like the P2F, crazy bonding where student pay 80% of his training.
As long we stay on this track, it s going to be worse, and we need more than an increase in VAT tax , to get out of problems.
what we need, it' s jobs! but as long jobs move to China, I have no hope!
if you look the + and the - in the balance sheets, you will see that an airline can not run efficiently anymore.
3% profit in a good time, 0% in an average time, 100% in a bad time.
airlines can loose 10 years of profit in less 1 year.In 2001, airlines have lost all their assets.Just 3 months later, some have been out of business (chapter 11).
in 2009, it was 3 times worse.
this is why we see now all these new trainings like the P2F, crazy bonding where student pay 80% of his training.
As long we stay on this track, it s going to be worse, and we need more than an increase in VAT tax , to get out of problems.
what we need, it' s jobs! but as long jobs move to China, I have no hope!
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I guess then that all my years as a Search and Rescue Captain must have been one huge, long exception then. 
Pilots are paid to fly the aircraft as, even with all the new sophisticated gadgetry in the front, the automatic systems cannot cope with every variable that good old mother nature can throw at us. Not exceptions but just the inability of any logic system to be able to cope with potentially infinite variables and the wish to portray a comfortable flight to the paying guests.
Pilots are paid to fly the aircraft as, even with all the new sophisticated gadgetry in the front, the automatic systems cannot cope with every variable that good old mother nature can throw at us. Not exceptions but just the inability of any logic system to be able to cope with potentially infinite variables and the wish to portray a comfortable flight to the paying guests.
It's not about the "flying" as much as the dealing with everything that is beyond the "flying". And by that I mean nature, failures, communication problems, etc. etc. etc. And of course that's part of flying, but the average bloke with just a couple hundred hours has not seen much nature, failures or communication problems, whereas the average bloke with 20 thousand hours has seen lots of nature, failures and communication problems.
As for all your years as a Search and Rescue Captain being an exception, well, aren't you flying because of exceptions? I mean it's not the norm for a search and rescue operation to be required, so in a way, yes, your career has been one exception after another.
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I mean it's not the norm for a search and rescue operation to be required, so in a way, yes, your career has been one exception after another.
As stated before I have flown with very well trained Co-Pilots who, despite their low hours in a log book, have often out performed colleagues and peers in the other seat. It often depends upon the level of training provided and the commitment of the individual receiving that training. Experience per se is extremely useful but, if the prepartation to fly is good, not always necessary.
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I assume you are english? upon graduating from university you need to obtain a training contract with a firm to train to be an accountant, you need to qualify to be an accountant by studying either the ACCA, ACA or CIMA, these take 3 years of training on the job and taking ten or so exams at the same time. So for you to say you know people who have have become chief accountants within a year is the biggest amount of 
I've ever heard. Please know something about a topic before trying to be an expert on the matter!
I've ever heard. Please know something about a topic before trying to be an expert on the matter!
I just think it is ridiculous to compare flight experience with accounting experience hour per hour.
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The sooner BALPA challenge these idiotic CTC/PARC P2F schemes and bought type ratings for 200 hour heros, the better off we will all be.
Surely it has to be illegal somewhere with regards to how companies like RYR and EZY operate with regards to pilot hiring as this cannot be construed as equal opportunites for all.
EASA, Government.. whoever, now is the time to rid us of this poison known as CTC etc and right the wrongs of our industry
Surely it has to be illegal somewhere with regards to how companies like RYR and EZY operate with regards to pilot hiring as this cannot be construed as equal opportunites for all.
EASA, Government.. whoever, now is the time to rid us of this poison known as CTC etc and right the wrongs of our industry
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To be honest InTheWeeds you say sitting below 200ft agl is worth 12 x that sitting at FLxxx, but in what context? The types of flying you are talking about is like chalk and cheese. One could even say there is no relevance from one to the other (& visa versa of course). I do agree though that quality over qantity every time.
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Coffin Corner,
I don't think the context is too far out of phase between Low Level NOE flying and high level FL transit flying. The ability to hear/feel/sense a failure at low level is inherent in the type of flying involved. The requirement to react quickly, calmly and appropriately whilst involving the other pilot, if there, is taught and nurtured throughout the flying training in the military and pilots are selected specifically for that ability to operate in such a harsh environment.
Low level NVG NOE flying is probably some of the most difficult and dangerous out there (aside from landing, at night, darkened ops onto ships!). The requirement to deal with any malfunction quickly and logically is heightened by the proximity to the ground! That said there are very few things in a helo that will kill you instantly, pretty much like an airliner. Add to that mix that 3000-4000 hours helicopter will take you 10-15 years at the current military flying rate. Thus the external experience gathering for things outside of direct flying is far greater as Standards flights within the military include far more than that required for an LPC/OPC.
The skills honed in a short time in such an environment can be invaluable combined with other experience in the cockpit of an airliner. Trust me I know! The caveat to the above is that some people find it difficult to transition a low level, one man band skill set into the airline CRM environment. Most however don't have a problem.
Given such a scenario I, personally, would take a 3000 hour Helo pilot new to the airline game over a 3000 Cadet who has never experienced malfunctions outside of the simulator.
I don't think the context is too far out of phase between Low Level NOE flying and high level FL transit flying. The ability to hear/feel/sense a failure at low level is inherent in the type of flying involved. The requirement to react quickly, calmly and appropriately whilst involving the other pilot, if there, is taught and nurtured throughout the flying training in the military and pilots are selected specifically for that ability to operate in such a harsh environment.
Low level NVG NOE flying is probably some of the most difficult and dangerous out there (aside from landing, at night, darkened ops onto ships!). The requirement to deal with any malfunction quickly and logically is heightened by the proximity to the ground! That said there are very few things in a helo that will kill you instantly, pretty much like an airliner. Add to that mix that 3000-4000 hours helicopter will take you 10-15 years at the current military flying rate. Thus the external experience gathering for things outside of direct flying is far greater as Standards flights within the military include far more than that required for an LPC/OPC.
The skills honed in a short time in such an environment can be invaluable combined with other experience in the cockpit of an airliner. Trust me I know! The caveat to the above is that some people find it difficult to transition a low level, one man band skill set into the airline CRM environment. Most however don't have a problem.
Given such a scenario I, personally, would take a 3000 hour Helo pilot new to the airline game over a 3000 Cadet who has never experienced malfunctions outside of the simulator.