Wide Body Time
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according to my experience after more than 2 decades in aviation , there is no problem to go from a small/medium to a wide body as long as the training given is good and long enough and that the trainee has the capacity it takes.
There were/are Airlines where the cadets are going directly to the wide bodies as those companies don't have anything else , of course they required long and thorough training to achieve that goal and not all of the candidates will succeed.
In my career I went from a B737-200 first officer position to a MD-11 first officer and this transition has been done without any problem but I have had a very good training.
I think that what is more important is what kind of initial training you have had , that is where you get the main part of your basic skills and gain good habits and as long as you keep it , the rest of your career will just be an easy flow.
As a trainer I usually have had less difficulties to train cadets without any experience than direct entry pilots with , most probably , less than good initial training and sometimes attitudes making their training more difficult.
I can even tell you that I have seen a DC-10 captain struggling to learn to fly a glider at the time I was a glider instructor…
So it is wrong to say that flying a wide body is more difficult to fly than anything else , the truth is that each " flying machine " as its own difficulties that should be learned and as long as your are properly trained and you have the capacity , there will be no problem.
There were/are Airlines where the cadets are going directly to the wide bodies as those companies don't have anything else , of course they required long and thorough training to achieve that goal and not all of the candidates will succeed.
In my career I went from a B737-200 first officer position to a MD-11 first officer and this transition has been done without any problem but I have had a very good training.
I think that what is more important is what kind of initial training you have had , that is where you get the main part of your basic skills and gain good habits and as long as you keep it , the rest of your career will just be an easy flow.
As a trainer I usually have had less difficulties to train cadets without any experience than direct entry pilots with , most probably , less than good initial training and sometimes attitudes making their training more difficult.
I can even tell you that I have seen a DC-10 captain struggling to learn to fly a glider at the time I was a glider instructor…
So it is wrong to say that flying a wide body is more difficult to fly than anything else , the truth is that each " flying machine " as its own difficulties that should be learned and as long as your are properly trained and you have the capacity , there will be no problem.
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Dubaigong, I like your attitude! I think your conclusion is spot on, prior training standard and the level of training received when transitioning are the key elements. We had 737 CPT move to a 747 freighter outfit without prior wide body experience. They had no problems, same when some went to the 767, flying mostly the Caribbeans.
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It’s just different, a larger aircraft has greater inertia so one needs to plan ahead a little more than on a narrow body. However, it’s not really any different from transitioning from a twin engine piston to a turboprop and from a turboprop to a jet. Lots of flights can be over large bodies of water or over very sparsely populated areas where the closest airport can be three hours flying time away. Flying to China from the Middle East over the Himalayas takes a little bit of planning to avoid some rather high cumulogranite in an emergency situation but one is trained to do it.
Widebody aircraft are very stable and have a lot of built in redundancy. Once one becomes used to the handling characteristics of the aircraft and the environment in which one is flying, it an easy transition for any decently trained pilot.
Some widebody pilots will try and convince you it takes a superhuman effort to fly big aircraft. From my experience, the bigger the aircraft the easier it is to fly. As mentioned, one just needs to become accustomed to the differences
Personally, having transitioned from being a Flight Instructor where every student is out to kill you, to a turboprop pilot flying to places like the Scottish Highlands and into Leeds Bradford, then to a jet pilot and a Captain flying to major European Cities and to the Greek Islands where there are lots of circle to land approaches. To Cat C airports such as Innsbruck, Salzburg, Ajaccio, Funchal & Gibraltar, I can honestly say, even with Far Eastern weather, Chinese ATC, lots of night flying, long ETOPS segments and jet lag, being a widebody Captain is the easiest flying job I’ve ever had.
Widebody aircraft are very stable and have a lot of built in redundancy. Once one becomes used to the handling characteristics of the aircraft and the environment in which one is flying, it an easy transition for any decently trained pilot.
Some widebody pilots will try and convince you it takes a superhuman effort to fly big aircraft. From my experience, the bigger the aircraft the easier it is to fly. As mentioned, one just needs to become accustomed to the differences
Personally, having transitioned from being a Flight Instructor where every student is out to kill you, to a turboprop pilot flying to places like the Scottish Highlands and into Leeds Bradford, then to a jet pilot and a Captain flying to major European Cities and to the Greek Islands where there are lots of circle to land approaches. To Cat C airports such as Innsbruck, Salzburg, Ajaccio, Funchal & Gibraltar, I can honestly say, even with Far Eastern weather, Chinese ATC, lots of night flying, long ETOPS segments and jet lag, being a widebody Captain is the easiest flying job I’ve ever had.
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I've never heard a single soul try and "convince you it takes a superhuman effort to fly big aircraft". Ever. Sounds like an overly-sensitive narrowbody pilot talking perceived slights, to me.
What is incontrovertible is that the loss of a widebody hull is far more costly in human and financial capital than that of a smaller machine. That is not to diminish the loss of ANY life, but simply underscores the difference in scale of operations. The potential for loss is far greater with more lives and more expensive equipment, and the scale of compensation is to match the responsibility of managing a larger operation and larger risk, nothing more.
Debate all you want over which is more "difficult", it's irrelevant. And if you're chafing because you you haven't gotten your widebody command yet and you feel you deserve it because it's just as "easy" as rockin' the 737/320 or a turboprop, you've missed the point entirely and need to read Glider7's post closely. Spot on.
The quality of pilots I've met over my entire career has been determined far more by their attitude than what they flew previously.
What is incontrovertible is that the loss of a widebody hull is far more costly in human and financial capital than that of a smaller machine. That is not to diminish the loss of ANY life, but simply underscores the difference in scale of operations. The potential for loss is far greater with more lives and more expensive equipment, and the scale of compensation is to match the responsibility of managing a larger operation and larger risk, nothing more.
Debate all you want over which is more "difficult", it's irrelevant. And if you're chafing because you you haven't gotten your widebody command yet and you feel you deserve it because it's just as "easy" as rockin' the 737/320 or a turboprop, you've missed the point entirely and need to read Glider7's post closely. Spot on.
The quality of pilots I've met over my entire career has been determined far more by their attitude than what they flew previously.
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Originally Posted by nlh
The quality of pilots I've met over my entire career has been determined far more by their attitude than what they flew previously.
The industry tends to promote people with more experience on wide bodies, people with more experience have a lower risk profile. Similar to the way young drivers pay more for insurance than a more experienced driver, even if it is the same model or car.
A lot of these requirements are driven by insurance requirements as they can reduce the airlines fixed costs.
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Good Airmenship is based on three pillars. Assessment (talent, motivation), Training (basic training and ongoing further development) and Experience (exposure, analysis).
Discussions like on here often fall too short. It is not an absolute matter of time on wide-bodies, but it counts towards the two last pillars. The same applies to the turbo-prop, or regionally limited Loco guys …. and so on.
The underlying problem is best described with the Swiss cheese model. Any hole is basically one too many, but there will always be some. Our intent should be to eliminate as many as possible.
In today’s aviation environment elimination of such holes is however threatened by the incredible expansion of number of aircraft and aviators and the decay of final profit for operators brought on by deregulation, unfair competition and lowering of standards to satisfy an artificially boosted demand by overly cheap prices. Sort of a vicious circle.
Concerning our topic, it is the lowering of standards that matters. Obviously the older farts (count me in) are the witnesses of this erosion. Airline owners, managers and their hollow beancounter and HR stooges are all much newer to the industry and never take long to fail and get replaced by even more obedient henchmen (or get back as walking dead archaic like TCAS). Our observations and warnings are cried down, because it goes against short term interests of greedy owners and fast career wishful dreams of wannabee pilots. We are called arrogant and worse, mainly to be quickly silenced. Nobody likes messengers like that.
To have no jet experience, no wide-body or no LH experience is no disqualification, everyone passed through this stage. To counter these holes there is training and exposure. Both mean a lot of money and time, two things airlines hate and logically try to avoid. Regulators should be the counterbalance, but we witness a rampant corruption in that respect, worldwide. We more and more witness jumping training and experience steps at an alarming rate (ab-initio right onto WB, MCC and quota-bound assessments i.e. “Emiratisation”). This means leaving some holes unfilled, against all aviation mantras.
To counter this threat, the industry handily presents all kind of further automation and the operators greedily jump on it. It not only leaves these holes unfilled, it even creates new holes (children of the magenta and dependence on automation). The remedy is quickly found and called “revert to basics”, but it is as hollow as the claim to always put safety first. Because the “basics” are no longer here! Today’s new pilots do not have all essential basics, they never got the chance to acquire them. The bad part is that they don’t even know that they don’t have them, just as their new instructors don’t! They are of the same breed.
We might no longer be able to go back and train all the modern aviators to these basics. What has to be acknowledged in all honesty though (by everyone, the new pilots, managers and especially the regulators), is that they are really missing them and try to form the training syllabi in function of this evidence. This to mitigate the deficiencies. Expansion will suffer a little bit, but we have to shape assessment and training to accommodate that trend. After that we have to shape rostering as to give as much exposure and experience as possible. This is more costly and complicated, but the way pilots are thrown into new environment without some guidance is frightening.
This is not meant to belittle any fellow pilot. If they had passed the same honest assessment, the same good basic training and time to get exposure and experience, they would be as proficient as the old and arrogant farts …..
I however shudder almost every week when I read the latest incident reports. It seems as if the reporters and the concerned postholders can no longer see the forest for the trees. I sometimes try to put some report back in time and just imagine the reaction of my first CP or TRE to that.
I guess I wouldn’t have survived such daffiness.
Discussions like on here often fall too short. It is not an absolute matter of time on wide-bodies, but it counts towards the two last pillars. The same applies to the turbo-prop, or regionally limited Loco guys …. and so on.
The underlying problem is best described with the Swiss cheese model. Any hole is basically one too many, but there will always be some. Our intent should be to eliminate as many as possible.
In today’s aviation environment elimination of such holes is however threatened by the incredible expansion of number of aircraft and aviators and the decay of final profit for operators brought on by deregulation, unfair competition and lowering of standards to satisfy an artificially boosted demand by overly cheap prices. Sort of a vicious circle.
Concerning our topic, it is the lowering of standards that matters. Obviously the older farts (count me in) are the witnesses of this erosion. Airline owners, managers and their hollow beancounter and HR stooges are all much newer to the industry and never take long to fail and get replaced by even more obedient henchmen (or get back as walking dead archaic like TCAS). Our observations and warnings are cried down, because it goes against short term interests of greedy owners and fast career wishful dreams of wannabee pilots. We are called arrogant and worse, mainly to be quickly silenced. Nobody likes messengers like that.
To have no jet experience, no wide-body or no LH experience is no disqualification, everyone passed through this stage. To counter these holes there is training and exposure. Both mean a lot of money and time, two things airlines hate and logically try to avoid. Regulators should be the counterbalance, but we witness a rampant corruption in that respect, worldwide. We more and more witness jumping training and experience steps at an alarming rate (ab-initio right onto WB, MCC and quota-bound assessments i.e. “Emiratisation”). This means leaving some holes unfilled, against all aviation mantras.
To counter this threat, the industry handily presents all kind of further automation and the operators greedily jump on it. It not only leaves these holes unfilled, it even creates new holes (children of the magenta and dependence on automation). The remedy is quickly found and called “revert to basics”, but it is as hollow as the claim to always put safety first. Because the “basics” are no longer here! Today’s new pilots do not have all essential basics, they never got the chance to acquire them. The bad part is that they don’t even know that they don’t have them, just as their new instructors don’t! They are of the same breed.
We might no longer be able to go back and train all the modern aviators to these basics. What has to be acknowledged in all honesty though (by everyone, the new pilots, managers and especially the regulators), is that they are really missing them and try to form the training syllabi in function of this evidence. This to mitigate the deficiencies. Expansion will suffer a little bit, but we have to shape assessment and training to accommodate that trend. After that we have to shape rostering as to give as much exposure and experience as possible. This is more costly and complicated, but the way pilots are thrown into new environment without some guidance is frightening.
This is not meant to belittle any fellow pilot. If they had passed the same honest assessment, the same good basic training and time to get exposure and experience, they would be as proficient as the old and arrogant farts …..
I however shudder almost every week when I read the latest incident reports. It seems as if the reporters and the concerned postholders can no longer see the forest for the trees. I sometimes try to put some report back in time and just imagine the reaction of my first CP or TRE to that.
I guess I wouldn’t have survived such daffiness.
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Top post Glofish.
If I may presume to summarize it;
The lunatics are now running the asylums!
If I may presume to summarize it;
The lunatics are now running the asylums!
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I think the answer to the op is quite simple.
Any job for which a very specific experience is required is usually a sign of a company not willing to take the (best) people from scratch(ish) and TRAIN them to a high standard appropriate to the operation, end of.
The more specific edperience you require the more potential very good people you are excluding, and looking long term (!!) no company would want that.
This is why selections at any air force full pilot career are tough but open to anybody (certainly not to cpl holders with 500 hrs flown at the local club for example).
The only thing that counts is selecting the right people, training will sort the rest and give you (hopefully) the best pilots.
We all know that this costs money and very few companies are willing to spend it.
Nothing to do with low cost, turboprop etc..just simple selection training and long term goals.
Any job for which a very specific experience is required is usually a sign of a company not willing to take the (best) people from scratch(ish) and TRAIN them to a high standard appropriate to the operation, end of.
The more specific edperience you require the more potential very good people you are excluding, and looking long term (!!) no company would want that.
This is why selections at any air force full pilot career are tough but open to anybody (certainly not to cpl holders with 500 hrs flown at the local club for example).
The only thing that counts is selecting the right people, training will sort the rest and give you (hopefully) the best pilots.
We all know that this costs money and very few companies are willing to spend it.
Nothing to do with low cost, turboprop etc..just simple selection training and long term goals.
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But the safest operations - in all sectors! - are never those that have a rigid and inwardly-focussed training department that 'knows best' but instead are those who relentlessly 'evolve' their protocols by asking every experienced new joiner 'how did you do this, and why'.
Lascaille, which is where EK quite frankly is found wanting with respect to its training environment, its ethos and its narrow focus on reactive policies and procedures.
Part of the challenge transitioning from shorthaul to longhaul (who cares if you have 1 or 2 aisles) are the significant differences locally and variations in expectation from one place to the next, rinse and repeat over 100 destinations and it becomes another beast entirely.
For me, I gain confidence when I see my colleague in the right seat actively identifying issues, and having or developing a plan, rather than quoting 8.3.3.6. Blah blah blah, which says we might or possibly might not be able to breath through our nostrils. It’s a sad reflection that at EK, compliance is more desirable to many, rather than resilience and its taught that way by the training department, despite protestations to the opposite.
Part of the challenge transitioning from shorthaul to longhaul (who cares if you have 1 or 2 aisles) are the significant differences locally and variations in expectation from one place to the next, rinse and repeat over 100 destinations and it becomes another beast entirely.
For me, I gain confidence when I see my colleague in the right seat actively identifying issues, and having or developing a plan, rather than quoting 8.3.3.6. Blah blah blah, which says we might or possibly might not be able to breath through our nostrils. It’s a sad reflection that at EK, compliance is more desirable to many, rather than resilience and its taught that way by the training department, despite protestations to the opposite.
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For me, I gain confidence when I see my colleague in the right seat actively identifying issues, and having or developing a plan, rather than quoting 8.3.3.6. Blah blah blah, which says we might or possibly might not be able to breath through our nostrils. It’s a sad reflection that at EK, compliance is more desirable to many, rather than resilience and its taught that way by the training department, despite protestations to the opposite.
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That's the problem ........
