Wanna buy a watch?........

A320LGW:....“I actually had 160TT when I flew my first passengers in a turboprop.”

Impressive, was it single pilot? Plus had to be IFR if it was in the UK. I didn’t know it was possible get a CPL and IR with only 160 hours.

In Oz, you’d consider yourself very, very lucky to be doing the same VFR in a C206 in the bush.

According to UK Regs a CPL + IR is a total of 180hrs of which 40 can be on the ground so 140hrs TT in the air. Or an MPL which can be even less time in the air. There’s a big world outside of Australia.

In a lot of Oz no, the majority of airlines in Australia have put plenty of CPL and IR grads into the right hand seat of aircraft ranging from 320s to Q400s to Metros and everything in-between with about 200hrs TT. This has been going on for decades.

Dr. Dre. & 320LGW....

I live and learn.

So let me get this right, there’s a whole generation of western airline pilots who have never had to fly alone? Incomprehensible to an old fossil like me. That’s progress, I guess.

What worries me is that there is a whole generation of pilots with thousands of mistake free hours. How can you make a mistake to learn from? This is most certainly a good thing in a highly regulated, trained and documented airline environment if you stick to the SOPs.

With the instability in careers of late how do they cope when thrown into a G550 or similar and told to go La Paz for 3 days? Or find themselves flying into strips in Irian Jaya? I ask because this is stuff I could and have drawn from as result of of a mistake riddled career.

Not proud of making mistakes but they have been good learning experiences to extrapolate from.