Virgin Australia + MCC
 

Hello all,

Does anyone know if Virgin Australia specifically VARA allows people to apply without MCC, on the grounds of successful recruitment where applicant agrees to attain MCC prior to start date

Airlines don't operate like this.

Minimums are the minimum.

Exactly... except when there are exemptions to the minimum for any number of reasons.

This introduction of the MCC is a total nonsense.

If you successfully complete a type rating for a multi-crew airplane, how on earth can you not be considered qualified or competent in multi-crew operations??

No one should be paying for an MCC course because an airline’s flight department is too lazy to write a type rating course or induction sim program that won’t provide you with the qualification.

Part 61 took the worse bits of EASA and the worse bits of the FARs, rewrote them in gibberish and published a multi page document.

As you say a type rating course is much better than wasting time and money in a fixed based sim on a type you know nothing about.

Gotta love how Part 61 makes you do MCC in a mockup sim, then turns around and says your 737 TR doesn’t count. Makes total sense… said no one ever.

I don’t know if it’s still going on, but back when CASA first added MCC to their ever more complex rules, a few characters with no airline experience got approved to run the courses. Their instructor experience was mostly in flying schools with a bit of light corporate aircraft time. It was another cost impost for students and a gravy train for the MCC providers. Any decent type rating program should cover MCC elements, and most now place considerable emphasis on this.

I think exactly this is still happening - in fact I see advertisements for MCC still on PPRUNE!

Whats even more remarkable is that instructors with Type Rating approvals on 737/320/etc, who hold ATPLs can’t actually run the MCC course without a seperate training endorsement on their licence.

Absolutely ridiculous!

The OP wasn’t asking for your takes on the MCC.

You will not get an interview at Virgin without having completed your MCC at time of application.

A rejected application will come with a 12 month cool off from applying again.

Some smaller operators with a more one on one hiring relationship might give you some wriggle room. At a prior smaller employer, the CP and myself in recruitment would work a bit closer with some to get the required minimums done before start date, if it was someone we really wanted.

Most of the big players, you are at the mercy of the HR machine, so no dice.

How nice of Virgin to make you pay $7k for something you don't need for an interview.

That sounds like half truths and mythology. A 12 month cooldown will only apply if you got an interview, or progressed so far and they found that there was a reason you might need another 12 months doing something else. It's more some flaw in your actual interview or sim check they thought you were close but needed to refine something and that 12 months waiting might fix it. If you don't meet the minimums and apply they just won't progress your application... If you were close enough that MCC was the only issue, they might tell you to go get it and come back.

I've been told by one airline after application that I was close but needed to go do 'x' before applying again, no cooldown, nothing. I said thanks, but I have other opportunities, they called back a few days later and asked me to come in for an interview, sim and such, and when they found out I had several other jobs lined up they rushed me into a ground course.

Being a large airline, do they even process written applications? It’s quite possible that you would be at the mercy of a computer. If you don’t tick the MCC box (or any other mandatory box) the computer most likely would spit your application straight to a rejection. No HR person would even see it.

The HR Machine these days is often the automated software. I was talking to one person who said 80% of the budget in one airline was software. Back in the day it was more wages and less computer stuff. HR these days is largely a self service model.

That also extends to rostering and payroll platforms, most of which ours locally are pretty crap.

I was aware that Rex was still using outdated processing methods with hiring and firing, and general payroll processes.

There are some urban legends around about MCC, so a bit of history.......

I cant remember exactly when, but around 2013 when CASR Part 61 was still in the draft melting pot, there was a push from "certain quarters" for CASA to copy the FAA requirement that a pilot could not conduct multi-crew ops unless they had 1500 hours as a pilot. The NTSB report on the Q400 Colgan crash at Buffalo was critical of several multi-crew aspects of the operation and the so called "1500 hour rule" was introduced by the FAA as one of the direct responses to the crash. This was obviously some kind of token reaction, as both of the pilots involved had well over 1500 hours!

The CASA DAS of the day was questioned directly at Senate estimates as to whether CASA was going to follow the FAA 1500 hour rule. The reply was that CASA would not, but instead would follow the European model of MCC. This came as a surprise to lots of people but, sure enough, the MCC qualification was introduced with the "new" regs.

Various flight schools then geared up for MCC courses, but a Part 142 approval was required, the required sim specs were quite tight and the sims were expensive, so very few operators ended up getting approval. Some airlines chose to integrate MCC into their type ratings if these were conducted in-house (e.g. QF, QF Link etc) while others didn't, and required MCC to be obtained as an entry requirement. (e.g. VA, JQ).
A point of difference with EASA is that their regs require MCC to be done prior to commencing a type rating, while the CASA regs don't. So, in Aus, you can do your first multi-crew type rating before you do MCC - although you cant use the rating until you get an MCC - not really a logical sequence. In terms of integrating MCC into a type rating, I guess that for an an airline there must be a cost consideration in using its full motion simulators and paying a TRI.

As an aside, in the USA, ALPA backed the FAA 1500 hour rule and has strongly opposed subsequent attempts to remove it, so there are obviously industrial considerations at play.

In respect of the original question, I guess it is up to an airline where they set their minimum requirements for application and its probable that checking the MCC box is used as a filter to reduce the number of applicants they need to interview.

FlySafe
PJ88

Its a very good rule for any pilot wishing to fly in the USA. It means that airlines can not apply absolute control the supply of pilots through cadet programs and they have to play the market to hire. As for safety benefit, not as much as it might seem, as the 1500 hour pilot that has not been through a training and checking program can be just as hit and miss on skill as the 200 hour one, just with an experience bucket that could help them. The real safety benefit would come more from seeing value in retaining experienced pilots through better terms and conditions, leading to long term employment and better on the job knowledge. This being realized through a tighter workforce market and the need to hold on to pilots rather than the old 'tap and drain' system.

Having flown with airlines prior to MCC and after, I've seen a general decline in standards in Australia. So if the MCC was supposed to help things, no it hasn't, though it isn't the direct cause of the decline either, more to do with training standards and experience in GA. Did I see an improvement in multi-crew cockpit management practices, nope, pretty much the same before and after and the attitude of the Captain still set the tone for the operation with all the variations of personality involved. Some airlines just shifted fancy words around, like PM vs PNF, and so on. Still saw the same errors and mistakes, regardless of what you called each crew member. So fancy words don't suddenly make you realize what you should be doing if you are not, but it makes the idiots who write these things feel good to see a Shakespeare play in action in the cockpit, even the tragedy part when it goes awry. And before the boffins turn ape, I'm talking the waffle introduced in the last 20 or so years, not the valuable stuff learned back when KLM rammed Pan Am, and similar lessons from the past.

PNF to PM was an Airbus change about 15 years ago. Might have had its genesis before then (ICAO?). It wasn’t a thought bubble in airlines here IIRC. they just went along with international standards (surprisingly in some cases).

The first formal introduction of the change from "Pilot Not Flying" (PNF) to "Pilot Monitoring" (PM) came from the FAA. Airbus started to introduce the term "Pilot Monitoring" into its flight manual and safety training documentation in 2002. However, the FAA had previously made this change in two advisory circulars, and Airbus followed suit.

FlySafe
PJ88

Thanks for confirming my suspicions on its prehistory Propjet. Our FM unedited direct from Airbus - changed from PNF to PM in 2015 or early 2016 (I'm not sure which release, I've got a gap there of our old FMs)

Except people now seem to say ‘checked’ a whole lot more, in response to pretty much anything. So there’s that.