Pilot experience/passenger choice

[Jabiman]

I'm interested as you are happy to give your views on how our profession should be reported on. I'm interested in your profession so I can understand how I can judge your experience.

Lets just say I am a consumer advocate who is surprised by the state of the worldwide aviation industry.

Unfortunately GA experience is utterly irrelevant when you're sitting in an airliner, it's a completely different type of operation.

That is an incorrect statement and is the line that the airlines are trying to push in an effort to justify their current course of action. Learning to fly a Cessna and then jumping into a jet is one way to ensure that said pilot has learnt little or no airmanship. This quality is impossible to train and only comes with experience but in an emergency situation can mean the difference between life and death.

Whilst some accidents have a lack of experience as a possible contributory factor, many do not

Agreed but all the other factors we will never have any influence over but the pilot experience is one that we hopefully we may. And an airline that cuts costs by employing minimally trained pilots on minimum pay is also going to skimp on the others so this will become readily apparent.

could you please explain to me where future experienced airline pilots will come from if you do not also currently have less experienced airline pilots?

There is already an oversupply which just continues to grow as integrated training continues to churn out young hopefuls who have no chance of getting a job unless they shell out more for line training etc.
Assuming the pilot profession is subject to the laws of supply and demand, then that is the reason that a FO is paid so little, there are just too many of them.

[west lakes]

Statistics and their use has always interested me. Now as far as I can see from this site GA is basically all flying that is non-scheduled or charter airline

So within the high statistics for GA flying quoted I can't help but wonder the proportion of CPL vs PPl license holders within it.

That Loco airlines are seen to be all low hours pilots surprises me, certainly I know of pilots with hours into 5 figures flying for them, a higher degree of monitoring of their actions electronically and a 1 strike and out attitude, some of these the legacy carriers don't have which would suggest a lower attitude to safety and compliance monitoring than the locos.

[Lord Spandex Masher]

Originally Posted by Jabiman

That is an incorrect statement and is the line that the airlines are trying to push in an effort to justify their current course of action. Learning to fly a Cessna and then jumping into a jet is one way to ensure that said pilot has learnt little or no airmanship. This quality is impossible to train and only comes with experience but in an emergency situation can mean the difference between life and death.

Actually it has always been the case that GA is completely dissimilar to commercial operations.

Learning to fly in a Cessna and then continuing to...err...what? Oh I know, continue to fly a Cessna, single pilot, VFR, unregulated and uncomplicated has no bearing whatsoever on flying a heavy jet commercially except, up, down, left, right, faster, slower. Dealing with an emergency in a Cessna is akin to plonking it down in a field. Deaing with an emergency in an airliner is a highly complex, coordinated effort between several agencies, crew and passengers. GA experience is just useless.

You might like to know that when I was a 150 hour co-pilot on a heavy jet I actually prevented an experienced captain - with several thousand hours in GA and maybe a thousand hours in airliners - controlling the aircraft quite accurately into the middle of a mountain. Lack of SA, lack of CRM, unwillingness to follow SOPs, doing what he usually did in GA which was his own thing and had been ingrained into his operating attitude. Tell me, how much airmanship did this guy gain from his previous experience?

Several years later I was a captain flying with the same bloke who had been demoted (finally) because he couldn't and wouldn't operate as the company expected - although why he is still flying is beyond me. On one occasion, due to a slow vacating aircraft, we carried out a go around, about half way through the manouver, climbing well, gear coming up etc., the preceeding aircraft had vacated the runway and he suggested that I should over power the autothrottle disconnect the autopilot and land.

You would seriously prefer that man to be in charge of your flight? I ask because using your criteria you would choose him over a well trained, qualified and capable airline pilot with less hours.

[TightSlot]

In the absence of any fresh, relevant or convincing arguments from Jabiman this thread is now closed: There is a clear consensus.

A search of his/her previous posts will reveal that questioning pilot training is something of a hobby horse.