Glass or Steam Gauges
 

A 20 year old wants to learn to fly and become an airline pilot. Should he learn on steam gauges or just stick with glass panels?

There's an argument that learning on traditional 'steam gauges' will make you a more competent pilot with real skills, lack of wind arrows and helpful pointers etc. But, the reality is that most airlines are flying aeroplanes that have glass cockpits. The honest answer from me is fly whichever is cheaper! It's already expensive enough.

And to continue the argument, you aren’t a real pilot unless you navigate using sextants and tells from the carrier pigeon that you sent ahead of you.

OP, an airline job now is 99.9% going to be on a wonderfully well equipped aircraft with glass. That’s all you need. If steam is cheaper, as said then fine, but I think it’s a stretch to say you’ll be any ‘better’

It’s why we don’t have to learn more code anymore, for example. Because it’s simply not a relevant skill and therefore wasted time and effort.

I would ask what is the road that 20-year old has to take to get to the airlines? Too often we focus on the end goal, and ignore the 5 to 10 years after flight training that it will take to get to that goal. If the pilot can learn both at the same price, I'd say learn both. But many schools don't give that option any more, and something like flight sim might be a cheap way to learn.

But consider this before you throw the baby out with the bath water: When I was working in the arctic, we'd get pilots who did their flight training on glass, only to find out that every airplane we had was steam. They all got the hang of it, but the training did take slightly longer than a pilot who had already flown steam gauges - and by longer, I mean an hour, maybe two. It wasn't a big deal, but I can think of two or three companies where I was working who would be unwilling to provide additional training to a pilot who was struggling to learn a steam-driven airplane. As far as I'm concerned, that's not somewhere you want to work anyways, but the industry will come to another downturn where that 20-year old might not have a choice but to fly at a place like that, and they had better come prepared.

Funny you say that, I flew with a guy who brought along a sextant every now and again, and wanted his FOs to be able to use it. Without the sextant, we got really good at calculating the Sun's True Bearing, which now makes my head hurt just thinking about. He would not let us use the GPS or any ground based nav-aid for our first 100 hours on type - unless it was honest-to-god IFR. SVFR was still VFR, so man-up...and if we couldn't tell him where we were by looking out the window after he allowed us to use the GPS, it went back off.

At the time I thought he was a right donkey, but I do look back fondly at those times, so maybe something to some of the old ways.

All well and good until you find yourself flying on a standby artificial horizon and that horrendous compass without any of that wondeful instrumentation. Then you'd be thankful for a bit of time on proper instruments...ask me how I know.

How I would do:

1.PPL - starting on steam gauges until First Solo (including), then continue on glass cockpit until the Check Ride/Skill Test.
2.Hour Building - first 20-30 hours on steam gauges, then glass cockpit.
3.IR - a couple of sim sessions on steam gauges (to better understand how the needles work and how/what to follow) then only glass cockpit.
4.All other ratings and certificates/licenses on glass cockpit.

P.S. if you have an opportunity to build hours as a CPL holder on either of 2 options, grab whichever comes first.