Flying an Airbus with 140hrs

[FlyingStone]

@Check Airman:

Not sure if pilots you hire are Chuck Yeager's relatives or your standards are lower, but I can't imagine many people who could successfully to from zero airline experience to being able to competently operate a jet to the standard we require on the line in 25 hours (unless those would be sub 1h flight times) - at least where I work.

Pilots new to airline flying are usually drinking out of a firehose, as everything is new to them. From check in, weight and balance, paperwork, PAs, etc. - let alone flying an aircraft 40 times heavier what they previously flew. And there's so many things to cover, Cat 2/3 approaches, NPAs with various levels of automation, manual flying, etc.

Seasoned captains with experience on type? Sure, couple of days so they get used to the different papers and checklists, and off they go. New first officers whose last aircraft was C172? No way.

[rudestuff]

That's got to be 25 sectors surely?

[Check Airman]

25 hours. Not sectors.

Some people would have come to their first jet from light pistons, and others from turboprops. We do the same training. I’m not sure how many landings or sectors are required, but am absolutely positive on the hour requirement.

After your first 25ish hours, your line training is considered complete (as long as you’re demonstrating competency, of course). You’re then release to fly with regular line captains, with a few restrictions on crosswinds and contaminated runways etc, until you get to 100hrs on type. After 100hrs, you’re unrestricted.

Of course, a great deal of mentoring goes on in those first few hundred hours. You really learn how to fly from the line captains.

[FlightDetent]

but whether you’ve flown the same type for a different airline, or just came from pistons, you get 25 hrs.​​​​​

Because the regulator demands minimum 25. I belive its also 8 sectors, not?

My first jet was 80 hrs and 40 sectors with 20 prescribed destinations to visit. So that the line captains did not need to mentor that much.

If commonly in your region it is the absolute minimum line training amount that is given to candidates who themselves barely qualify,.... there must be other arrangements which fill the obviously missing part. Previous real-life flying exposure is a good guess.

As observed many times before, the right side of Atlantic leans towards the institutionalised. The left side on doing things. But hey, no two tetris games are the same, just keep filling the blank spaces. The outcome becomes the same, despite different playing strategies.

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[Check Airman]

Really not sure on the number of sectors needed. If transitioning from one type to another within the same company, it’s 15 hrs with a training captain, and fewer than 8 sectors for sure.



To be clear, you’re not kicked to the curb or released to the line at 25 hrs, no matter what. If you need more time, you’ll get it, but you’re not getting 140 hrs of instruction. The last person I knew of who couldn’t seem to get it together was fired after ~80 hrs of line training.



As alluded to before, there’s probably more real-life exposure than the average MPL is accustomed to. Most will have spent some time flying singe pilot IFR, and into the same size airports they’ll be flying jets out of.



You also raise a good point about our focus on “doing things”. From reading here, I get the feeling our side of the pond is more likely to say “let’s see what happens, the worst case scenario is a missed approach”.

[Chiefttp]

I think there is confusion as to what the 25 hours requirement is. First we’re talking about the USA. I was a 727 F/O for 10 years and then upgraded to DC-8 Capt with zero DC-8 time. I did my upgrade in the Sim and then flew 25 hours of OE (operating experience with an Instructor) took a checkride in the aircraft and was released to fly with some restrictions until I hit 100 hours. We don’t have MPL programs in the States as far as I know. I had 4500 hours prior experience in the Air Force also, so the 25 hours are just to get acclimated to the system. At my airline the average new hire has 6000 hrs plus, and the average age is around 38. 99% of our new hires were captains prior to getting hired. Apples and Oranges and not applicable to this conversation about 140 hr pilots. I will say that those who do have issues are the new hires that are not experienced.

[Check Airman]

True that at a major, most new hires have prior 121 time, but it’s still 25 hrs at a regional.

[giggitygiggity]

Originally Posted by FlyingStone

Pilots new to airline flying are usually drinking out of a firehose, as everything is new to them. From check in, weight and balance, paperwork, PAs, etc. - let alone flying an aircraft 40 times heavier what they previously flew. And there's so many things to cover, Cat 2/3 approaches, NPAs with various levels of automation, manual flying, etc.

Seasoned captains with experience on type? Sure, couple of days so they get used to the different papers and checklists, and off they go. New first officers whose last aircraft was C172? No way.

But that's not the case. They've done over double the amount of time in the sim and have lived and breathed the A320 (or 737) mass+balance, CAT 2/3, NPAs etc during that time. My airline has a well established MPL program (not sure, but I'd be surprised if there are any bigger ones globally). It's 50 sectors minimum here, which is probably 100hrs or more of flying and obviously more as required. After that, they'll have a number of restrictions that won't get removed till their command. Half crosswind limit, no contaminated runways, no autolands as PF, minimum 400m RVR, initially restrictions on reduced flap landings (they go after about 6 months).

The reality is we just don't have an aviation sector that would cater to what seems absoultely necessary on the otherside of the atlantic. The safety data shows it doesn't matter anyway, the European skies are not more dangerous. Clearly not every training department/program is as robust as the next one, but saying 'no way' seems to be entirely emotional rather than logical when the evidence doesn't seem to exist. If the concern is this great, I'd never get on a European aircraft again as there will be few (none?) that operate without these sorts of cadets.

I can think of countless incidents where very experienced crews made some elementary and often catestrophic mistakes. On the other hand, I struggle to think of many where a freshly minted cadet was the fundemental reason for an incident - one which an average experienced guy would have saved the day. Obviosuly we're looking at this one from the UAE involving a cadet, but it still doesn't seem like a mistake that an experienced crew would be immune from, neither was it initially detected by a very experienced trainer.

[FlyingStone]

I think you might have misread my post.

My point was that it is unrealistic to have only 25 hours of line training for inexperienced pilots transitioning from light aircraft to first jet.