Portuguese MEP Accuses Air France to Make Training Flights With Passengers
 

"Mário David attended a flight that had difficulties in landing and found that pilots were being trained, using commercial flights."

Air France is using commercial flights to train Chinese pilots in return for money and jeopardizing the safety of passengers who paid ticket.

The link to the original news in Portuguese below.

Eurodeputado português acusa Air France de fazer voos de treino com passageiros - PÚBLICO

I thought there was a whole range of P2Fly airlines doing this across Europe. What is new? Politician just found out? :ugh:

Be great if they banned it.

Now that would make line training very interesting indeed!

easyJet and Ryanair have been doing that for years, the passengers demand it. They want low fares so the airline have to economise everywhere they can and putting young inexperienced kids in the right seat who pay for the privilige to fly an aircraft with 150 paying punters in the back is just another way of cutting cost.

This is the norm with the locos, not the exception.

What do you mean by training? A fairly wide scope word. If these pilots are rated but not experienced and were to only carry out PNF duties it would seem acceptable. However, if they are carrying landings with pax aboard I would certainly be uncomfortable with that prospect.

Also, passengers don't "demand" that the airlines utilize these pilots. They want low fares which is a totally different expectation. How the airlines meet that customer need is a management decision.

Red thats utter rubbish even if you don`t run a pay to fly scheme you still have to line train them.

Normally they come out of type rating then get given to a line training captains until they are up to standard. Then they are let loose with normal line pilots.

All done with pax down the back.

Normally with first job commercial pilots personally with me they do the majority of the landings until they are up to standard.

Normally they arrive with an hour and 6 landings in the aircraft when the line trainer starts working with them.

:ugh: This is not a loco/legacy issue, not a P2F vs sponsored issue, and shows a gaping lack of understanding.

How would anyone complete line training without conducting training on revenue flights. Do they really think that any airline is going to conduct 80-odd sectors per new pilot in empty airliners. Would this politician be happy for his ticket price to 5 or 6 figure sums to fund this. Drivel.:rolleyes:

Does AF employ Chinese pilots?

They have a deal with sichuan an china southern if i'm right and they do some kind of advanced type rating with way more hours, way more landings during base trainings and a certain number of line training flights untill they're ready to go back to China.

These Chinese Cadets are fully rated to fly on these jets, what's the big deal ?

He probably wouldn't care, as its OUR tax money paying for his expenses :yuk:

Such aggression!
 

My, my, Mad Jock you are an aggressive person! "Red thats utter rubbish.."

Quote "Normally they come out of type rating then get given to a line training captains until they are up to standard. Then they are let loose with normal line pilots."

Your statement is quite true but leaves out the Safety Pilot bit.
My experience with a legacy carrier (B747 & L1011) is that with a brand new type rating the newly qualified F/O flies around 10 sectors with a Training Captain, but with a Safety Pilot in the jump seat - just in case the Training Captain turns his toes up.
The Safety pilot is then dispensed with and the F/O continues his line training with the Line Training Captain, as you described.
I can tell you that if the Training Captain became incapacitated on the first few sectors without the Safety Pilot, things would become very exciting!!. Most F/Os with previous experience would be able to handle it, but a 250 hour ex cadet or even worse a MPL holder, I seriously doubt it.

So Mad Jock omitted to mention the safety pilot, big deal, I'm not sure who is being aggressive here but this thread seems to be about quite normal practise so not sure where it will end. Boeing v Airbus?

Best Practice?
 

Manthrust, my remark about aggression was in response to Mad Jock's sharp retort to Red Mud's posts. A straight forward alternative view point is just not enough for some.

Yes, the thread is about normal practice, but is it "Best Practice"?

I am not sure if training Chinese cadets on board of Air France flights is "quite normal practise" , I am not sure at all.

Not only the flying you need to worry about
 

These Chinese pilots may be able to fly the aircraft but once on the ground.......if they don't 'risten'.....then it's a whole new ball game!!:=

Unfortunate. However why do the various controllers have to speak so FAST ??
I always found the FAA controllers rushing their contact with pilots as if there is a race somewhere. That's not necessary and should not be done.
Not everyone speaks or understands the English language very well, so speaking slowly and properly will help.

Yeah, Safety pilots, I remember them, like the one they had on that Turkish B737-800 that stalled and crashed on approach into AMS some time ago, with the flying FO under training!

Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise...
Do the line trainers of these cadets speak English, French or Chinese since effective communication between the two pilots is essential for flight safety?

Fred,the yanks are by no means the pinnacle of aviation English...

Seems like Air France is going down the drain though:eek:

Last time I ran into chinese pilots at Boeing the trainer told me that they had interpreters as the chinese guys did not speak any english. I don't expect them to speak french either.

Utter nonsense, this article.
How did this MEP find out that the flight had "difficulties in landing"?
The cabin crew can't differentiate between a good landing and one "with difficulties". They just think a soft landing is a good one. And I'm sure they fly more than this MEP.

Aside from that, any linetraining is a training flight, right?

I know that russian pilots (who fly on B products in russia) study and subsequently perform all procedures in english because that's the way they were taught. Besides, isn't it the case that manuals for AC don't get translated to any other language just because english is the only language manuals were approved on? Since any translations may cause misunderstanding which can lead to some undesired events, B doesn't have other versions.
That was my understanding (misunderstanding perhaps).

But, from what is stated here I am not sure that my understanding is right. Could somebody clarify to me this issue? :hmm:

To me it is more a reflection on the common sense of a politician who is supposed to represent the interests of the population: i.e. one who opens their mouth and spouts forth without checking the facts. Oh, I forgot, that is what politicians often do. However, there might be more to this. Has a lurking unwanted trend been uncovered? Let's hear more of the facts.

A zero to hero hasn`t got a chance in hell of getting the aircraft on the ground single crew after 10 sectors if its there first job and 200 hours total time.

I don`t think of the extra FO as a safety feature more of a paper work instructor. Which to be honest they are alot better than me at. That is if we have spare one. If not I am on my jac jones with more work load than single crewing it. But still I get alot of job satisfaction from seeing them improve and develop.

My apologies regarding the landings comment from earlier. I think my ignorance of the practical aspect of airline operations vis-a-vis training new FOs showed. As stated no airline would accept multiple sectors for training in a non-pax / non-revenue environment. Regards to Mad and Torque.

No problem.

It really isn't as problematic as you might think. Training Captains tend to have an aversion to having to do incident reports and pretty much all paper work.

Yes the landings might not be as sweet as if the Captain did them but hey we have bad days as well and there is no one to sort our landings out.

And the only way to get things better is for the trainee to build their experience by doing approaches and landings. There really isn't a short cut to building experience.

seat 0A: The fact is that winds were calm on that day and the aircraft was only able to land at the third attempt. In its speech the captain attributed the go-arounds to tricky winds...

..and line training is not to train FO's ability to handle landing and take-offs on a particular aircraft, its to prepare them for the operational issues of different routes and environments. Two subsequent go-arounds make one think if that particular first officer was really prepared to handle a jet...and if it is correct to train pilot's basic skills with passengers on board.
One may argue that all regular airlines, at some point will have low hour pilots at the controls. But those companies don't do it for a living, so the risk is must less, once they will only do it when in need for new pilots. By opposition to that philosophy there are a number of companies who tend to explore the new business of pay-to-fly. Once they do it on a regular basis, they play with the odds...what shocks us, is to see AF doing that sort of flights. I don't believe their passengers have payed to to play the role of crash test dummies...

Dunno, all my peers and me did manage quite fine around the 6th to 8th sector on the line on our incapacitation check flights which had to be done before we could get a release for flight without a safety FO. Mind you, that was 15 years back, but it is still done and was nothing new back then.

It might be a problem with horribly below par training departments, and we all know there are more of them out there than is good for the industry. If they do not train their cadets it is not a surprise if those cadets can't cope with the situation.

So would there be some kind of announcement "today the landing will be performed by our guest Mr Chen [...]". If not, why not?

I can't see the problem. Most, if not all major European airlines are TRTOs. They are training organisations. Their trainees arrive for their line training with X hours, at least 6 landings (normally in the real thing, but not necessarily) and a type rating. For the more nervous companies, they might even stick an alleged Safety FO in the jump-seat. They then fly with fare paying passengers. Whether or not the trainee's salary is paid by that airline is irrelevant. Generally, the most difficult thing to manage with legacy airlines is the protocol whereby the person who is replaced has to be "ghosted." The training period may last until the end of line training or even for a six months or so. What is certain is that all parties gain out of this process and the passengers never lose.

Another socialist
 

Well there we are then. Another Social Democrat who's an expert on everything and knows f.uck all about anything. Looking for extra space in the cover of a Lisbon rag to make the grade again when next elections come. These guys should be altogether ignored. Unfortunately a mouth as big as his can cause surprising amount of damage and problems when they decide to go on a mission.

There really isn't a short cut to building experience.
 

Amen to that!

About the video of Air China in JFK: I don't think the controller speaks too fast. Maybe a bit...?
But the Air China pilot has huge problems with a simple taxy clearance!:ugh: Can he read a taxy chart? A map? :ugh:And we see his english is way below ICAO level 4:=! WHAT is he seriously doing in the cockpit of a 744 or 777 ? On intercontinental flights? You have to have a minimum standard or you are a danger to your passengers and other aircraft! On the ground and in the air!
For Air france: it looks the training has not improved; the unions run the show and decide! nothing moves; and this confirms that BA and LH are much safer than AF ( see the rates, the statistics...)

FBW 390