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Is this a dying breed of Airman / Pilot for airlines?

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Is this a dying breed of Airman / Pilot for airlines?

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Old 10th Jan 2011, 10:17
  #181 (permalink)  
 
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Check out the Parc website.

For £54k you can front up at the parent company in Oxford, OAT that was, get a frozen ATPL and a summer`s work in a shiny costume for Easy Jet, on exes.
The captains must be run ragged.

The answer to your question is self evident.

l honestly never thought l would see this.
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Old 10th Jan 2011, 11:09
  #182 (permalink)  
 
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The captains are run rugged.
Comments like when I want your help I will ask for it when passing 20 NM at 8500 feet.


The other good one is " I'M not flying a profile I'M flying a heading"

I surpose if teams and conditions don't improve we could always write a book.
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Old 10th Jan 2011, 11:33
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Originally Posted by SNS3Guppy
In fact, Sully noted that glider experience (to hark back to the general aviation discussion before) was the source he tapped when making his forced landing.
I just read Sully's book and I thought I read that he said his previous gliding experiences didn't really help becuase they were so different, and that in fact it was his thousands of hours of honing his energy management on jets that helped.
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Old 10th Jan 2011, 11:49
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l didn`t know he had any gliding experience, l`m afraid.

May l respectfully suggest that you have hard facts concerning that man, and not contentious waffle, since he did actually pull off a blinder.
His time, if he did, selling Tony`s lce Cream from a van would not matter a jot.

Ask his pax.

Mungo l don`t bear grudges, life is far too short for that. When you get that elusive left seat, as you will, you will find for starters it`s the most lonely and scariest place in the universe, and eventually you will find you stop staggering under the weight of four gold bars.
At that point you will have the choice of airmanship or bull****.

Now that is the crux of the matter, in my humble opinion, so please don`t get it wrong. Bye.

Last edited by overun; 10th Jan 2011 at 14:03. Reason: a fresh breath.
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Old 10th Jan 2011, 12:08
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Originally Posted by overrun
contentious waffle
??? I'm just quoting from the man's book.
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Old 10th Jan 2011, 13:51
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foreign slang glossary

will someone publish a foreign (to me) slang glossary. I don't have a clue what the last two posts mean.

it seems to me that sully made a left turn, flew a certain speed and kept the wings level till splashdown.

I'd like to think that every ATP on this forum could do the same thing. Gliding experience? I don't think he was looking for thermals do you? I recall when the four basics of flight were climbs, straight and level, turns and glides (the word glide being replaced by descent)
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Old 10th Jan 2011, 14:35
  #187 (permalink)  
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In partial answer to the question set in the title: it will continue to seem like a dying breed.

There are a few considerations that haven't appeared here yet.

One is the natural limitations on talent. In the 1990's, when the true awfulness of much SW was becoming known to a wider public, a friend of mine, who knew everybody when he started and is still known by everybody, relayed a comment by one of his (even) older colleagues: "you know, when I started in the '60's, there were probably about thirty good programmers in the world. Things haven't changed."

Pick the competence level: there are a certain number of people in the world who interest themselves enough, train enough, and are good enough, to hold a particular flying standard with that level of training and recurrent training. Maybe not all of them are flying professionally, and maybe one can encourage more to do so, but once the level is picked the numbers are thereby limited.

What happens if you need 20-30% more pilots than that? Well, it's going to cost 40-50% more, because the ones you get are going to need more training, more recurrency, more everything to maintain the standard than the ones you already have. Or you're going to have to lower the standard. It's just the way things are.

Now, this consideration isn't decisive. Because we actually do have more talented programmers and computer scientists in the world than we had in the 1990's (let alone the 1960's) and that is because talented people are attracted. Math is dead-end; physics is dead-end; suppose you like technical detail: go into computer security. It's a huge growth industry, starting from almost nothing (pure military apps) in the mid-1980's.

But that doesn't seem to be happening in airline flying because of the Sullenberger-PJ2 considerations. Since I have been reading Aviation Week (mid 1980's) there have been regular letters complaining about a similar situation in aeronautical engineering. Talented people were apparently now going to computer companies or finance (which got technical).

Second is the type of training. The different aspects of understanding and flying the fundamentals versus following the magenta line have been done to death in a few dozen threads here. So I won't reiterate that. But I will say in all likelihood the magenta line wins out. It wins for different reasons than in my first point above; I have in mind two. One is that it embodies judgements about flying logistics that largely cannot be calculated in real-time by two flying crew, so management likes it, even savvy management, and they do run the show. The second is a phenomenon called by John Adams "risk homeostasis" and by some others "risk compensation". I was driven around town in a recent snowstorm by a taxi driver who drove in slippery conditions as if he were on just a wet road. He was relying completely on ESP and ABS to maintain his vehicle in its accustomed mode of proceeding, in case he should misjudge a situation. It worked (not just for my trip, obviously). That's what people do, and pilots and their managers are no different. And it works (until it doesn't). If that is what you are mainly used to, then flying the raw data is going to be proportionately less familiar, no matter what your level of talent and professionalism.

Third is a phenomenon highlighted by Guppy and countered by Jabiman. NA is a place in which you can accumulate the kind of experience recounted by Guppy. So is Oz. For all I know, so is Brazil. Not many other places. You can't get it any more in Europe, and the East, where growth is at present, is not known for its wide-open spaces and inexpensive private aviation culture. So people are going to be ab initio trained and put in the right seat. Like it or not. The question - with 200 hours or with 2000 hours? - has already been answered. I guess that, unless the accident statistics get, quickly, a lot worse, it is not going to go up from where it is now, which is low-hundreds (except in those places with a plethora of high-time pilots without jobs, such as the US). Correspondingly, avionics will be designed to cope with this situation.

There is an article in The Economist this week which addresses some of the economic phenomena of contemporary transport flying. I introduced it, but a moderator thoughtfully relegated it to the "Passengers and SLF" Forum here, where it is sure to get a lot of attention from those discussing the changes in the flying profession. On a private list, it was discussed by an IFATCA executive, PJ2, and people intimately involved in assessing the major 1990's ATC upgrades in Canada, UK, Australia, and the US. The consensus is that the ATC upgrade problem is not due to controllers' views or actions, but largely due to technical difficulties and the airlines themselves not wanting to move to a variable-pricing slot model. The question arose why avionics are comparatively so advanced and ATC systems up until now so technically troubled (this has begun to change with systems such as iFACTS, which have been developed using Correct-by-Construction techniques).

The reason such considerations are relevant to the cockpit situation is that the beancounters always win (to complete the argument, put this together with my points one and two above). But the question is what beans they count. Do they count the beans they didn't have to grow but might have had to if a couple of truckloads had tipped over on the highway? Not according to PJ2. Safety (which is ultimately what this thread is about) is a hidden variable as things now stand. The trick is to make it explicit, along with its price, and no one here has yet suggested how to do that. To do it, one has to understand the entire economic environment. To my mind, the above article is part of that.

PBL
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Old 10th Jan 2011, 14:45
  #188 (permalink)  
 
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l didn`t know he had any gliding experience, l`m afraid.
What is it that you're afraid of? Yes, he had gliding experience.
May l respectfully suggest that you have hard facts concerning that man, and not contentious waffle, since he did actually pull off a blinder.
His time, if he did, selling Tony`s lce Cream from a van would not matter a jot.
I don't know what a "blinder" is, but it's also not what Sully said:

A&S Interview: Sully?s Tale | Flight Today | Air & Space Magazine
The way I describe this whole experience—and I haven’t had time to reflect on it sufficiently—is that everything I had done in my career had in some way been a preparation for that moment. There were probably some things that were more important than others or that applied more directly. But I felt like everything I’d done in some way contributed to the outcome—of course along with [the actions of] my first officer and the flight attendant crew, the cooperative behavior of the passengers during the evacuation, and the prompt and efficient response of the first responders in New York.
Sully made a power-off, off-field forced landing. He's not the first to ditch, he's not the first to glide, and he's not the first to do either one successfully. He did an excellent job, as did his FO. He should be expected to do nothing less, no should any one of us.

I just read Sully's book and I thought I read that he said his previous gliding experiences didn't really help becuase they were so different, and that in fact it was his thousands of hours of honing his energy management on jets that helped.
Reading the above referenced interview, you may be correct: Sully is asked about his gliding background, and he states the following:

I get asked that question about my gliding experience a lot, but that was so long ago, and those [gliders] are so different from a modern jet airliner, I think the transfer [of experience] was not large. There are more recent experiences I’ve had that played a greater role.

One of the big differences in flying heavy jets versus flying lighter, smaller aircraft is energy management—always knowing at any part of the flight what the most desirable flight path is, then trying to attain that in an elegant way with the minimum thrust, so that you never are too high or too low or too fast or too slow. I’ve always paid attention to that, and I think that more than anything else helped me.
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Old 10th Jan 2011, 15:19
  #189 (permalink)  
 
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So what exactly is your interest Guppy ?

Envy perhaps ?
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Old 10th Jan 2011, 15:32
  #190 (permalink)  
 
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No! I think he tells the thruth...that's all true what he said...if you read his posts more and follow on pprune him then you'll realize that he acquired his extensive aeronautical knowledge by retaining lots of humility and respect for aircraft..
read about his run-in with Kathleen Sclachter.. [ primary contributor on AC-0.045]...

.UAL-232---was special...
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Old 10th Jan 2011, 15:59
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l don`t have a clue mate, my fault l`m sure.

Could you please explain ?
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Old 10th Jan 2011, 16:03
  #192 (permalink)  
 
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http://www.pprune.org/4350737-post2.html

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Old 10th Jan 2011, 16:12
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Ah. A polite cough is called for.

Thankyou.

l feel quite depressed now, is there any good news?

Anything will do.

Last edited by overun; 10th Jan 2011 at 16:25. Reason: just re-read
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Old 10th Jan 2011, 16:52
  #194 (permalink)  
 
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How about this then?

Safety (which is ultimately what this thread is about) is a hidden variable as things now stand. The trick is to make it explicit, along with its price, and no one here has yet suggested how to do that. To do it, one has to understand the entire economic environment.

That nicely gets to the crux of the matter.
In team sports, the difference between a top professional player and an average one could physically be very minor and yet the difference in salary could be an order of magnitude (10x) or more. The economic reason is competition between teams for these players.
In the general workforce, these pressures are not so pronounced and while professions which experience shortages may have rapid wage growth and a large premium placed on ability, this does not generally happen for piloting.
My idea for rectifying this competitive deficiency is to regulate airlines so that they have to show the experience of the flight crew as part of the booking process.
In this way passengers have a choice as to flying with an inexperienced crew or possibly paying more for greater experience.
Initially I suggested this to be quantified by showing the number of hours of experience that the Captain and FO possess but as we all know, hours does not = experience.
But herein lays the problem, possibly the number of years that the pilot has been flying.
Regardless of how the experience is measured, I believe that it would create a competition between the airlines for the better rated crew and therefore this would lead to the unusual situation of pilot salaries going up rather than down.
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Old 10th Jan 2011, 17:03
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lt doesn`t seem to work with taxis, l`ve tried avoiding the ones with lumps out but the price is the same.

Is there a friend of Guppies out there who is able to make direct contact by phone, etc. ? to make sure he`s ok ?

A bit concerned about this, he`s gone quiet, too quiet.

Apparently not.

Last edited by overun; 10th Jan 2011 at 19:08. Reason: a concern.
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Old 10th Jan 2011, 18:32
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Rivalino.

Could l put a couple of quid your way for a signed first edition ?
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Old 10th Jan 2011, 22:31
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A bit concerned about this, he`s gone quiet, too quiet.
Your point? I posted this morning. You think I don't post enough?

How is this relevant to the thread?

read about his run-in with Kathleen Sclachter.
Who is Kathleen Sclachter?

So what exactly is your interest Guppy ?
In what? In the thread, or Sully? Read the thread; it's fairly self-explanatory.
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Old 11th Jan 2011, 07:20
  #198 (permalink)  
 
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Safety (which is ultimately what this thread is about) is a hidden variable as things now stand. The trick is to make it explicit, along with its price, and no one here has yet suggested how to do that.
I'll make some suggestions to start the debate.

1) regulations should be clear and not open to interpretation
2) regulators regulate to the rule instead of the prevailing economic climate

Most issues would solve themselves if the above were adhered to.
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Old 11th Jan 2011, 14:26
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the Wright's learned things first hand that I could only read about.

Lindbergh knew things that I have never known in person.

And I know a few things that won't be easily passed on to others.

But I do think, in any real training scheme, that the thirst for aeronautical knowledge be made part of the course.

Let me ask this question for honest answers. Mind you I am aware of the changes to modern television from 40 years ago.

IF YOU WERE out in a highly rural area, seemingly lost, in a small plane and you came upon a farm house with a television antenna, could you use this for some form of navigation?

think about it and answer.

Now, if you have never heard of this, you have learned something.

Also ask yourself what flying in a triangular pattern while making right turns means...and with left turns.

Its all about self motivation to learn things.
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Old 11th Jan 2011, 14:48
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I know the first one. The narrowest part of the antenna points to a major city where the TV transmitter is located. The left and right triangles have to do with your receiver being operational or not as I recall. I think right turns is with an operative receiver. Without a transponder which would make this an easy fix I doubt if any controller would notice you before you ran out of gas. Now with analog TV being gone the little digital antennas aren't being used much so at least you could see where south was using the Directv antennas depending on what region you were in. Remember flying the old 727 types with no magenta line? Entering holding was fun then. You couldn't just push a button. Now getting an instrument rating probably only requires a 10 hr typing course. That will probably be standard in 2020.
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