The Less experience - the less "Bad habits" you accrue. Discuss
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The Less experience - the less "Bad habits" you accrue. Discuss
The latest Aviation Week & Space Technology has a letter to the editor; an extract from which says:
"You do not need 1500 hours to be an airline pilot. In fact, the less time you have the better because you have fewer bad habits to overcome. Many high-time pilots - both civil and military - arrive at the airlines with careless habits and attitudes that must be remedied."
That myth has been peddled for years. Let's forget for a moment the outrageous generalisations by the writer. But he echoes a point of view I have seen countless times on Pprune when it comes to the subject of why do airlines often prefer to hire low hour pilots into the second in command seat of a jet transport rather than draw from a pool of experienced candidates? Perhaps the most common theme used by recruiters is the assertion that experienced pilots carry with them bad habits into an airline. This begs the question what specifically are these dreadful habits that have the potential to cause death and destruction to airline passengers?
Is it a tendency from their early flying training on light singles to bounce on landing? Will they carry that over to landing an Airbus? Or how about the same pilot has a bad habit of speaking too fast on the radio? Or being a crop duster skilled in low flying, does it follow he will naturally be tempted to indulge in a bit of low flying in a 777 if he gets a job as an airline pilot?
Or maybe if he is a charter pilot used to unserviceable automatic pilots and thus skilled at hand flying in IMC, he will be tempted to hand fly his A380 in IMC at 40,000ft? Or how about if our airline candidate flew F18's doing deck landings on aircraft carriers, maybe he would bring him a bad habit of applying full power on touch-down and instinctively do the same on touch down in his 737.
Where does all this nonsense stop? All candidates joining an airline will usually undergo a type rating in a simulator. That applies to a 200 hour cadet as well as a 5000 hour ex military or general aviation operator. I have yet to hear of specific "bad habits" from their previous employment that have to be unlearned or "remedied" that would otherwise have the potential to cause an accident in an A320, 747, 737, Dash Eight or a B787.
For too long, this unfounded perceived fear of "bad habits" going right through an airline career despite hundreds of simulator check rides and line training, has been used as an excuse to avoid the hiring of experienced commercial and military pilots in favour of a 200 hour cadet with no experience outside of a flying school environment.
If the real reason behind hiring cadets direct from flying schools is cost cutting, then why don't the hiring agencies say so. But please don't put up the feeble excuse it saves the airline from spending time and money knocking out the bad habits allegedly inherent with experienced candidates.
"You do not need 1500 hours to be an airline pilot. In fact, the less time you have the better because you have fewer bad habits to overcome. Many high-time pilots - both civil and military - arrive at the airlines with careless habits and attitudes that must be remedied."
That myth has been peddled for years. Let's forget for a moment the outrageous generalisations by the writer. But he echoes a point of view I have seen countless times on Pprune when it comes to the subject of why do airlines often prefer to hire low hour pilots into the second in command seat of a jet transport rather than draw from a pool of experienced candidates? Perhaps the most common theme used by recruiters is the assertion that experienced pilots carry with them bad habits into an airline. This begs the question what specifically are these dreadful habits that have the potential to cause death and destruction to airline passengers?
Is it a tendency from their early flying training on light singles to bounce on landing? Will they carry that over to landing an Airbus? Or how about the same pilot has a bad habit of speaking too fast on the radio? Or being a crop duster skilled in low flying, does it follow he will naturally be tempted to indulge in a bit of low flying in a 777 if he gets a job as an airline pilot?
Or maybe if he is a charter pilot used to unserviceable automatic pilots and thus skilled at hand flying in IMC, he will be tempted to hand fly his A380 in IMC at 40,000ft? Or how about if our airline candidate flew F18's doing deck landings on aircraft carriers, maybe he would bring him a bad habit of applying full power on touch-down and instinctively do the same on touch down in his 737.
Where does all this nonsense stop? All candidates joining an airline will usually undergo a type rating in a simulator. That applies to a 200 hour cadet as well as a 5000 hour ex military or general aviation operator. I have yet to hear of specific "bad habits" from their previous employment that have to be unlearned or "remedied" that would otherwise have the potential to cause an accident in an A320, 747, 737, Dash Eight or a B787.
For too long, this unfounded perceived fear of "bad habits" going right through an airline career despite hundreds of simulator check rides and line training, has been used as an excuse to avoid the hiring of experienced commercial and military pilots in favour of a 200 hour cadet with no experience outside of a flying school environment.
If the real reason behind hiring cadets direct from flying schools is cost cutting, then why don't the hiring agencies say so. But please don't put up the feeble excuse it saves the airline from spending time and money knocking out the bad habits allegedly inherent with experienced candidates.
Last edited by Tee Emm; 11th Oct 2013 at 09:55.
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If the real reason behind hiring cadets direct from flying schools is cost cutting, then why don't the hiring agencies say so.
Granted, there are situations when the comparatively quick and effortless judgment and action of an experienced person may lead to a mistake which a newbie who proceeds slowly and meticulously would have avoided, but that has little to nothing to do with bad or careless habits. Supersized egos and a reluctance to be corrected by a less experienced crew member may be a burden, too, but are not necessarily related to experience. Also, the research I know has shown that time-on-type is more important than overall flying experience, but that, too, is a completely different subject than "bad habits".
However, to be fair, I do not think that management's preference for less experienced (and younger?) pilots is just about money. They will also swallow more pinstripe-suit BS than seasoned professionals.
Last edited by Armchairflyer; 11th Oct 2013 at 11:06.
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you are the pilot you will be at 200 hours...if you are sloppy by then, you will be a sloppy pilot, if you are disciplined, your flying will show it for many years to come.
but low time pilots have not had the experience...the times you have seen things fall apart, or recognize from reality, wx conditions that could be harmful.
if someone hires a low time pilot, it is because they are young and likely will be with the airline for many years...waiting to upgrade.
I got hired at a major airline at about 5000 hours...I came to work and did my job from day one...minor things like how to fill out time sheets or make reports took a little while...but flying, talking on the radio, etc...ready from day one.
but low time pilots have not had the experience...the times you have seen things fall apart, or recognize from reality, wx conditions that could be harmful.
if someone hires a low time pilot, it is because they are young and likely will be with the airline for many years...waiting to upgrade.
I got hired at a major airline at about 5000 hours...I came to work and did my job from day one...minor things like how to fill out time sheets or make reports took a little while...but flying, talking on the radio, etc...ready from day one.
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Remember the old saying: "you start with a full bag of luck and an empty bag of experience. The trick is to fill the bag of experience before you empty the bag of luck..."
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Granted, there are situations when the comparatively quick and effortless judgment and action of an experienced person may lead to a mistake which a newbie who proceeds slowly and meticulously would have avoided
In Human Factors it is a general view that premature decisions and too fast judgements are more frequent among less experienced crews than the more experienced.
This I can verify by my own observations from both left and right seat as well as in the simulators
As a sidenote it is quite amusing when you can tell the experience level of a first officer by the speed of his/her after start flow on the overhead panel. The less experience the quicker they pull all the switches.
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That experienced crews more frequently tend to use quick heuristics (not even yet available to the inexperienced newbie) which are mostly but not always correct is not a personal assumption but a finding from HF research, summarized e.g. in the following passage (for the medical field, but the same principle applies to the cockpit, too):
"(...) there is also evidence that as physicians gain experience and expertise, most problems are solved by some sort of pattern recognition process, either by recalling prior similar cases, attending to prototypical features, or other similar strategies. As Eva and Norman (ref) and Klein(ref) have emphasized, most of the time this pattern recognition serves the clinician well. However, it is during the times when it does not work, whether because of lack of knowledge or because of the inherent shortcomings of heuristic problem solving, that overconfidence may occur."
(Eta S. Berner, & Mark L. Graber, 2008: Overconfidence as a Cause of Diagnostic Error in Medicine. The American Journal of Medicine, Vol 121 (5A), S2–S23)
Taking the British Midland Flight 92 (Kegworth) accident as an illustration: the smell of smoke prompted the captain who was experienced with the 737 to quickly identify the right engine as the malfunctioning one (which was a wrong clue owing to Boeing's redesign of the bleed air system). An inexperienced crew without that readily available in-depth knowledge about the 737 would not have had any quick clue for heuristic thinking and would therefore have had to more slowly and meticulously analyze the problem (e.g., by looking at the small and apparently not too clear vibration indicators).
This does not contradict the assertion that the heuristics used by inexperienced crews are usually less accurate and often overlook important aspects that experienced crews are aware of, leading to "jumping to wrong conclusions" more frequently.
"(...) there is also evidence that as physicians gain experience and expertise, most problems are solved by some sort of pattern recognition process, either by recalling prior similar cases, attending to prototypical features, or other similar strategies. As Eva and Norman (ref) and Klein(ref) have emphasized, most of the time this pattern recognition serves the clinician well. However, it is during the times when it does not work, whether because of lack of knowledge or because of the inherent shortcomings of heuristic problem solving, that overconfidence may occur."
(Eta S. Berner, & Mark L. Graber, 2008: Overconfidence as a Cause of Diagnostic Error in Medicine. The American Journal of Medicine, Vol 121 (5A), S2–S23)
Taking the British Midland Flight 92 (Kegworth) accident as an illustration: the smell of smoke prompted the captain who was experienced with the 737 to quickly identify the right engine as the malfunctioning one (which was a wrong clue owing to Boeing's redesign of the bleed air system). An inexperienced crew without that readily available in-depth knowledge about the 737 would not have had any quick clue for heuristic thinking and would therefore have had to more slowly and meticulously analyze the problem (e.g., by looking at the small and apparently not too clear vibration indicators).
This does not contradict the assertion that the heuristics used by inexperienced crews are usually less accurate and often overlook important aspects that experienced crews are aware of, leading to "jumping to wrong conclusions" more frequently.
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Taking the British Midland Flight 92 (Kegworth) accident as an illustration: the smell of smoke prompted the captain who was experienced with the 737 to quickly identify the right engine as the malfunctioning one (which was a wrong clue owing to Boeing's redesign of the bleed air system). An inexperienced crew without that readily available in-depth knowledge about the 737 would not have had any quick clue for heuristic thinking and would therefore have had to more slowly and meticulously analyze the problem (e.g., by looking at the small and apparently not too clear vibration indicators).
Could this example not aid the argument for inexperienced crews having less 'bad habits' though ?
The BMI captain made the decision to shut down, what turned out to be the wrong engine, based on a learned assumption of the smoke being due to the bleed off the right hand engine.
Devils advocate here, but surely a less experienced crew, whilst making a slower decision, may ultimately made the right decision by evaluating the information in front of them, rather than going off an assumption ?
Whilst hangar, not cockpit, based my experience has been that whilst experience goes along way it is not an automatic right to be deemed 'better'.
Many a time I've seen experienced engineers have made mistakes based on their assumption / 'hunch' that turns out to be based on a previous experience that in fact wasn't relevant to the situation they were dealing with.
Safe flying
Tech_log
Could this example not aid the argument for inexperienced crews having less 'bad habits' though ?
The BMI captain made the decision to shut down, what turned out to be the wrong engine, based on a learned assumption of the smoke being due to the bleed off the right hand engine.
Devils advocate here, but surely a less experienced crew, whilst making a slower decision, may ultimately made the right decision by evaluating the information in front of them, rather than going off an assumption ?
Whilst hangar, not cockpit, based my experience has been that whilst experience goes along way it is not an automatic right to be deemed 'better'.
Many a time I've seen experienced engineers have made mistakes based on their assumption / 'hunch' that turns out to be based on a previous experience that in fact wasn't relevant to the situation they were dealing with.
Safe flying
Tech_log
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Doesn't matter much what paddock one is looking at .. characteristic management by the old bull is tied to heuristic behaviour while that for the young bull is characterised by testosterone-fuelled risk taking, partly due to the genetics and partly due to blissful ignorance and the Darwin Principle's not having caught up with the particular individual ...
Trick for the expert is to merge that characteristic with a semblance of conservatism .. ie the sage admonition "first, sit on your hands for a bit".
We can all get bitten if we let our guard down ... for instance, I just (inadvertently because I wasn't thinking and being alert enough) closed this window and lost my first cut at this post.
Penalty = having to do it over. No big deal.
We rely heavily on experience teaching us when we can be a bit relaxed (because the consequences aren't earth shattering) and when we could get bitten badly so we had better get it right first time.
Trick for the expert is to merge that characteristic with a semblance of conservatism .. ie the sage admonition "first, sit on your hands for a bit".
We can all get bitten if we let our guard down ... for instance, I just (inadvertently because I wasn't thinking and being alert enough) closed this window and lost my first cut at this post.
Penalty = having to do it over. No big deal.
We rely heavily on experience teaching us when we can be a bit relaxed (because the consequences aren't earth shattering) and when we could get bitten badly so we had better get it right first time.
