No. The regulator should be held to account as each airline abides by the regulator.

Case in point, the FAA post-Colgan. But does 1500hrs maketh the pilot, probably not. That's a different argument.

An experience level league table without context is pointless. To add context would make the league table pointless as it would be a massive document. Ergo let the regulators do their jobs and hold them to account.

You say that transparency is part of improving safety and reducing corruption. Would transparency be meaningful in this area after all the replies you've had so far? Who is corrupt?

I'd bet that there are more commercial jet transport incidents & accidents attributable to folk with very high hours than very low hours. I sense a personal agenda here, as your point is moot.

I posted the following answer in another thread, but copy it below.

The insurance industry seem to know how to asses risk when writing paper on the various aircraft and pilots we {my wife and I} have owned and employed over the years , if they don't get it right they will be belly up in no time, {as indeed did happen to a discount insurer a few years back} maybe we should look at whatever system they use to asses risk in a more meaningful way than straight hours?

Sorry but it's absurd to suggest that I have an agenda because I believe that the low experience levels operated by some Airlines needs to be addressed. The managements of these Airlines and the training organisations clearly have the agenda.

Bealzebub, your historical information is interesting but it is irrelevant because the era of the super low experience crew has only been around for a very short while and statistically there has not been time to prove it safe or not.

Experience is like a brand, you buy Coca-Cola rather than the other cola because you know you can trust it. You and your 15,000 hour mate in the RHS are a brand, we know you've seen a lot and we know we can trust you. That 3000 hour crew may have been exceptional in the simulator but we certainly don't know yet if we can trust them in the real world.

Even I would not send my family with that 3000 hour crew so of course this information would never be allowed to be public.

As somebody previously posted, Soux city would have been a lot more bereaved families and the Hudson River would have been the New york city disaster had it not been for very experienced pilots on board.

I don't doubt that training and good procedures are very important, but experience is even more important. League tables would show who is cutting corners on this most vital aspect of safety. There is a need for it and would be a demand for it, if it was available.

Forget discussing the self improver, it hasn't existed for the best part of two decades.

Telling the public meaningless numbers about pilot hours, that are supposed to indicate safety levels does not seem like a great idea to me. However I'm sure that in the event of an accident, the media will have a field day if one or both of the pilots is found to have low levels of experience.

It's the job of the regulator to ensure that standards are kept high and part of that is maintaining experience levels. Instead, many European regulators have allowed a dysfunctional environment to build up where experience is seen as worthless. Airlines seek to drive everything down to the minimum and attract talent from a pool of applicant, massively diluted by being based on the ability to pay for training. Huge staff turnover in some cases is just seen as means of raising more training revenue and driving cost down further. This is what has to be got accross to the public.

In a democracy the regulator's are answerable to a free media, like it or not. It is the way it has to be to ensure that they do their jobs properly.

Kungfu Panda, you wrote:
"Bealzebub, your historical information is interesting but it is irrelevant because the era of the super low experience crew has only been around for a very short while and statistically there has not been time to prove it safe or not."

On what data are you basing your assertion? If you can share your source perhaps we can have a more informed debate. In the past two airlines I have worked for (both big companies) the average flightdeck experience is significantly higher than when I started flying a decade ago.

speedrestriction- I prefer not to talk about the individual Airlines, I understand that many Airlines operate with high average experience.

There are a couple airlines which I know are moving to operating 2500 hour Captains or little more with recently graduated cadets. As JS says "I couldn't disagree with this more" to me it is obviously unsafe.

I do believe that regulators should be answering much more to the media or to their government but currently they seem to have a free hand.

Keep digging; your hole is getting bigger by the moment.

I just want to post something my wife just said after reading this thread:

A few years ago her little cousin did an advanced driving course with the RAC. He was bragging to her that he was now officially a safer driver than his Mum and Dad. Three weeks later he crashed his brand new MX-5 into a tree.
years later he acknowledges he was a little immature.

I did my first flight as captain of a four-engined turboprop with exactly 1474 hrs and 30 mins in my log book. I retired in 2006 having flown professionally for 47 years without even scraping the paint off a wingtip and having subsequently taught dozens and dozens of young men how to be professional airmen.

To my knowledge, not one of them has ever let me down.

I really think you would do yourself an enormous favour to drop this ridiculous argument.

You are quite simply trying to flog a dead horse and the average punter wouldn't give a monkey's for your idea even if you could get someone in serious power to listen to you.

Sorry to be so negative.

Thanks JW411- I totally agree that I'm flogging a dead horse but sorry, I want to flog it...

I don't think the argument is ridiculous.

I don't have your experience but I have enough to know that you get safer the more you have, generally. I am also aware that the experience levels in some Airlines are becoming much lower now than they were at any Airline before you retired. Respect for experience has also been largely discarded since you retired.

Do me favour though, don't tell me that I'm digging myself a hole again, I think this is the second time. Thank you.

Yet you seem to have little problem in suggesting other people have agendas based on nothing more than your own absurd construction?

So "historical information" is irrelevant and the basis of your assertion lacks any evidence to suggest it is "safe or not"?

Regulators are an emanation of the state so they do and are answerable to the government of that state. As far as I am aware they also provide information to the media when requested or required. However I assume you mean the same media that is subject to unending criticism for its lack of insight, accuracy, or understanding in most of the threads on these forums?

Yes, I am curious as well. I have been flying professionally for over 35 years and haven't seen a significant overall reduction of quantitative experience in the flight deck. In the case of cadet first officers, they have been around long before I started flying. They didn't figure much in accident reports 40 years ago, thirty years ago, twenty years ago, ten years ago, or last year! "Experienced" pilots on the other hand......!

Look, the vast majority of professional pilots are committed, dedicated, mature, and intelligent individuals. Experience is then simply a measure of the quantitative time period they have spent developing those qualities in those roles. These days I see a lot of relatively young F/O's who attain the requirements on a sustained basis for a command at or around the minimum levels set down for such consideration. Unless they consistently demonstrate those standards that promotion will simply not happen. It isn't a right of passage or indeed a right of anything. Many individuals will not meet the required standards at the minimum point for doing so, and so will require more "experience" and development in their current roles before being considered further. A few will simply never make the grade. Of course in this latter group you are going to find some of the most "experienced" F/O's on the planet. However that "experience" in some cases is a by-product of not meeting the necessary standards for promotion. Do you think the "media" should be provided with this information so it can provide the transparency and "league tables" with which the public can then supposedly make their informed choices?

league tables are all well and good in reinforcing what you want to believe, but they rarely provide an honest or accurate overall picture. For example, take one that already exists such as delay statistics. There are few of us that aren't familiar with the concept of pushing back off stand on schedule to satisfy the league tables, only to spend lengthy periods of time sitting on a remote holding stand waiting for our delayed slot time to roll around. Similarly, those airlines who simply cancel their flights in order to avoid appearing in the delay statistics. I think the OP mentioned school league tables, yet the best (often private) schools are exempt from appearing in such tables thereby distorting the real picture.

JS- I absolutely do not ignore the evidence presented to me, I think as you can tell, I have read all the posts written in reply to mine.

I regard Easyjet highly as an Airline who have a structured career path which appears to respect it's pilots experience and wishes to retain that experience. Unfortunately that does not apply to some other European operators.

What evidence would you like me to back up my opinion with?

I know you quote Ryanair and Easyjet's safety record which in the case of Easyjet has been very good. I would imagine that experience levels at Easyjet are going up. However other LCC's in Europe are shifting further to lower experience.

Have you seen enough with 2500 hours to be a Captain for the first time and fly with newly graduated F/O's?

Am I wrong in making the assertion that this is happening?

In a few months they will reduce minimum command time to 1500 hours and you will articulately be telling me how safe that is, and that I'm flogging a dead horse complaining about it.

Ryanair pilots are trained to good standards, but so are many other airlines as well. The issue with inexperience though in my book if something goes wrong is you are less likely to perform as well as somebody having more experience. The more you do do something , anything, the actual skill gradually gets transferred from the one part of the memory to the motor memory and once there it enables you to free capacity and focus on other things while flying. Improving decision making as you don´t have to think so much of the actual flying, whilst still flying to good standards.

Of course there are ways airlines can try and mitigate lack of experience and one of them is to implement procedure instead micromanaging, for the inexperienced to learn by rote and apply live if needed. But to me it is still not the same.

To me it´s a function of capacity, ability and experience. Ability and capacity increase with experience so there is no shortcuts.

Of course with experience comes complacency, not doing the right thing, despite knowing better, but that is another issue.

Thread theme is a load of :mad:.

Give the public experience levels? WTF for and who precisely is going to be paid to accurately collate, validate and publicise the data? You clearly have never worked outside a 1st world country before....

'Experience is an inference of ability'

That's why people give a 'work sample' at a job interview, in our case a sim ride.

Not foolproof, but a more valid way of measuring ability.

I'm suggesting a personal agenda, as you're ignoring the logical, well reasoned replies! You're not bringing any facts or evidence to the discussion.

An airline I used to work for upgraded at 1800 hours if you fitted the bill and passed the assessment. No accidents on their record.

Experience isn't like a brand, a brand is like a brand, and that is all about marketing. Ryanair was founded 11 years before easyJet, but I'd suggest that the public would have a higher opinion of easyJet. Ryanair and Virgin Atlantic started up in the same year, same argument applies.

Extensive levels of low experience could be a concern, but that is a matter for the regulator and not to be resolved by publishing a table in the Daily Mail.

calmcavok- Thankyou, there is no personal agenda.

I believe clearly that there is an issue here which I want to address, I understand that nothing will change by addressing it here but I'd like to put this view out there.

The problem is not the BA cadetship, which has as rightly said been going for many years, or the Easyjet Cadet scheme which is correctly combined with a career structure which allows cadets to be introduced into a professional environment with an abundance of experience.

The issue we are discussing is a new situation where non-career structures are introducing cadets into an environment where there is an abundance of very low experience within the Captain group and even the training Captain group, low experience in combination with very localised Flying.

I agree that I don't present a lot of evidence but if I'm wrong and this does not happen then please clarify that for me because my understanding is that it is happening.

If the Airline you worked for truly had a program of upgrading 1800 hour First Officers to Captain on passenger Jet Aircraft then I am absolutely horrified.