For current context to those of you who say there is no issue with current training standards....

I am currently flying for an airline in the UK, lets leave the name out please, and while i did complete an integrated course, before joining said airline i flew para drop, bush flying and small tp airliners.

I would consider myself no better than average and make the odd mistake still despite being here awhile now. Over the last week I am having poor performing FO's who joined the company long before me, from the company's cadet scheme, being hauled off the line to sit on the jumpseat behind me as their performances are not up to standard and their handling skills are poor at best.

You cannot protect against the kind of tragic incident that has happened but we can and should use it as an opportunity to highlight the deficiencies in our industry and hope the regulators do the right thing and follow the Americans.

I think it is in bad taste to make a tragedy like this fit to an ongoing argument about Cadets to prove a point. This tragedy had nothing to do with experience levels, it was affected by mental health and a policy that allows for a single person to be left on the flight deck. It could easily have been the Captain who did the same if he had been the one suffering from a very deep mental instability (remember the Jetblue Captain). The company I fly for changed the policy on toilet breaks immediately and I'm sure many others have as well. There will probably be tighter control on mental health checks both on annual medicals and during recruitment now and this again will address the direct problem that caused this incident.

As for experience levels, there is no doubt that having experience in the area of operation you fly is important. I have often thought that we do things the wrong way around in aviation. The procedural and automated world of airline flying is very clear and can be well trained in the simulator, flying older turbo props requires more hand flying and better raw data IFR skills, and instructing requires experience to pass onto a student. However the pay is in favour of the reverse order. A new pilot has to get experience in one of these areas or come from a military background, he/she will be inexperienced when they start and could likely have passengers onboard. The training environment of an airline is a good place to start in my opinion, once of course they have been through strict selection, a CAA approved training course and a thorough line training programme and passed to the companies standard. Then it comes down to trust in the airlines training programme.

I went through the instructor, turbo prop, Jet route and can speak from experience of flying with many cadets who all seem intelligent, well trained and willing to learn. I also fly with many experienced FO's who come from different backgrounds who are a vital part of keeping overall company experience levels high.

"Should Average Pilot Experience Levels Of Each Airline Be Public?"

Probably covered before, however, what's the exact benefit to the public knowing this? lets take the case of a 20000 Hr Boeing pilot that converts to Airbus, experience no effectively zero on type, probably less aware than a 100 hr cadet with time on type..of course, one could argue " overall experience in the industry" but then we also incorporate all the jurassic hobby flyers retired from the majors dozing half the flight, or the guys only used to procedural ILS city to city now flapping around in " less developed countries" for pin money, If this type of information is made public several things happen" Marketing depts TV ads " or pilots are THE most experienced" Insurance companies have excuses for premium hikes, airlines simply dodge the ball.. really can't see any useful purpose here. My Daughter is a newly qualified doctor, should we extend the principle here " in the public interest" sorry Dr you don't know my Ass from my Elbow? come on, keep the industry sensible..

It's the second time I read you writing this false statement. So I will set you straight.

The Pilot Flying FO, Pierre-Cédric Bonin, had a Glider Licence, period. "Significant gliding time', or "Regular" glider pilot, as you wrote in the other post is just not true. Of course you put a disclaimer in the beginning "deep into the recesses of my memory", so let me refresh your memory :

The BEA final report states he received his Glider licence in 2001, the same year he received his commercial multi IFR. Period. I never saw any other reference that Bonin was a current glider pilot or a glider enthusiasts. He had 2900 hours, most of which was straight and level on autopilot in Fly by Wire aircraft and lacked the most basic flying skills.

No they don't! I certainly don't have any disdain for a category of pilots that includes myself. Ridiculous statement.

Yes perhaps, which rather begs the question why you chose to resurrect this 7 month old thread with this seemingly (let's jump on the band wagon) post:
Have they?

Long before I started in aviation, airlines such as BOAC/BEA (later British airways) and others, were running cadet pilot schemes that placed 200+ hour pilot cadets into jet airliners. They have done this for the last 50 odd years without it raising an eyebrow. I dare say there are many ex-cadets who have fulfilled an entire career and have now retired or have even shuffled off this mortal coil. Other airlines have had long established cadet programmes. I have flown with cadet pilots for the last twenty years without any particular difficulty.

The testing always seemed fit for purpose. The ab-initio training usually provided an excellent base candidate, which likely explains the low failure rate from this group. The reality was that if you took the three main recruitment groups: Military career changers; ab-initio cadets; and experienced career changers (self improvers), sadly, it was always the latter group that threw up the highest failure/re-training percentiles. This was in the days when that latter group mainly comprised 2500-3500 hour pilots.

Perhaps, instead of providing details of the hours, it might be better to provide the global marking scores each pilot achieved on their last half dozen simulator and line checks! I am sure that would provide the customer base with a more meaningful set of parameters with which to arrive at this sophisticated decision. I am still not quite sure how you would do this, or why it would be necessary, but I am guessing it might not be quite such a popular suggestion amongst some of the usual howlers on this subject!

I don't think you have had any "abusive" replies, although presumably you mean something along the lines of: :hmm:

Its not how many hours you put in, its what you put in the hours.

Average experience is pretty useless anyway. For example average experience for FOs in my company is probably around 5000 to 7000 hours, captains somewhere around 12 to 15k hours. However, we do exclusively hire out of our own flight school which was actually the first approved MPL school in the country. Entry level experience when starting the line training is probably around 80 to 100 hours real flight time and around 300 hours simulator time. And surprisingly those youngsters are eager to learn and are actually pretty good pilots. Of course raw data manual flight is encouraged in my company and visual approaches, although not allowed in our home country airports anymore, are still a common thing and enjoyed by most.