Should Average Pilot Experience Levels Of Each Airline Be Public?
 

I'm not trying to argue the benefit of experience or not but the first issue the media was interested in after both the Asiana accident and the Malaysian disappearance was the experience level of the crews.

It seems to me that Pilot experience is of public interest and to maintain transparency in the industry would it not be reasonable for an experience league table to exist for use by the media?

I can foresee a couple of companies that wouldn't be too keen to run with that idea.

I think it would make for interesting reading!

Also i'm with Captplaystation above...and i don't think anyone would be suprised as to which airlines those turn out to be! :}

Hours really say nothing.
It is the amount of approaches that count, as well as the operational environment.

I accept that view despegue but that is a different argument the first thing CNN and the BBC want to know is......Hours

And why is that? So they can feed speculation on even root cause before the facts are known?

Desp.

I accept the approach & environment issue but hours do bring an increasing awareness when things are beginning to go awry! Hours help you spot a problem before it happens, hopefully!! Hours also tend to bring a maturity, not easy for us!!!!

I think this is an interesting idea - maybe using a total time/landings score.

That way the public *might* be dissuaded against going for the cheapest ticket price, which, let's face it, is unsustainable.

I guess is remarkable to Point out that in some airlines the first officer duty is to raise the Landing gear up while in some other less "well sighted" in Just 1-2 years of operations you do as pf plenty of cirlcing and tought approach environment..Just a guess. ..

They are nearly always published as part of an accident report.

I am not sure why it would it would be particularly helpful?

I recall replying to somebody a while ago about experience levels not necessarily having a correlation to accidents. That reply is reproduced here.

It is clear that many passengers believe that crew experience level is an important part of safety. Why would league tables not be available to help them make their own decision?

In my view some Airlines are reducing experience to critically low levels and consumer information should be available. Pilot experience ranks higher in Imortance to many people than lost luggage and on-time arrivals.

All I think is transparency should be equally applied to all issues.

Looking at recent media coverage in case of an incident the first thing the public want to know is what level of experience the crew had.

Beazlebub- I agree experience is no guarantee of safety. Just one aspect.

Experience is not understood by the public. The whole technical part of flying is not understood by the public. Just refer to a "nice landing".

A license issued by a contracting state should be looked upon as such. There should be no need to have a letter issued by that state that this license is genuine.
If pilots want to cheat, it is much easier to cheat in flying hours, than faking the complete license.

Last, but not least, flying hours say nothing, as mentioned before.
In times where everybody can buy a license, and airplanes are so reliable on automatics, one can fly half a life span without knowing what is going on.

Lateonite- It is a very very good point that everybody can buy a license these days therefore maybe experience is far more important than the license itself.

Regarding issuing authorities they provide a legal minimum as they do for fuel. That does not mean that legal minimum fuel is necessarily safe and if a Mayday occurs due to low fuel the public have the right to know, the same applies to legal minimum experience. In my view as Airlines are driven by cost cutting it is essential the public are kept informed of where those costs are being cut, Pilot experience is one important safety area.

A league table of average Pilot experience in Airlines would provide a guide to the public as to which Airlines truly put safety ahead of costs.

I understand that there is a lot of kick back to this view because it does not benefit cost cutting management's and it does not benefit young guys trying to move up the ladder faster than maybe is sensible. Therefore maybe it is even more important to have this kind of league table?

You can't judge crew's abilities only by experience in flight hours. I have no idea about the average experience of crews at Air France, but since it's a legacy carrier, I'd assume they don't tend to have 3000h captains. Compare their (temporary) LOC (Loss of control) incidents in the last couple of years to the incidents of LCCs (Ryanair etc.), which tend to have less experienced crews.

If flight time was really THAT important, airlines would only hire based on that parameter alone. But when you can find captains with 15k hours that have no idea what CRM even stands for, questionable manual flying skills and money being only reason why they come to work every day - the question pops out whether a highly motivated young captain with 5000h on 60+ ton jet (737/320) is really de facto inferior to all 15k-hour pilots? I doubt it.

Don't get me wrong, there is no subsitute for experience, but it's not measured just in flight hours and therefore you can't just list the airlines by crew's flight time experience. It is as if somebody would list airlines by number of incidents and forgot to divide it by sectors flown - an airline with 200 aircraft each flying 4-6 sectors per day is obviously more likely to have a f*-up or two in 30 year history than a summer-charter company with 5 aircraft.

I refer to previous post, the public cannot judge, due lack of technical and insight knowledge.

What is the difference between 3000 hrs and 10000 hrs? As hours are the only way experience is expressed? What is it supposed to mean to the general public?

As now all pilots are referred to as 'drivers', does one deem it important taking a taxi with the driver experience advertised on the front window?

These days everything seems to be going haywire, without limits.

Why stop there?

Why not an equally meaningless league table of average experience of engineers, average airframe age and hours.

It is the regulators job to ensure safety compliancy in all aspects of aviation and the public must have total faith in that system.

ZFT - I agree 100%; that is why there is SMS to take an holistic view of the overall risk and safety of an operation.

If there is an irrational focus by the media on pilot hours when it comes to a news story then rather than feed the ignorance we should be ensuring that representative bodies are attempting to educate and inform the media in order that they provide more meaningful analysis.

The question for me is why would you not put the information out there to let the public decide whether it's useful or not?

They have plenty of other league tables, why not allow the public to decide if the experience of the people whose hands they are putting there lives into should be the most or the least experienced.

Most wouldn't even consider it, some would.

Kungfu Panda, my two questions to you then are:

Do you believe that pilot experience is the most useful metric as a predictor of future accident rates?

Do you believe that the company with 12 ASRs per 1,000 departures or 20 ASRs per 1,000 departures is safer?

As always the two extreme sides of the topic are debated. When most of us talk about experience being ignored in preference to non-experience, we are talking about those pilots with around 5 years (+/- a few years) in the industry and who lead a life that depends on them being employable should their employers going bust. The cadet hiring model British airlines are all to fond off, denies UK born and based pilots that right (yes, I'm calling it a right). How can a system which only hires pilots at a junior level be sustainable for this career choice?

Let me tell you this: If ever a passenger comes to ask me about my experience and wether I am qualified for the task, he will be off loaded.

speedrestriction- My view is that experience plays an important role in safety.

I think some European Airlines are reducing the experience levels to what I would consider to be critically low. As I said before- just like Flying around on Min. Fuel for all scenario's.

I don't have an answer for you regarding the ASR question. My view is things happen in Aviation. Given training standards between two Airlines being equal then the most experienced Airline would probably have the least ASR's.

Latetonite- What kind of argument is that, of course you should not be asked individually what your experience is. we are talking about company averages.

I can also assure you that if it was in the interest of certain Airlines to be published then it would be. It is an important part of safety, and would put pressure on Airlines to increase experience levels and would therefore only be beneficial. Transparency is vital as well.

Interesting argument posed initially and a few peoples' arogance obviously being prodded by it. Obviously a difference between long haul and "Domestic/Regional" hours (done both so coming from a good angle here) but I pose a better question that is in desperate need and will leave a lot of red faces and people leaving/not entering the conversation possibly:

Should the public know if the pilots' qualifications & claimed hours are legitimate?

The rise of fake hours and forged licenses has surged not only throughout Asia & the subcontinent but globally , while the "gold old log-book check" (the REAL one, where the airline returns your books via secure mail some days latter after an in depth check!) has disappeared and just become a general flick through, looking for stamps. This may explain why many can not fly visually, hands-on, no automation.

Fake hours is a different argument. I tend to believe most peoples claimed hours are close to the truth because the industry is so small that everywhere you go somebody knows somebody who knows you from a previous company. They know what you've been Flying and roughly how much. Most companies in the middle east and Asia now need your computer print out of block hours from your previous company and references covering the previous five years from "known" management Pilots.

Different argument though...

I do not need any paperwork to prove your credentials. I want to see you ten minutes in the simulator.

A pilot's experience has little to do with safety. For a start, the majority of prangs are with high houred, experienced pilots. So just for that reason, publishing this data would serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever. Furthermore, I don't trust the media (it's they who rely on that idiot Yates for "expert" opinion) nor the traveling public to use data in any meaningful way. A useful and worthwhile published list would be an independent score of a pilot's ability. It would also include the number of take-off and landings in the past 30 days, the amount of hand-flying vs automatic flight, the number of visual and non-precision approaches, the number of FDM exceedences etc. and so forth. But that data will never be released. There would be little long haul flying. The Queen would never fly (unless BA management massage the figures or let a "gash" line pilot fly her) and our friends at RYR would probably top the "ability" table.

Kungfu Panda,

The airline that has 20 ASRs per 1000 departures might have a much more pro-active safety culture that strongly encourages incident and risk reporting thus allowing the airline to have a better awareness of where the risks are and allows it to mitigate those risks more effectively than 12 per 1000 departure airline where the risks are not being identified as successfully. Which airline is more at risk?

My point is that numbers on their own are pretty ineffective in communicating how safe an airline is. Experience is important but no more so than company culture, training, rostering/fatigue etc etc etc. As a group of professionals we probably shouldn't encourage passengers to reduce complex issues into overly simplistic equations such as experience=safe, it isn't in anyone's interest.

Speedrestriction- I agree with most of what you say, it just comes down to the fact that a large part of a safety culture is transparency. Information available to a free media is an important part in a democracy of improving safety and reducing corruption. The media appear to be so ignorant because of the lack of information provided to them.

Piltdown Man- "A Pilots experience has little to do with safety"....then you go on to call somebody else an idiot...do I need to say more?

Another comparison to draw is the Cathay Second Officer cadets, whilst I'm sure all are very qualified good guys, their first 1000/1500 hours is all autopilot in, above 10000ft. But all with a legacy carrier on a wide body. Compare that to a regional TP FO. Short tight runways 4/6 sector days, lots of NPA's and circling approaches, lots of aircraft malfunctions.

Both have 2000 hours, but you can't really compare the two when it comes to average hand flying skills and experience.

So if I fly with a new cadet tomorrow we have 21,400 hours in the cockpit. Would the public be reassured? If I fly with an F/O who has (on performance) been passed over for command for many years, we have 35,000 hours in the cockpit, would the public be reassured? One of my colleagues who has held a command on type for 6 years has 8,000 hours and is flying with an ex-cadet first officer who has 2500 hours, would the public be reassured? If that same captain flies with a cadet who has been with us for one year there is 9,000 hours experience in the cockpit, would the public be reassured?

When the public put their faith in an airline, it is usually on the basis that the airline is subject to, and complies with, regulatory oversight. It is on the basis that the airline has a rigorous standard of crew training, maintenance , and a general safety culture. I don't have any problem at all with somebody placing a blackboard with my (or my crews) experience written on it, at the boarding gate. I would be amazed if it made any difference to anybody at all. Would this transparency extend to gender, or age, or sexual orientation, or race or nationality, in those countries where that is permitted? Would it extend to OPC/LPC global marking? Would it extend to your training history (warts and all?)

The problem I have with the concept (and in fairness there doesn't appear to be any real end user need or demand,) Is that it is meaningless. Obviously I understand that the hypothesis is that perhaps the public could be frightened into believing a problem exists, that might otherwise help to unblock a career path for specific individuals who are simply exasperated by the fact. Should that be made transparent as well?

How would it be measured?

Airlines with very long seniority systems and high rates of staff retention would have the highest average. Then the airlines that people are keen to stay with long term but recruit cadets the second. The lowest would be the airlines with a relatively high turn over of crew that recruit low hour guys too.

Point being say Easyjet. A company a lot of guys stay with long term when reaching command but recruit a lot of cadets. If an average is simply drawn across both ranks, the high hours of the captains who've stayed there a long time would pull up the average figure and mask the woefully low hours of the bulk of the new entrants, even more so in the case of BA.

What a simple average experience cheese slice would miss is the airlines with a huge gradient of experience. A better understanding would be to show the 2 ranks independently. I don't see any venture in this idea as the currency is meaningless to the public. There's no basis for comparison.

The regulatory body is there to lay down an absolute minimum not to put in place an acceptable Norm, therefore from this point of view forget the regulatory body. The danger, as with fuel in recent years, managements have used the absolute minimum as the norm, I think this is clear. It has to stop.

The only way to deal with this situation, as with UK schools, is to use League tables as way to shame Airlines who do use absolute minimum flight deck experience as a norm. I understand that League tables are not perfect but their imperfections can be made clear and they can be used as a guide for consumers.

It has to be clear that experience levels in some Airlines are becoming shockingly low, where you have crew with total experience of maybe 3000 hours, all of which very localised. These crew members may not have even avoided a thunderstorm between the the two of them or made a real low visiblity Landing.

Bealzebub- I respect your views but you need to make it clear that you do have a vested interest in your argument due to your role in training which I believe is either Easyjet or CTC. It is not an unbiased opinion. All the hours argument that you put out in your post are a red herring, you know what we are talking about here, it is the real problem of super low experience crews operating together. With your intelligent articulate views please address the real problem rather than throwing out decoys.

OK. Let me make this clear. Completely transparent as you would say. I do not have a vested interest. I do not have the roles you describe, or ever had in the manner you describe them. The only bias to my opinion is from my own experience, a word that is the prime focus of this hypothesis of yours. Yes I do know what you are talking about. It is the career block that you feel is placed in your way by low hour cadets, and is there a cats chance in hell that the public could be convinced that it is a problem that affects the public? The answer is obvious. No!

Is there a problem with I am not sure what you mean by "Super low" since the minimum levels of baseline experience set down for commanders is usually in the 3500 to 4000 hours range. Most airlines (through regulatory oversight) do not roster low experience in both seats at the same time, where both pilots are new to their roles irrespective of the hours they have. However, you have to accept that there has to come a point when this restriction no longer applies. Even if you won't accept it, the industry most certainly will, does, and has done for a long time.

If the public and the industry is concerned about safety (and they are and most certainly should be,) then look back through the accident statistics. Unfortunately, (and let me remind you of your term red herring) a very long history of such statistics is going reveal that lack of overall "experience" was anything but a contributory factor in almost all of them. On the other hand, complacency, poor training, and poor application of training, is depressingly repeated time and time again! One thing that is glaringly obvious is that "experience" as a stand alone item simply isn't addressing the problem.

I have seen quite a few "experienced" pilots over the years who have failed to maintain an acceptable standard. Unfortunately, nearly all of these examples were individuals from what might be termed "unstructured" backgrounds. Remedial training either resolves the problem or that individuals employment is terminated. The industry has moved markedly towards better application of relevant, seamless and more integrated basic and continuation training.

Panda, I would suggest to you that your narrow focus is self serving. You simply do not want to step back and see the wider picture. If you put aside your prejudice and look at that wider picture you will see that what you want to project as a problem simply isn't a problem at all. Better training, structure and integration are the seeds of better safety. Quantitative experience might well help in some cases when everything else hasn't, however I can send you box loads of accident reports that simply demonstrate time and time again that in isolation it simply isn't an acceptable substitute for better structure and training.

Has that made it clear? Has that addressed the real problem? Is it all still a red herring? Your initial conjectures were completely erroneous. I am afraid that doesn't provide much support for your follow on conjectures.

Kungfu Panda You may be interested to read the following from CAA 2011-2016 Strategic Plan:

Hours in a log book don't make pilots much safer, so experience measured in that manner is a red herring. Hours spent thumb-up-arse over the Atlantic or Pacific, napping while your colleague reads a paper is worse than useless - you're gaining no experience benefit but are still ageing and time is still passing since you last hand flew. Useful experience is dealing with unusual issues, like bad weather, tech problems, crew issues (illness or CRM issues) and dealing with cockups.

I see a mixture of colleagues, some new cadets fresh out of flying schools, some with prior GA experience and some experienced in the airlines. There is no trend in their ability; each has to be judged on merit. What is noticeable is how ability and safety follows attitude. The smart ones listen and watch closely, and rarely have to see something twice to pick it up. They cherry pick the best bits from all the skippers they fly with and make their own tailored toolkit, thinking and adapting to new situations seamlessly. The cocky ones don't learn much, having decided they know more than the old guys sitting next to them, and so have no toolkit and no adaptablity.

So, what do hours on paper signify? Sweet FA.

Having an incident per 1000 sector ratio for each company would be revealing of company cultures, which severely affect safety, and would be useful to passengers, but not break downs of pilots' hours.

Should promotion to captaincy be based on total experience including that gained prior to joining an airline so as to maximise the experience of the captains? Logical but I doubt that the idea would go down well with the crews of legacy carriers.

European national carriers have put low hour DEPs into the RHS since the introduction of the two pilot cockpit. Its generally considered that ab initio training schemes produce very high quality pilots. I don't know whether there is any statistical correlation between safety and the rate of growth of the aviation industry (which is the primary determinant of average experience). Safety rates have certainly improved since the days of high growth in the 60s but I suspect that there are other factors at work explaining this.

There are those who believe that the best pilots are ex-military (particularly in the US where the preference seems to be for ex fighter types). The recent 1,500 hour regulation in the U.S. includes a limited exemption for ex-military pilots. I've spoken to some senior pilots who would prefer lower hours ab initio trainees than higher hours ex RAF or Navy. (Note, I am not a pilot myself, my father was a military pilot for a time. Also I know that generalising is often not helpful.)

In some other areas there is often an preference for younger people who are considered quicker at picking things up. This is particularly true in I.T. (where in truth there is age discrimination). Might there be a conflict between older experienced flyers with better flying skills and younger guys who can find their way around glass cockpits quicker?

latetonight had the correct answer here.

There is no point in publicising information which will be interpreted out of context by some media commentator.

It may be to the advantage of an airline to list generic average numbers if it beats the competator, the same as average age of the fleet of aircraft. Also incident percentage records. Could start a whole lot of mud slinging in a marketing war as on time performance, direct flights etc are also factors.

As to the correlation between experience/hours/hours on type etc. There are so many variables that it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to determine who is the better pilot. The most difficult factor I can think of is a high time pilot becoming complacent and the low time pilot suffering from a lack of experience. The low time but sharp and vigilant pilot with a high level ov awareness could be the better pilot while the high time pilot who could have seen and experienced just about all one can knowing quickly what to do in any adverse condition eg: suix city, Sully on the Hudson etc. Wow having said that how many of you have ever heard of a novice saving a flight from certain desaster, does anyone remember the name of the F/O flying with Sullenberg?

FO
 

Jeff Skiles

Spot on, I know FO Skiles had more total time than sullenberger and had actually been a Capt on another type previously, but in Sullenbergers book he makes specific reference to the fact FO Skiles had only just come on type as being a huge benefit as he was very familiar with the QRH and knew the exact pages to look at.

Now tell a passenger the first officer has 100 hours on type, on this baseless comparison of hours most would probably get off.