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.

You really need to read what is being written.
Would you be "less horrified" if they waited another year and were reassessed with 2300 hours and achieved the same result? You do seem inordinately obsessed with "never mind the quality feel the width"

You started this thread by asking:
If the Asiana accident had been crewed by the most junior captains and the most junior first officers (or indeed anybody else) it is almost certain that the accident wouldn't have occurred. It was almost certainly the prevailing set of circumstances and/or the individual actions of those concerned that resulted in that accident.

I doubt much of the "public" would have any real idea of what levels of quantitative "experience" constitute typical benchmarks in any event. Is 200 hours a lot? 2000 hours? 20,000 hours? Even for those that might share your "horror" at the thought of their flight being crewed with a level that didn't (for whatever reason) match their personal level of acceptance, the random and dynamic nature of crewing a flight means they wouldn't know what the quantitative "experience" level was until they were about to board the flight in any event.
Cadets are part of a career structure. That is why they are cadets. Those cadets eventually become regular first officers once they have reached levels of quantity/ time / performance, gates. They are not released onto the line until they meet the performance standards expected of all first officers. They are then mentored, monitored and specifically assessed for a significant portion of their early careers. It is a steep learning curve and the selection and training requirements reflect that. the vast majority of cadets that I have come into contact with over they years have made their careers within the airline. Many of them are now captains and training captains. Those cadets from 15 years ago are now todays 11,000 captains. Is that enough "experience"?

I am not entirely sure I understand what you mean by the term "very localized flying"? If I take it to mean a lack of route variety, then yes that can become an issue. An airline that flies short haul routes to major airports can result in a lack of pilot exposure to more basic airports and less widespread application of non-precision or visual approaches. However an awareness of that problem (where it exists) results in a greater use of simulator exposure and real world opportunities being provided as and when they can be. However that problem is not contained to cadets, it is usually just as prevalent in experienced pilots as well.

Low experience is the same as age. Give it time and it will cure itself. I think I would most definitely fit into your definition of "experienced" and yet I do not have the slightest qualm about flying with a cadet tomorrow, or indeed a low hour f/o, or an f/o with 3000 hours, or an f/o with 20,000 hours who might have been passed over for command for the last 25 years. In a typical month I am likely to fly with all of those examples. So why are you horrified and I am not? Similarly I do not have the slightest qualm that my family might get on board an aircraft tomorrow crewed by the most junior captain and junior first officers in the company. If I have no cause for concern why on Earth should the general public?

Anything! Unless you simply demand theoretical reinforcement of your opinion, the thread is meaningless.

Bealzebub- Clearly your argument is very Airline specific, it is obvious that your company is able to absorb Pilots of all experience levels into the structure and provide appropriate training.

I may not have provided the evidence for my argument that you would like to see but nobody has denied that what I have said is happening.

I agree with you that training and ability is important. I don't believe that simulator training is a means to an end in itself. However much ability you have it is unlikely, with the low levels of experience which we are talking about i.e. Captain 2500 hours, F/O 250 hours, that you have seen sufficient. As an example I remember as an F/O with just under 3000 hours Making an approach to Bergamo, the ATIS gave cavok and so I was fat dumb and happy, passing about 1400' on the approach with me manually Flying we were passed a visibility of 400m. Never having seen an approach ban situation in real life and the fact that my mental capacity was eaten up somewhat by manual Flying, I would have continued but for the experienced Captain in the left seat.

You could argue that it is just me that is capable of making this type of mistake with low experience but I don't think so, and my standard of operation in the simulator Always met the required level.

The point I am making is that however good someone is in the simulator, given the real life situation, if they have not got experience to fall back on they may not cope well.

If they fit the bill and pass the assessment should a Cadet go directly into the left seat with no experience?

The evidence I can offer can only be based on that which I have, so yes it must be specific to those companies that I have worked for. However you have also had answers from other people with their own specific evidence and examples from other companies. They are presumably different companies although the examples seem broadly similar and the comment is pretty much the same. Do you have a specific company in mind, or a set of responses that you want to hear?

Oh but it is! So many things we experience in the simulator cannot safely, practically or economically be reproduced outside of that environment, yet they are so critical to the safety and/or regularity of the operation that their simulation must be the means to an end.

As already stated, the simulator is very often the only experience that pilots will likely encounter of specific situations. Simulation (whatever the shortcomings and limitations) often tests people to an extent that performance in that environment is far more demanding than they are ever likely to experience in day to day operations. Over the last Three decades and more, I have seen many people who are perfectly competent and relaxed on the line, who completely fall apart in the simulator. I have never seen the reversal of that situation. Those that are particularly good in the simulator (with all the stresses that are inherent with that environment,) are usually very good on the line, problems or no problems.

Rhetorical, because it doesn't happen. Cadets are junior first officers. The progression is from cadet to a regular first officer, and only when they meet the time and performance criteria, do they then get consideration for promotion. We set that time floor at around 4000 hours, although those first officers who consistently demonstrate a high level of ability may be considered with 500 hours less than that. For a newly recruited first officer with 4000 hours they might be considered straight away, however the seniority queue would generally preclude that. An ab-initio cadet with 200 hours would require around 18-24 months before they lost the cadet status and became regular first officers, and somewhere in the region of 5-6 years in the right hand seat before they could be considered for further promotion. Even so I must again emphasise the point that being at the head of the queue is not sufficient qualification for promotion.
Other companies may well have requirements that differ from these, however broadly I would expect the requirements to be similar for aircraft of a similar size and complexity.

I don't know of any airline that considers cadets for promotion to captains. Perhaps you could offer some evidence of that, if it exists?

So there we find the fundamental disagreement, I do not believe that simulator is a means to an end, I believe it is a very important training tool that goes hand in hand with experience.

Panda, you are closing your eyes and ears to the fundamental point made by several of us, repeatedly, that hours in a log book don't always constitute useful experience. You criticise short haul for being unchallenging, but that's where you get the most take offs and landings for a given number of hours and typically where you use the least well equipped airports and the shortest runways. Frankly, the biggest challenge for long haul is fatigue and boredom. Fly around the EU in the locos and you're landing jest on 5500' runways off NPAs in valleys, and doing a lot of contaminated runway ops in the winter too. It's also extremely congested airspace with a lot of different cultures and languages. Still think that doesn't count? Why do you think many of the legacy airlines are now specifically targeting EZY and RYR for recruitment, rather than charter or other legacy carriers?

Even then, in the rapid-fire LOCOs, experience and hours don't go hand in hand, and ability and hours are almost completely divorced. I see guys with a few years on line who have never had a diversion, and others who have just started their second season and had diversions, technical issues, medical emergencies and so on. Hours and experience are a lottery, and it's arguable as to whether it's luckier to have lots of things happen to you or none; personally, I think those who sail through with never a challenge are the unfortunate ones. But I have to say the sharpest FO I have seen yet was not only doing just his second year, but is also very young, and he was (is) exceptionally aware and capable, more so than several 15000hr captains I know.

Those who push the hours=experience=safety angle are almost exclusively frustrated long haul FOs. That might not be the case here, I don't know, but that's how it comes over.

Or else he might not have come up to FR standards?

Don't be horrified! It's not a good look.

You're again missing the main reason why publishing a league table is a bad idea: context. The 1800hr upgrade was possible and a few did it in that time. It was/is an airline that has a huge mix of experience, be it cadet, ex-mil, ex-legacy or returning expats. Captains with between 2000 - 15000+ hours. Most upgraded with more time than the minimum. The average sector length was around an hour, so you could have had 1600 odd sectors under your belt when it came for command assessment. And all achieved in around 3 years. In my current gig, I'll find it a stretch to do much more than 300 sectors in 3 years, but the average sector is considerably longer than an hour!

I take on board your example, but it's a weak one. You were working hard, the skipper wasn't, he had more capacity at that moment most likely. Probably wondering why you were still in the clag at 1400' on a CAVOK day! You'll always go somewhere for the first time, be it 200hrs or 10000hrs

A league table as you describe, despite being pointless, would never be subscribed to by any airline. If you're concerned by particular operators, name them and explain why. Then we might be able to understand your position better.

JW, I'm not sure if your post is referring to my preceding one. Just in case it is, I don't want to get into a debate over standards in individual companies, because that too can be misleading - there are good and bad everywhere, and the reasons for the bad vary; they could be bad because of a lack of aptitude, holes in their training or because they are too scared of management to do what is right and instead just do what they're told. And while I don't think EZY or RYR pilots as a whole are bad, I don't think they can be singled out as the epitome of flying either - some are very good indeed, and other not so much. Just like everywhere else, they have to be judged individually, not collectively. Just because a pilot might fly for a company with a bad name, it doesn't follow that the pilot must be bad too.

JW411- Are you suggesting that FR standards are low?

AS- I don't want to re-iterate what I have already posted. I clearly have respect for the shorthaul experience that guys of Easyjet or Ryanair have. I agree with a lot of what you say. I question whether you think the sharp 20 year old in his second year of operation should be Captain and the less sharp 15000 hour guy should be his F/O. Then maybe we could make that sharp 20 year old an F/O when he is a less sharp 15,000 hour guy. We could kind of go into a reverse career path.

Panda, I'm not entirely comfortable with 3000hrs being sufficient for a jet command, but then again, it's a minimum and not a qualifier. I agree that the industry needs to ensure commanders are suitably experienced, and frankly I don't think many FOs get enough experience in 3k unless they're in the habit of shooting albatross. The average guy may see one or two weather diversions and a single tech issue, but that's probably about it. Some of the more fortunate ones will see more, but some of the guys I know who are due for command soon in these outfits and have passed their screening have never diverted. I can't help feeling that was a factor in the mess that was the MAD-VLC mass diversion. But, I still think that hours per se are a misleading indicator for experience, especially amongst long haul pilots who spend most of their flight time dong relatively little but checking the nav and fuel consumption. As long as pilots are selected on aptitude and given suitable training, then experience will continue to play only a smaller role in safety.

I feel this thread has become Kafkaesque, if indeed it wasn't to begin with.

You would probably not be sitting there fat dumb and happy if you were a 3000 hour captain faced with this situation. You cannot compare your 3000 hour self to other low hour captains. Merely switching seats changes your outlook on the situation...

Anyway. Many legacy airlines have very young and 'unexperienced' pilots, left AND right seat, on their short haul fleet. This is nothing new. They hire cadets who become short haul captains at the first opportunity. Been like this for ages..

What I see very clearly on the line is that a proper selection before a cadet starts flight training says ten times more than experience. I'm not discounting experience, but it is but one of many factors.

Jet, Turboprop, Piston Single, Glider - It doesn't matter. What counts is the selection, training and thinking of the crews.

Was due to the weather. More fuel would have enabled them hold for longer, with no guarantee of a better outcome. And although I can not stand RYR, I do rate their pilots. They are some of the best in the industry. Also, whenever there are mass diversions I've learned that a yellow streak is a good thing to have. Beat the rush, nick the best parking spots, get fueled, get the buses etc.

Having thought about this, I suspect there is probably a 'Normal distribution', ("bell curve") of pilot's ability against their age.

By ability, I mean a combination of experience and competance.

Experience implies age but it is not a direct connection. Experience cannot be measured by total hours alone (because for example widebody jet cruise pilots hours are not comparable to "Low Cost" turboprop hours). Take offs and landings and types flown perhaps need to be taken into consideration too.

So young pilots with very little experience generally have less 'ability' than the norm, but much older pilots who have a lot of experience but who may be slowing down in their thought processes also might have reducing ability - hence possibly why some accidents happen to very experienced pilots?

However, age is not a reliable indicator either, because one 50 year old pilot might have been flying since they were 17, another might be a career changer in only their 5th year of flying.

I also think that this preoccupation by newspapers of a pilots' hours probably comes from the same reason that makes reporters want to quote people's ages. It's not usually all that relevant, but it gives them something to write?

I don't see any reason why such information (average pilot experience) can't be published based on a sample data. Other than worrying about the airline filing a lawsuit which shouldn't be a problem if you publish factual information and issue a disclaimer about the statistical probability for error.

The information should be published based on carrier name, not operator. Many large airlines outsource their flying to low cost operators who carry the name of the larger airline...such as the regional airlines in the USA.

The problem with the regional airlines in the USA is that they split their pilot pool across several code share partnerships so one day a pilot could be flying under the Delta Airlines name and the next day under USAirways or something like that. A solution could be to use averages based on number of flights used in each code share compared with experience average for that operator.

Then you have to place the data in a context that the public could understand and care about. For example...if airline A with 2000 pilots has an average experience level of 5000 hours and airline B with 3000 pilots has an average of 5500 hours....does that really matter to anyone?

I think whats more important is the general spread of the curve, not the average. For example, airline A has pilots that range from 250 hours up to 13,000 hours while airline B's lowest experienced pilot is 3000 hours.

So what do you do with a legacy airline that has it's junior crew flying the little Fokkers and Embraers whilst the more experienced crew progress to the heavier metal? If you use the average experience, you would think that the crew flying your little Embraer is vastly experienced, whereas the may not even have 3000 hours combined!


Shows you that this idea will not work in any way or form.

See there are no airlines like that in the USA. Other than JetBlue and USAirways operating E190s I can't think of any operator in the USA that operates RJs alongside Boeings or Airbus. Does anyone still fly Fokkers?

Maybe the OP had European airlines in mind? Except I thought he was an American working in China. In China they don't really move pilots from smaller planes to larger planes...they all pretty much stay in whatever they are assigned to.

Pretty much...but...

...if it did become an public issue and airlines really did have to compete for those top rankings...they may be inclined to back off the outsourcing model that's bringing their numbers down. Or, in the case of some other airlines (not in the USA) that bring very low time (and low paid) pilots into the larger equipment...to stop doing that. After all, no one airline will want to be labelled as having the least experienced pilots in their cockpits even if just by a small margin...just like they don't like having the oldest fleet in the country.

Actually I think such a ranking system would be very doable...maybe it's something Consumer Reports should publish a story on.

Looking at the Ryanair threads here it appears Ryanair management will happily recruit less and less qualified guys just to keep the operation going. Is there really any oversight? Because it sure doesn't look like it. Maybe experience levels should be published.

Fast track to A320/B737 then 1000s of hours burning holes in the sky on automation
 

Fast track to A320/B737 then 1000s of hours burning holes in the sky on automation

Both FO and SO on AF447 were Integrated, sponsored cadet route under 250h then straight onto A320 then A330 and 340 automation for 10 years.....

Now we reduce that 250h flying course to the MPL: less solo experience than a PPL/Private pilot, and as low as 70h real flying before SIM and then pax flying.......


USA going the opposite route - better fatigue rules than EASA and 1500h rule plus a min of 10h full motion SIM and 30h g/school before you can take the ATP from August 1st 2014.......


Up to retirement age, old and less bold tend to live longer than young and rash. That's why car insurance is so ridiculously high for youngsters no matter how well they can drive. On the flip side, many (accountants) decry experience these days, but it is in fact possible for the brain to continue to make new connections well in to old age but that means doing the cross word or similar and not just relying on old habits!

Comlux now advertising for "Commander – XRS Global Express (G6000 Vision) - Living in Almaty".....and in the add one can read "Minimum experience (total time) 2’500 hours. Rating on BD700 or G5000".

2,500 hrs total time and being PIC of a 100,000lb aircraft with intercontinental range??!! I don't know about you but most people I have met in my career with 2,500 hrs total time would not be ready for this.

Mr Oligarch Billionaire is more concerned about the cost of a Global rating than his own life apparently. Beats me......