Euro market pilot saturation
 

Hello there,

Don't kick me hard for this thread.

On a long layover i looked through US pilot Job market and apparently they are ahead of Europe in terms of salary and working environment. For example sign-on bonus which i never heard of before. I was comparing this to European market overcrowded with young pilots agreeing to work for food to get jet hours. I am not talking about legacy carriers but i mean low-cost airlines that are damping the salary by taking advantage of your little experience and desire to fly big jets no matter what. After you build some hours you move to Asia or ME and circle starts all over again.
So my question is, what would happen if Europe did the same thing as US and apply 1500 h rule before allowing you to fly big jets? Would that bankrupt low-cost airlines and end slavery or would it cause Pan-European transport collapse? Definitely it will benefit safety and make experienced pilots more valuable.
I have a few thousand hours on turboprop in regional and was recently offered to fly E jet for 1/5 of my salary:) I had to decline this generous offer but i am sure there are those who will accept it and in a few years move to Asia to make big money.

The problem here would be that in most of Europe, there isn't a GA scene or market for pilots to build up to those 1500hrs. And besides that, you always have to remember that experience does not equal safety. I've flown with enough experienced idiots and inexperienced good pilots to say that that holds up. In my opinion, that 1500hr limit is mostly just an arbitrary hoop to jump through, and the focus should be more on filtering out the idiots during training by regulating flight schools in better ways and simply banning pay to fly programs in any form. That would benefit everyone; less pilots get dumped into the job market, average quality of pilots goes up.

I've flown with FO's fresh out of flight school on their first job who have been absolutely awesome and would be a welcome addition in any airline, but who would run into an arbitrary wall if there were to be a 1500hr rule over here as well.

Towing happy birthday wont make you a better pilot but asking for 1500 hours will stop the pilot puppy factories turning out young fresh CPL holders who will do almost anything for a job. They have a 100k pound debt so paying it is priority.

I have been in the US for a while now and Capts tell me about when 250 hours would get you in a regional jet. Usually they had many more applicants than jobs so picking the cream was easy. Pay for training then look forward to getting net 1600 dollars a month. All because you needed airline time to apply to American/United/ Delta. The system stank and needed changing. The Euro system isnt much better at the moment.

It's not going to stop that at all. Those 'pilot puppy factories' are commercial entities interested in making money and will find new ways to keep doing so and to keep producing pilots. There will be silly schemes where they'll have new pilots pay a crap load of money on top of already high 'normal' training costs to be guaranteed a spot on a miserable old turboprop for 1 year or 500hrs after training. Those already exist now. Schemes will get worse as the schools will want to survive.

Therefore, better regulation of those schools instead of an arbitrary total time limit. And just outright ban pay to fly schemes altogether. It might not work as quickly in the short term to improve T&C's for current pilots, but it would be a more fair solution that would not beat down new pilots who might actually be good.

And for the talk about the US system... this is the same system that allowed the FO from that Atlas 767 crash to be in the air. It ain't all sunshine and roses there and I'm sure there's more like him flying around as well.

Atlas FO didnt disclose just like Lubitz didnt disclose.

Isn't disclosure mandatory under the Pilot Records Improvement Act?

Bull!!!!!!! I fly regurarly pilot that would not be able to get on ground safely in case of incapacitation. They are awesome in their total ignorance and lack of aimsmship .
In the US without a degree you are not getting a job here we have guys that cannot articulate verbs. I would make mandatory either a full ATPL or a specific
degree plus reduce hours like 800 or so like in the US. Passengers are in danger from this pilot milling business that should stop immediately.

I again disagree. Lion Air and Ethiopian are the proof. Poor piloting skills and lack of knowledge played s role.
Whilst on general safety has improved the statisticsl data of CFIT or near CFIT has not.
Low hours cadet are only possible on AB INITIO courses in major airlines with a proper facilities and proven quality of training and with strict pre parameters.
Thiird tiers low co ( quality) that made of type and line training a business should be stopped immediately. There are " pilots" that are ( ridicolously ) paid passengers filling paper work that cannot fly without automation and have limited capability with, , cannot read properly a checkist and have zero knowledge of aicraft systems and zero general aeronautical knowledge thanks to multiple answer exams. This must be stopped.

En there I thought that:
- Lion Air pilots didn't even know about MCAS, so didn't have the means to understand what was going on
- the runaway trim technique reinforced after Lion Air crash was found to be flawed by the FAA after Ethiopian crash (so even if the pilots knew the procedure, the procedure was wrong)
- the plane has been grounded and production halted due to its inherent unsafety

PS: I guess we found a Boeing board member on the forum

A few things to note here.

1. Shortly after the ATP rule kicked in here, regional jet salaries increased significantly, as well as the introduction of significant signing bonuses. Part was the increased hiring from major airlines (sucking up the CA’s and senior FO’s), part was the shortage of 250hr guys willing to do anything to fly a jet. Some of them have just become 1500hr guys willing to do anything, but that’s something else. To give you an idea of the size of the increase, at my first airline, the starting salary for a first officer has gone up 127% (that’s not a typo, it’s more than doubled) in 3-4 years. T&C have improved as well. Back when I was there, the management laughed at the idea of paying a FO that much. “We’d love to, but can’t possibly afford it” they said. As of today, they’re still doing business, and say they’re profitable, so I guess they found the money somehow.

2. Somebody mentioned doing 1500hrs towing banners. Firstly, not all of us got 1500hrs towing banners on VFR days. That’s one of several paths. Each path has its merits though. The banner tow guys (in my experience) are quite comfortable at the edges of the aerodynamic envelope, and are perfectly happy getting airplanes into and out of stalls all day long. Unfortunately, some pilots without that experience get very nervous at Vref-1, and react inappropriately to stalls.

I’ll agree though, that a logbook alone can’t tell you how well the pilot will do in an airline cockpit, and we need to do a better job of weeding out those who shouldn’t be there.

Regarding the lack of background disclosure. That has been a known issue since the Colgan 3407 accident. There’s a system in the works to address it. It was spoken about in the interviews. Unfortunately, it’s not quite up and running yet, a decade later.

Wow, porky. Just wow. You have hereby been consigned to the sin bin (to read the thousand of pages about the Max on Rumours and News). We hope your rehabilitation works out.

what hours did you have when you started your turboprop job?

I think you will find lack of airmanship and training did play a part in the Max accidents.
Especially the ET incident.
Well before MCAS was active the pilots distracted by the faulty A/A probe causing the Stick Shaker, left full takeoff power set throughout the flight until ground contact. Not good Airmanship.
No, I don't work for Boeing.

The thought of better t&cs here in Europe, would be nice. However not realistic. The European Union has deregulated aviation, simply to reduce costs of transportation. EU is a trade union, and to be efficient, you need cheap transportation, to be able to sell a spanish produced lemon in Stockholm, for almost the same price as in Madrid.

The 1500 hours rule was just a political "let's do something with no sense" after the 2009 Colgan Air accident, were fatigue and poor cockpit discipline were also contributing causes.
You know what's also funny? That both the involved pilots had more tha 1500 hours at the time of the accident.

So what's this 1500? Just a random number written by a politican, nothing more than that.
I'd also like to know why a bachelor program would make that 1500 become a 1000...that's one third of the "essential" required experience waived. Or why pilots with less than 1500 hours performed better than guys with more than 1500 hours during regional training. Or why are they considering to lower the magic number to solve the "pilot shortage"...

We should look at the quality of training and personal attitude, not at total hours.

My personal view about increasing T&C and the "pilot shortage" in the US: they're not related to the 1500 hours rule, but to the fact that a lot of people choose other careers when the regionals were paing 20000$ for an FO. Now they're forced to increase T&C. Then it will cycle again and again.

Needing a higher number of total hours to access an airline job would put the pay-to-get-the-license-no-matter-what path out of business.

Making the number of hours high enough so it is not practical to pay for all of them would put the pay-to-fly path out of business as well.

Needing to pass actual screenings rather than paying to build a career in a aviation would immediately fix the attitude problems and would steer the young pilots towards the training organizations with the highest quality of teaching, not the easiest ones. After some years of this, things could possibly go back to normal.

I have flown out of the EU with European cadets and their skills and attitude sucks big time (go ahead and bash me, it is the honest truth). The worst of this is that they are not even aware of it. They think it is the usual in a cockpit not to follow the chain of command, argue for the sake of it, bend the SOP's, follow "what this Captain told me" instead of reading the manual, etc. It is not really their fault since they have been led to believe that it is how things are done. For them, I am the dinosaur.

When I started I also had a very low number of hours BUT the difference is in how I got my first job: it was after sending CV's for years all around the world, waiting for my chance and failing plenty of interviews and sim screenings until I got it right and I reached the required standard.

Requiring total time would not make better pilots but would definitely help to filter out the ones that want it by paying and not by studying and making the effort.