Jujupilot – Cockpit managers is exactly what we are most of the time!
The thing about transport flying is the weather isn’t really a go/no go decision, but rather how much fuel should we take.
Europe isn’t benign either – some of the worst weather I’ve seen was near Bordeaux. Yes, for the new FO their first winter season will be an eye opener for sure, but as a 800 hour copilot I operated to Innsbruck, Funchal, picked my way around storms in the eastern med and dealt with contaminated runways in the Arctic circle, all with that comfort blanket of an experienced colleague sitting next to me.
For the manual flying we spend about 16 hours per year in the simulator, dealing with all sorts of plausible and less plausible emergencies and all the manual handling that goes with it. My last SEP reval was about 1h 15m of me demonstrating I can still fly a Super Cub.
I guess what I’m saying is your engineer friend is unlikely to be as good a GA pilot as you after his ATPL course, or even after he’s done 1000hrs in an Airbus, but that doesn’t mean he’s not going to be a good and safe Airbus pilot.
Edited to add – one of the most skilled pilots I knew held nothing more than a gliding certificate. One of the most naturally gifted stick and rudder pilots, and it was a pleasure to be sitting in the front while he made the flight seem effortless. My stripes and hours can not ever make me as good as he was, but if he were still around I’d hope he’d trust me to take him on holiday.
All interesting stuff.
Maybe there’s nothing wrong with it, maybe it’s how it needs to be, but it strikes me as odd that I probably fly more hands-on-stick time each year than you do.
As an aside, this got me thinking about whether stick time ought to be specifically recorded (as opposed to time flying on autopilot). I thought of similar things, and the one that jumps out is instrument time – flight by sole reference to instruments. Do you airline guys log all your time in that column, simply because you’re always IFR? Or do you actually keep a record of how much of each journey you could see out of the window, etc? The thought came about from instrument time going towards the CB-IR, and there is no distinction (that I know of) between hand-flying instrument time and instrument time using an autopilot (which to my mind hardly counts, especially if one doesn’t have much in the first place and is cobbling together hrs for a rating.)
I don’t log any airline hours in the IFR or Actual Instrument column as I don’t need to and it wouldn’t be useful anyway. I use the column as a record of my single engine actual instrument time.
I did 340 flights in 2017. Assuming I was pilot flying for half those flights and only counted “stick time” for takeoff to 1000 ft (approx 1m 30sec) and 1000 ft to vacating the runway (maybe 2m 20sec) then that would only be around 10 hours a year “stick time”, in practice I fly manually and raw data approaches quite frequently but I’m sure you’re right about having more stick time. I probably have about 50 hours a year driving on the nosewheel tiller, and maybe 5 hours on the toilet ;-)
But that’s not really the point – it’s just a different kind of flying, a different set of skills and experiences. Looking back on my logbook I can remember details of flights 15 years ago that only lasted 20 minutes, but I can’t remember much about flying to Tenerife and back last month. I love all sorts of flying, I still wave to the spotters at the fence, and get jealous when I’m taxying behind a TB20. Most of us are formed in the same mould, and the number of seats, stripes and hours shouldn’t matter.
Graham wrote:
The thought came about from instrument time going towards the CB-IR, and there is no distinction (that I know of) between hand-flying instrument time and instrument time using an autopilot (which to my mind hardly counts, especially if one doesn’t have much in the first place and is cobbling together hrs for a rating.)
You can do lot of that on IMCr (or on gliders cloud rating under the carpet 
) why you need a full IR?
My feeling you only need a full IR to fly very high UK/EU standard routes IFR preferably in CAVOK days or VMC on top days (as airliners do actually), for that any IFR time should count? the current system is generous by requiring IFR time not IMC time, why tighten it?
Currency on keeping wing level en-route by ref to AI has no meaning IMHO it is just repetitive task that one get tired of (= no skill there 
), sooner or later you will ring the bell (especially if you want to log 50h IMC had flying en-route in complex weather/airspace in the rental fleet?) while currency on departure/approaches and the associated precision flying is a different topic…
Same applies to superior GA perception of “FO Airliners not doing real flying”, yes an FO who flies by hand an A320 OCAS VFR as PIC from airstrips with 200 POB is plain stupid, I agree with that
GraemeH wrote:
As other have said, I don’t think 300 or 1500 SEP hours would make much difference for conversion to a modern jet transport. In extreme cases it could even be counter productive.
Excellent post!
LFHNflightstudent wrote:
If after 10K hours you still can’t fly the plane maybe it’s time to think of another career no?
It’s inappropriate to point the fingers at the af447 guys on a message board. They were also products of the system and now they are dead.
You misunderstand the system.
Airline = thin profit margin = only the minimum training required by the authority. Give me 4 hours of raw data level d sim every month, give me loft sessions without 8 repositionings, I’d happily take it and become a better pilot. Guess what the airlines (and their lobbyists) will think of my idea..?
I can guarantee you that EVERY pilot will have worse stick and rudder skills in a small sep after 10000 airline hours.
It’s hypocritical: the airlines force maximum use of autopilot/flight director (some even mandating autolands) which means essentially following a magenta line 99,99% of the time, and when you go for a job interview you have to fly approaches, qdm/qdr intercepts and ndb holds in an airbus raw data… I’d like to see the guy evaluating the session in the back fly that stuff „on the fly“.
I still fly small planes and while it helps for stick and rudder (the actual flying) it’s of no big use for the rest of the stuff industrial flying throws at you.
Peter wrote:
I recall discussing the famous Cork crash (a turboprop twin doing a near zero-zero approach, on some “interesting, but still EU” AOC etc etc)
Very definitely EU. The AOC was Spanish.
