The only reason MPL was introduced a few years ago, was for the airlines to save some dough, and to accelerate the production of pilots…
Quite a few airlines have now stopped, or greatly reduced, their MPL scheme. Various reasons quoted… my experience: I could usually diagnose a MPL co given 20” of his hand flying 
Can’t bake a good tart without the pastry…
PS
It will be solved with full time automation, Airbus showing the way…
gallois wrote:
AF447 is often referred to when it comes to the subjects of, training, accidents and basic flying
But I would urge the reading of the full report and you will recognise more of the Swiss Cheese/ human factors contribution to this disaster than just seen in the headline quotes.
Oh I’ve read the full report, a number of times. I can just picture them staring at the screens, ignoring the PFD full of blue and saying stuff like “what’s it doing now?”. It gives me the chills.
Power + attitude = performance. Point the nose in a sensible direction and apply a sensible power setting.
Fairly early on in my PPL training my instructor covered the ASI at ~100ft on climb out. I trusted her completely so my only reaction was raised eyebrows and a curious look, and she just said “No worries – power is good and attitude is good, so you can’t see the airspeed but you know it’s ok.”
Why do ATPL students need to start on a SEP/MEP.
Perhaps because occasionally they have to actually fly the thing? Here in the US, the FAA is getting quite concerned with the erosion of basic piloting skills and AFAIK is exploring various remedies. Mind you, that’s in a country where you need 1500 hours to get an ATPL, so you will have flown smaller stuff for quite some time.
Various reasons quoted… my experience: I could usually diagnose a MPL co given 20” of his hand flying
Can you list these reasons? That’s what I’m looking for.
I’m not questioning your diagnoses, but they surprise me. Why would a cadet being exposed to a number of hours in a fixed base sim complemented by a number of hours in a proper A320 motion sim would do worse than a cadet combining hours in a C172 and in such sims? Intuitively I’d think he’d do better, because he spent more time ‘flying’ that A320.
Power + attitude = performance. Point the nose in a sensible direction and apply a sensible power setting.
Perhaps because occasionally they have to actually fly the thing?
You can actually learn these things in a sim as you know. And with great fidelity to the real thing.
@Airborne_Again Yes indeed they did change advanced upset prevention and recovery training, but they also changed a number of other things too. It is why I wrote that you need to read the full report. Many hundreds of pages of it. Anyone who just believes that the problems only started a few minutes before the crash, just hasn’t read the full report.
One of my IR examiners was an Air France test pilot. He took me into a white out just after take off and then during the course of the revalidation set up individual instrument problems and unusual positions. In total IMC you had to believe what the instruments were telling you when your body and perhaps one.instrument was telling you something else.
I admit it was disconcerting and several times the stall warning blasted or VNE was approached.
However as I say the beginnings of the Swiss Cheese in the AF447 accident possibly started many hours before this stage was reached.
1500hrs (incl. 100 at night) is an ICAO requirement for an ATP.
It is Europe that has “perverted” the system 
AF447 thread. My take on AF447 is primarily a lack of aircraft systems knowledge, specifically that the PFD attitude comes from the IRS and therefore can be trusted in a loss of airdata situation. The graduation from an “elite pilot academy” probably just reinforced the system, but as discussed here you don’t need to be particularly technically bright to get into this job. And these guys could not fly a plane on instruments, anyway.
aart wrote:
You can actually learn these things in a sim as you know. And with great fidelity to the real thing.
Sure. However, in the back of your mind you KNOW there is a reset button and nothing bad will ever happen.
aart wrote:
You can actually learn these things in a sim as you know. And with great fidelity to the real thing.
You can be taught the concept of power + attitude = performance in a sim. Whether you really learn it, compared to actually messing around in aeroplane and trying it out, who knows.
AF447 had all sorts of contributory factors and raised all sorts of major issues with systems, automation and human factors, but what it really boiled down to – what put the jet into a stall – was especially bad hand-flying. Read the report: for the approx. one minute that elapsed between the AP disconnecting itself and the stall beginning it was literally all over the place – rolling left and right with a 3,000ft altitude excursion.
power + attitude = performance
Actually the software for a swept wing jet is the other way round: attitude plus power equals performance. Or more prosaically known as point and squirt :)
