gallois wrote:
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.
I did read the full report. All the hundred of pages.
Peter wrote:
1500hrs (incl. 100 at night) is an ICAO requirement for an ATP.It is Europe that has “perverted” the system
Sure, but having an ATPL is not an ICAO requirement for the F/O. Even without the MPL (which I very much agree is a dubious license) CPL+IR is enough.
The sims are getting so good and relatively cheap, so I just wonder.
This may be a flippant answer, but
so currently there is no economic way around flying a “plane”… all the time that ICAO requires x hours flown for real.
Of course block renting a C150 and flying it up and down Arizona at night, to log the 100hrs ATPL requirement, or some variation of that, like building hours towards the 1500, is crazy, but we have what we have 
The only operators who actually train pilots to fly for real, pragmatically, are the air forces. I don’t know the current situation on this but some are starting on turboprops. And why not, if you want only good pilots? The only advantage of training on SEPs is that they cost less to fix if you bend them. The PPL training business would collapse if only good pilots could be trained, and to a slightly lesser extent the same goes for the airline pilot training business (these are not my words btw; they are from a retired ATPL with decades of heavy jet flying).
During the pandemic cadets could switch out of MPL but the programs are still running. Some airlines overwhelmingly prefer MPL and it is not a money saving exercise.
Would you rather your entry level FO have around 150 hours on type and be thoroughly conversant on the airline SOP, or 30 hours during a type rating possibly with some off market provider?
Well, this is not the industry-or business-reason, but the way I think of it is, rather than the dismal failure of AF447, the enormous successes of BA38. and Qantas32
Personally, I would like to see that kind of pilot flying my kids in the future, rather than thinking they are flown around by sim-bred guys and gils (or computers) who will not know what to do when outside the checklist
Antonio wrote:
Personally, I would like to see that kind of pilot flying my kids in the future, rather than thinking they are flown around by sim-bred guys and gils (or computers) who will not know what to do when outside the checklist
So do I, and while hoping I’m wrong I think it will be interesting times ahead when the baby boomer captain generation is retired.
I think this issue comes down to whether you think machines will continue to do things that their creators did not anticipate. If you think airliners won’t do that because of the perfect ‘system engineering’ approach used to create them then fine, train student pilots in a simulator and when they’ve memorized the creators procedures or can look them up quickly, and can fly both the simulator and a smooth cooperative airliner, they’re ready to go. Computers flying the plane can be taught in a similar way, you may not even need people.
If on the other hand you think the plane may someday do something that nobody ever anticipated, I think you might prefer a equally intelligent human pilot who has also e.g. felt a plane stall one wing and go over on its back when it ‘shouldn’t’, with the fear and physical shock that comes when it does something unanticipated and heads for the ground, and has developed (over time) the physiological acclimatization, emotional fortitude plus skill and analytical underpinning required to sort varying types of weirdness out in real time. I’m not under any utopian illusion that this won’t occasionally be necessary for professional pilots in the future. As a result I’m certainly willing to pay through slightly elevated ticket prices for airline pilots who might start flying as a fearless teenager in whatever is available to them, then when still young accumulate 1500 hrs in weird conditions, in more complex older planes that more regularly do weird things. That makes them more comfortable and level headed in ‘unanticipated by anybody’ situations in which (either I or) some ‘10 years of experience since start of simulator training’ 35 year old Captain (never mind the fresh recruit) might be scared, physically overwhelmed and inadequately responsive.
Does the potential for paralyzing fear and visceral shock when in a real and unanticipated situation not occur to anybody who might see it otherwise?
they are flown around by sim-bred guys and gils (or computers) who will not know what to do when outside the checklist
MPL abnormal conditions are introduced early on in phase 2 Core, so in effect MPL cadets are dealing with emergency and abnormal situations, in or outside the QRH, during the majority of their training. This is much more detailed (briefed/debriefed/challenged) than the very limited, nearly absent, scenario based training in a CPL/IR (USA spends more time on scenario based emergencies, but not as much as would be encountered on an MPL). The course during the basic and intermediate phase covers many CRM events which by definition will have been outside the routine flows.
The vast majority of baby boomer flag carrier crew on international airlines were trained at Cadet schools (eg Hamble, Phoenix, etc) and gained their first flight crew job after around 200 hours, with no safety implications. Fortunately (because lack of wars!) the air forces of the world do not produce thousands of short commission flight crew (which in turn went into multi engine transport flight decks after 200 hours). Whether some teenager through the self improver route who scared herself in a Cessna 150 is better trained might be difficult to judge. The old UPRT MPL courses were quite thorough and required more spin exposure than most civilian spin training outside aerobatic instructor level. They were also competency based. The new ‘advanced’ UPRT has been unfortunately dumbed down.
Since Kahnemann and Tversky started work for Delta and using their research on officer training at the IDF, behavioural science has helped design multi crew SOP. I would prefer my flight crew to have had the modern equivalent of Hamble style selection and training than emerging from a puppy factory with 30 random hours on some €10k MCC generic SIM, which is not even competency based.
This Australian research at least spends some time on trying to analyse the competencies of new MPL crew.
Antonio wrote:
Well, this is not the industry-or business-reason, but the way I think of it is, rather than the dismal failure of AF447, the enormous successes of BA38. and Qantas32
I agree about Quantas32, but I’m not so sure about BA38. The only “extraordinary” action taken by the crew was reducing flaps and – unless they knew beforehand what the effect would be in a glide situation – that action could just as well have had a negative effect.
Airborne_Again wrote:
The only “extraordinary” action taken by the crew was reducing flaps and – unless they knew beforehand what the effect would be in a glide situation – that action could just as well have had a negative effect
Of course hindsight is powerful and now we know it was the only way of reaching the runway. Did they know? Perhaps not, but
a) They thought of it in a few seconds , and
b) They were willing to try it
I have personally done quite a bit of simulated power-off training including glide adjustment by flap setting and like to think it would help me in such a scenario.
I doubt any part of their formal airline training drove them to a) or b)
