oh jeez

Wow, I thought I had low time...that scares even me. I hope all the captains are MEIs.
 
What this really does is breaks the link between general aviation flying and airliner piloting, thereby setting the stage for the unthinkable should the airlines gain a management role over the airspace.

Not that I'm paranoid or anything.
 
So, there's fast growth in the industry and opportunity for future candidates. I restate my comment in another thread... It falls somewhere between scary and encouraging.
 
The US Air Force sends folks out solo in supersonic fighter-type jets doing formation acro and night IMC cross-countries with less than 150 hours of flight time but over 1000 hours of ground training, and they've got a pretty good record in that regard. This program sends folks out in the right seat of a transport with a senior captain in the left seat in about the same amount of high level sim plus flight time and more ground training (45 weeks is a lot of training).

Do I think it's a good idea? Hell no. Captains make mistakes, and these "MPL's" cannot possibly be prepared to help out in such situations -- that's why Southwest wants 3000 hours of flight time including 1000 hours turbine PIC (that's legal PIC, not just sole manipulator in the right seat) to be a co-pilot. 'Course, highly experienced SWA co-pilots didn't stop two SWA captains from making the bad decisions that put their 737's in a Van Nuys gas station and Chicago street, so who knows for sure. Guess we'll just have to wait for the string to play out and see the results.
 
This is the latest incarnation of the training program used by the Chinese. For years they've been sticking 200 hour wonders in the right seat (less for native born Taiwanese and Chinese). All their capt are training capts. Given the new generation of simulators the MPL program is no surpise.
 
tonycondon said:
http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?ContentBlockID=798dee8f-0fe8-455a-a9dc-0dd5717a0741&

64 hrs in the air and you can manage an airliner. lets hope the captain can land the thing.
Click to expand...

Hang on for a minute, it's 45 weeks of training with 64 hrs in the air. Doesn't say how much sim time is involved. Lets see, figure 40 weeks sim training with 10 hrs a week in the sim (5 left seat, 5 right working with a sim partner), that's 400 hrs of pro level training in a sim of the plane they'll be flying. Sounds like a better system than 1000 hrs in the right seat of a 152 and a couple hundred in the right seat of a multi sitting on their hands except for the few times they have to do something.
 
The more I think about it and given the amount of time in ground training, it could be a very good program. A significant amount of time in a true simulator on a Stewart platform can be great training. But, I don't think it should be a jump from that to an airliner or even a twin turbine.

Without knowing the background, I believe that couple hundred hours required for commercial was for good reason. The cross-country time is for good reason. Those provide experiences you will never get from sitting in the safe, non-threatening environment of a simulator.

Which would you rather have... a pilot who made 50-100 hours of real cross-country time followed by a few hundred more with students? Or, twice as much time in never more than a simulator?

If you choose the latter, let me know which airline you'll be hiring for so I can schedule another.
 
KennyFlys said:
Without knowing the background, I believe that couple hundred hours required for commercial was for good reason. The cross-country time is for good reason. Those provide experiences you will never get from sitting in the safe, non-threatening environment of a simulator.
Click to expand...



I absolutely agree! I spent two weeks in a Level D full motion sim when I got on with my airline. It really is a wonderful training tool of immeasurable value. My first flight or two in the real airplane, when everything was going right, it was hard to tell the difference.

But when everything starts to go wrong...sure we can simulate
the low pressure pump failure that causes the high pressure fuel pump to cavatate and thus fail, which leads to the failure of the engine. And of course once your left engine goes, you get the fire alert on the right one just as you're intercepting the glide slope. At least the smoke has cleared in the cockpit after the fire in the cargo hold. Unfortunately it cleared when the cargo door blew open at FL230. And of course the engine failure fried both AC Buses, so we're on stand by instruments only and someone our battery is in thermal runaway, so we don't have enough juice to put the gear down AND run the radios (kind of want to see where that loc is)...

Even though we simulate all that in a way that we can't in the airplane, there's still that knowledge in the back of your head that the pause button is on the console right behind you, and even if you do get "the red screen" a second shot at not killing everyone is just a coffee break away.

Ground training is great. Sim training is invaluable. NOTHING beats the real thing.
 
I don't know about anyone else, but at least half of the EP events I've seen in the airplane only roughly resembled what the sim produces. The thing I find the most valuable about emergencies in the sim are the checklist practice and getting an idea how the airplane will react in a certain situation. Oh yeah, it's also a kick ass CRM tool.
 
Sim is only as good as the skipper running it. Let's hope they put some good resources to use.
 
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