What is the point of hour building?

AdamFrisch wrote:

Do your really want to send your granny on a flight where the FO has 250hrs, of which half were in a cheap desktop simulator?

Yes, why not? What extra safety would the granny gain if that FO had bimbled up and down the Florida coast in a C152 for 100 hours? Airlines do a pretty good job when it comes to pairing inexperienced FOs with experienced training captains.

AdamFrisch wrote:

The days of paying $16K/year for a FO (Colgan) and demanding them to pay for their own type ratings are over.

Honestly, I don’t really see that. A colleague of mine (bizjet captain for 20 years) with good connections in the States was just offered a bizjet position there: 25k$ per year. Pathetic. Worse than ever.

Bathman wrote:

…or pulled an aircraft in and out of a hanger.

I am working in the GA sector, yet the operating manual of our company says: „ Pilots of XXX do not tow aeroplanes .“ Must be an insurance thing. Some of us do it anyway to spare our technicians the trouble of staying late or driving to the airport during weekends, but at our own risk. And that skill I did not gain through hours building (which I had to do back then) because I never flew anything that lived in a hangar until I joined my current employer.

Peter wrote:

or more accurately AOC ops running on a southern AOC e.g. the Cork one

Have you read this: http://fearoflanding.com/accidents/accident-reports/the-sordid-story-behind-the-cork-fatal-accident-manx2-air-lada-and-flightline/ ?

It does seem amazing to me that the conjecture than an airline-qualified crew were reluctant to divert because of unfamiliarity with the diversion field could even be a consideration (of course we don’t know what they were actually thinking at the time). That seems like a cavernous gap in training if it were true. At least if someone’s hour building, out of sheer avoidance of getting bored, they are likely to try going to all sorts of different airfields.

This one being close to home garnered lots of interest. Manx2 subsequently changed their name to CityWing and their website once again gives the impression they are an airline rather than a ticket booking agent.

AdamFrisch wrote:

This is precisely why AF447 guys etc can’t recognize a stall – because they’ve never flown normal GA aircraft.

You really think that flying around in a puddle jumper gives you experience relevant to high altitude flight? Gives you the ability to reliably distinguish high speed from low speed buffet without an outside reference and with instruments you don’t trust/ can’t make heads or tails of? IIRC one of the training issues they identified was that their loss of airspeed indication simulations were all at low altitudes.

I’m not really worried about “green” FOs as long as they get a proper training. I don’t really see hour building as something useful. Experience is good but not all hours are the same.

what_next wrote:

Some crashes like AF447 have been attributed to the lack of basic flying skills of this kind of pilot

I think that in that case psychology played a big role. PF stopped being a member of the crew and unwittingly interfered with attempts of the PM. And PM didn’t recognize the issue. We’ll never know what went through their heads. IIRC PF was worried about overspeeding. And things like stall warning going off when they pitched down and going silent when pitching up probably didn’t help. One of the interesting questions was why nobody mentioned the stall warning. A really tragic accident. An event that wouldn’t even be worth mentioning (momentary loss of airspeed indication) developed into a disaster.

Tumbleweed wrote:

The process is much better structured by doing the IR first followed by the CPL, making better use of the time whilst offering a financial saving, but few follow that route.

People really do that? It wouldn’t even occur to me aside from situations where you already have the hours (no need to build them) or you aren’t interested in the IR at the moment. I saw a few modular ATPL courses and IR was always right after ATPL theory during which you did some hour building since you need 50 hours for the IR IIRC.

“You really think that flying around in a puddle jumper gives you experience relevant to high altitude flight?”

But that’s not the point I was making. I feel a cpl/IR holder who has just spent 100 pounds on their training should be capable of flying a basic SEP aircraft from a to b and back again. In a safe and commercially expeditious manner.

The fact that are not interested in GA is irrelevent, although I would add that some are, they have the licence to do so and therefore should be able to do it.

I should add that many are perfectly capable of doing this. But it’s shocking that after all the money spent many are not.

Bathman wrote:

But that’s not the point I was making.

I was reacting to a post from AdamFrisch.

what_next wrote:

Yes, why not? What extra safety would the granny gain if that FO had bimbled up and down the Florida coast in a C152 for 100 hours? Airlines do a pretty good job when it comes to pairing inexperienced FOs with experienced training captains.

Which effectively turns your shiny B738 / A320 into a single-pilot operation. Great – not.

I have some first-hand experience with MCC ‘pilots’ (I use word with hesitation), who, as Bathman says, are basically unable to fly an airplane. Setting up the AP and all the various bells and whistles in a sim? Sure. Actually flying? No way. I also venture to say, that sim training doesn’t substitute for the real thing (and yes, I have been in real, full motion ones). In the back of your mind you know that there is a reset button and nobody will get harmed if you f*ck up massively. Now, getting into severe turbulence over some remote mountains in a C172 is a different experience altogether and IMHO makes you more appreciative of the medium you are operating in. Which may well have saved the AF447 guys and their pax.

Not bimble up and down the coast, but even so with the varying weather in FL, that would be more useful than engaging A/P at 400ft. But this is not my idea – the industry itself is coming to the conclusion that there’s a serious lack of physical flying skills in modern cockpits due to attrition. The more recent experience the pilots have from manual flying, the better we’re all off. Just look at Asiana – yes, ILS was out, but VASI sure as hell wasn’t. 4 reds during most of approach and the pilot didn’t think it was time do something? That just wouldn’t happen with a pilot who’s flown a lot of GA.

172driver wrote:

I have some first-hand experience with MCC ‘pilots’

Do you, by “MCC”, perhaps mean “MPL”? (MCC=Multi Crew Concept, a part of the ATPL training whereas MPL=Multi Pilot License, a license restricted to performing co-pilot duties in a multi-pilot environment).

Right now I am flying with my third FO who comes straight from the flying school after an integrated ATPL course. With something like 150 to 200 hours total time. Each of those three was/is perfectly capable of handling the aeroplane and performing his duties. His hand flying skills and instrument scan is probably better than mine, because he has had recent experience of hand-flying in IMC which I haven’t done for decades myself.

And by the way: Every airliner crash after AF447 – and there have been very few during the last two years which were the safest in commercial aviation ever – was either caused by or had experienced pilots in the cockpit (last year’s Germanwings crash apart which was the result of undetected mental illness).