How Does Your Department Assign Trip PIC's?

[AA717driver]

Sounds like an Ego thing. Very irresponsible of the chief pilot to not challenge the new captains with more difficult international trips. How else do you learn? One fine point. In todays operations if something goes wrong it is both crewmembers fault. I don't think the idea of it was the PIC's fault will fly if the customer is not happy.

Not at my former company. Something goes wrong and the CP and senior guy on the trip get the 'feces car wash'. AND it reverberates and implicates for months.

You DON'T want to have to answer the question: "Why was he captain on that trip if he wasn't ready?"

My first Int'l. trip as CA went badly. We made an unnecessary fuel stop because of a bum flight plan from AR and I didn't catch it. Neither did the very senior other two guys. I got a lecture and they got chewed out. My second Int'l. trip went flawlessly (thanks to the other two guys, one a prominent member here and frequent poster , who all worked together to eliminate problems).

So, no, you don't want to throw someone in the water to see if he floats or not--it could mean your job.

TC

 

[Shamus]

If your there for 8 years to become "senior pilot" It's probably a really good job. Don't get dicked up in company politics, just be happy to have a job. A good job that.

 

[PlaneStupid]

AA717 I would guess that where you worked you didn't have a very stringent PIC checkout program. If a guy is qualified as a captain then he/she should certainly be qualified to act as PIC. I wouldn't "throw" a new captain on a trip to La Paz as his first International trip, but certainly there are other destinations to increase his/her experience level.

 

[ILOVEBEER]

I wouldn't "throw" a new captain on a trip to La Paz as his first International trip, but certainly there are other destinations to increase his/her experience level.

La Paz? Really? With the exception of Canada, I don't think there could be an easier international trip than La Paz.

 

[AA717driver]

AA717 I would guess that where you worked you didn't have a very stringent PIC checkout program. If a guy is qualified as a captain then he/she should certainly be qualified to act as PIC. I wouldn't "throw" a new captain on a trip to La Paz as his first International trip, but certainly there are other destinations to increase his/her experience level.

No, there wasn't a very formal checkout program. They hire very high time people with international experience and don't let them be trip captain until they're comfortable with the operation and have flown as trip captain on domestic.

I got into trouble because the senior guy on the trip didn't do squat, didn't care and if he had the choice of giving you the right answer or the answer that would get you in trouble, he'd screw you every time. AND, I still had the 'deer in the headlights' going on. But I didn't make the same mistake twice. Oh well...

TC

 

[PlaneStupid]

La Paz was just an example. The thread started with PIC's on any trip not just international. No offense AA717 but sounds like that pilot was "old school" and there was not much of a crew concept going on in that cockpit. There is no place for that attitude in any flight department nowadays and those flyers should be weeded out. If something were to go wrong he would be just as violated or dead as you would be. IMHO.

 

[GVFlyer]

Straight seniority.

 

[GVFlyer]

La Paz? Really? With the exception of Canada, I don't think there could be an easier international trip than La Paz.

At 13,313 feet field elevation La Paz - J F Kennedy International Airport (LPB/SLLP) is one of the more challenging airports that I go into.

 

[landlover]

does your paycheck vary by any of these topics? If not, who the hell cares?

At our flight department we have three levels of pilot; Co-pilot, Captain and Senior Captain (you automatically become a Senior Captain after being a Captain for 8 years).

In the past, the scheduler would randomly assign the trip pic (when two Captains were flying together) so that by years end everyone ended up with roughly a 50/50 split as pic and sic, except for Co-pilots who are always sic.

A recent change was made, at the request of some Senior Captains, that when a Captain and a Senior Captain fly together, the Senior Captain is always pic. When Senior Captains fly together or Captains fly together the pic role is randomly assigned (except that the Chief Pilot is always pic).

Based on the numbers all but two pilots will be Senior Captains within 4 years. Then 4 to 8 years after that everyone will be a Senior Captain. The problem I have with the policy change is that we will end up with several Captains who will never be the pic of a trip for 4 to 8 years. I wonder how this policy helps advance/develop the careers of the younger pilots, or any pilots we hire in the future? Sure they will eventually be paid as a Captain, they will just never get any of the responsibility that comes with the title.

To me it seems to be an ego-driven policy change. We certainly have Captains who possess more skill, ability and better judgement than some Senior Captains, so it is not a safety issue of making the best/safest pilot the pic.

I am wondering how your departments handle trip assignments? What is your policy? If you have a similar policy what is it based on? Safety? Seniority? Ego?

 

[sleepy]

Straight seniority.

How do you determine seniority? Date of hire, date promoted to Captain, assigned by the Chief Pilot?

We hire street captains ahead of Co-pilots sometimes, so if it is DOH then some Captains are junior to some Co-pilots? If it is date promoted to Captain then we have cases where Co-pilots were upgraded to captain ahead of other Co-pilots hired before them. We have many regular Captains who are international qualified and Senior Captains who have never been anywhere but Canada or Mexico and are not International Captains.

We are not a unionized airline where you get a seniority number that stays with you for life. Just wondering how your department assigns seniority

 

[ILOVEBEER]

At 13,313 feet field elevation La Paz - J F Kennedy International Airport (LPB/SLLP) is one of the more challenging airports that I go into.

If he mean't La Paz, Bolivia, then I agree. I was thinking La Paz, Mexico.

 

[semperfido]

How do you determine seniority?

seniority is normally date of hire.

 

[sleepy]

seniority is normally date of hire.

At our place it is all over the place. It mostly comes down to what the Chief Pilots says it is on any particular day.

 

[semperfido]

take up a hobby and focus on something else. it's not worth bothering about.

 

[sleepy]

I ran a pretty good campaign against the change, I got the pilot group behind it, found out yesterday that they are going back to the old policy of splitting it up 50/50 unless special qualifications are required for a trip.