Last of the dinosaurs?

[Lear70]

Yeah, that old stick-and-rudder guy, Bud Holland, sure had that pitch-power-bank-stall stuff all figured out...

Well, you can't fix deliberately stupid, nor can you stop someone from being an a$$hole with an airplane.

A deliberate airshow stunt gone bad is a different animal than reacting improperly to an emergency you haven't created. Then again, you're getting into another age-old argument about which is better, civilian pilots flying crap equipment into uncontrolled fields for years and living to tell about it or military pilots who are (arguably) much more highly-trained, but usually don't have a lot of independent operating experience.

I'd still take the Air Force guy when the crap hits the fan unexpectedly than a puppy mill graduate with 500 hours and a wet CMEL. YMMV

 

[Sluggo_63]

Well, you can't fix deliberately stupid, nor can you stop someone from being an a$$hole with an airplane.

A deliberate airshow stunt gone bad is a different animal than reacting improperly to an emergency you haven't created. Then again, you're getting into another age-old argument about which is better, civilian pilots flying crap equipment into uncontrolled fields for years and living to tell about it or military pilots who are (arguably) much more highly-trained, but usually don't have a lot of independent operating experience.

I'd still take the Air Force guy when the crap hits the fan unexpectedly than a puppy mill graduate with 500 hours and a wet CMEL. YMMV

I mostly agree with you, but your original premise was in the C-17 crash a old stick-and-rudder guy would have figured it out. The C-17 crash was an airshow practice with a Major who was being deliberately stupid with an airplane. The similarities to the Fairchild B-52 crash are eerie...

 

[Lear70]

The East is getting exactly what they wanted. Years of a fence in place protecting their seniority in wide-body equipment until the majority of the super-senior either retire or hiring starts back up again, thus bringing up everyone's seniority and lessening the effects of the Nic.

At the end of the day, Nic will probably prevail, but in the meantime only the senior benefit while everyone else can't get a pay raise. Yes, it sucks that this industry eats its young and no, I don't think anyone will ever learn. That's why I got out of union work except for daily contract compliance stuff which, 90% of the time, is explaining the contract to people who won't take the time to research it themselves (which I don't mind, happy to help our guys), but it's indicative of a larger problem of apathy among the majority of our pilots and is a problem that ALPA has been battling for a long time.

 

[Lear70]

I mostly agree with you, but your original premise was in the C-17 crash a old stick-and-rudder guy would have figured it out. The C-17 crash was an airshow practice with a Major who was being deliberately stupid with an airplane. The similarities to the Fairchild B-52 crash are eerie...

I understand what you mean, although I wasn't trying to draw a hard line in the sand that applied to every person or individual.

In truth, I've flown with some of the puppy mill pilots who were sharp (not a lot, but some), and I've flown with some who couldn't fly their way out of a paper bag if you took the automation away from them (more than a few). Most were somewhere in the middle, but tended to be on the worse end of the spectrum until they got about 18+ months in the jet before they caught up.

The people who came out of round-dial non-automated aircraft were, by and large, simply better pilots. There are always exceptions to the rule, but that's been my experience over the last 20+ years.