(qualified?) pilot shortage round 2? MPL

[Abernathy]

So a Lufthansa pilot was the "Father of MPL"? I wonder if this was one of his shining examples: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja1LCCuDgfI

 

[dalav8tor]

The 1500 rule is not just a FAA reg, it is now also law. Google HR 5900.

 

[HA25]

The 1500 rule is not just a FAA reg, it is now also law. Google HR 5900.

Section 217 -
Directs the FAA Administrator to conduct a rulemaking proceeding to modify minimum federal requirements for the issuance of airline transport pilot certificates. Requires a pilot to have at least 1,500 flight hours to qualify for a certificate.
Authorizes the Administrator to allow specific academic training courses, beyond the minimum required, to be credited toward total flight hours, if allowing a pilot to take such courses will enhance safety more than requiring full compliance with the flight hours requirement.

loop holes so big you can drive a Mack truck thru them....

 

[laker4284]

The 1500 rule is not just a FAA reg, it is now also law. Google HR 5900.

My bad. I focused on the FAA writing the reg, as opposed to the law directing the Feds to do so. The Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2010 is the name of the bill, sponsored by Rep Oberstar, a hard-core ALPA supporter. The end result is the same - a bad bill, with foolish requirements, in part passed to give ALPA an item it has long wanted.

If you haven't followed this part of ALPA's want list, they have for many years supported anything that artificialy might create pressure on pilot availability, i.e. working to create a pilot shortage. The ALPA mag had a large article about just that, using a shortage to enhance contracts, somewhere back around 2004ish.

Regardless, it unfortunately comes back to logic and common sense having far too little to do with a final rule.

The irony is that this is the same logic that provided a potent weapon for APAAD, SWAPA et al when working to change the age rule: If newbies are popping straight out of college and into the right seat of an RJ, then it makes sense to keep more experienced pilots in the cockpit. APAAD ran a wickedly effective ad lampooning 250 hour new hires in The Hill, the primary Capitol Hill newspaper. It got lots of attention, which added to the cosponsors of the age change bill.

The further irony is that CAPA and ALPA pushed for this new bill/reg and got it. High hiring reqirements might bring better contracts. But...these same requirements also might, down the road a piece, bring another extension of the retirement age.

I wonder if they figured that in?

 

[Lear70]

Yes, but it leaves it up to the FAA, not Congress or another ruling body, to determine what academic training courses and how much it reduces those flight hours.

For instance, if someone were to take a course that put someone with 1,000 hours in a multi-crew environment in a simulator for 30 hours (not a Frasca... there's a couple MD and 727 sims out there in the University environment), teach them a FULL systems course in that aircraft, basically giving them the equivalent of a type rating without really giving them a type rating, and letting them reduce their 1,500 by 100 hours, I'd be OK with that, but only once, not multiple reductions.

Again, the idea that training equals experience is ludicrous. You can't replicate being tired after being up all day then getting called for a night flight to an airport served by an NDB in a snow storm, get a crappy runway report from some 19 year old idiot, then landing and having no braking action when you weren't expecting it, or a hundred other similar abnormal scenarios when tired and not expecting them.

That's what makes a good pilot. Experience that teaches you to always be vigilant and to stay current on the systems even when it's not checkride time and sharp with hand-flying skills.

(sorry about the post above yesterday. Posting from my iPhone always makes for spelling errors - putting the wrong word in and I don't catch it).

 

[Lear70]

My bad. I focused on the FAA writing the reg, as opposed to the law directing the Feds to do so. The Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2010 is the name of the bill, sponsored by Rep Oberstar, a hard-core ALPA supporter. The end result is the same - a bad bill, with foolish requirements, in part passed to give ALPA an item it has long wanted.

If you haven't followed this part of ALPA's want list, they have for many years supported anything that artificialy might create pressure on pilot availability, i.e. working to create a pilot shortage. The ALPA mag had a large article about just that, using a shortage to enhance contracts, somewhere back around 2004ish.

Regardless, it unfortunately comes back to logic and common sense having far too little to do with a final rule.

The irony is that this is the same logic that provided a potent weapon for APAAD, SWAPA et al when working to change the age rule: If newbies are popping straight out of college and into the right seat of an RJ, then it makes sense to keep more experienced pilots in the cockpit. APAAD ran a wickedly effective ad lampooning 250 hour new hires in The Hill, the primary Capitol Hill newspaper. It got lots of attention, which added to the cosponsors of the age change bill.

The further irony is that CAPA and ALPA pushed for this new bill/reg and got it. High hiring reqirements might bring better contracts. But...these same requirements also might, down the road a piece, bring another extension of the retirement age.

I wonder if they figured that in?

I'm guessing you never had to sit left seat in an RJ with some wunderkid child of the magenta in the right seat trying to keep up with the airplane and either doing multiple things that make you question who gave them their CMEL or outright panicking the first time you get an abnormal and trying to do something REALLY stupid where, in both cases, no matter how much you try to talk them through it, you basically have to take the airplane, tell them to sit on their hands and shut up, and deal with the situation.

I had the dubious pleasure of being at PCL when they hired a TON of those kinds of pilots and it made life rather irritating, and made me start watching what airplanes my family got on when a wunderkid got paired with one of our near-obese older pilots that were coronaries waiting to happen.

I shudder to think what would have happened in an emergency with one of those crew pairings if the CA checked out (stroke, heart attack, whatever) and the new-hire 250-hr wonder was left to deal with it. Probably something like the Colgan accident. Or what happened with PCL 3701.

Having directly experienced what happens when you put a 250 hour pilot in the right seat of an RJ (serious degradation in safety), I've been advocating an ATP for ALL 121 airline pilots for about 11 years now (go back and research my postings, you'll see it pop up once every year or two when this topic comes up).

I guess at 41 I'm just an old-school, 3rd generation pilot, been around this all my life. Fly the Wing and Aerodynamics for Naval Aviators is sitting over here on my shelf, well-read and studied, not because it was required in a course, but because someone in my career shoved it under my nose and I wanted to be a better aviator. You give that kind of training to ALL pilots, make them UNDERSTAND the aircraft they're flying, HOW it works beyond just pushing the buttons and following the pretty magenta line, then make them develop stick skills that PROVE they can handle the plane, not just a rote checkride and a question and answer bank they can memorize, then MAYBE, just MAYBE I'd be OK reducing those hours now required.

Otherwise, no. They need the experience. Personally I believe the ATP course should REQUIRE mandatory understanding and oral testing on Chapters 1-5 of Aerodynamics for Naval Aviators and the entire book of Fly the Wing. The testing standards for the FAA for the CMEL and ATP are laughable; that's part of the problem.

Any idiot can memorize 1,000 multiple choice questions enough to get 70% and flying a Duchess through maneuvers isn't exactly equivalent to blowing an engine on takeoff so badly it catches on fire, kills half the hydraulic system, and makes the obese Captain stroke out from the sudden shock and stress, leaving the F/O to deal with all of that on his own.

Show me a training course that can teach that successfully and I'll gladly retract my position.

 

[jmreii]

Maybe some US airlines will sell their assets to foreign investors and all these problems will be a memory.

 

[laker4284]

I'm guessing you never had to sit left seat in an RJ ...

Not in an RJ but, yes, I've had some totally unqualified co-pilots gracing the left seat of cockpits I occupied. Never a pleasant experience.

I'd say you and I areto a large extent, on the same page.The newbies popping out of college and into the right seat are clearly lacking experience, which cannot be replicated. On the other hand, 1500 or so hours boring a hole through the sky in CAVU weather isn't doing much for anyone either. It comes back to experience, training AND training source.

In that respect, we differ as I don't think an ATP is the answer either. It mandates 1,500 hours and a new license. While that ensures an adequate or better pilot is in the right seat it sets the bar VERY high. And it ignores the mix aspect, i.e. the military pilot who has excellent training, high bars which if not crossed result in termination and, by the time that pilot separates from the military, enough time to have seen the real world (1,000 hours for a fighter jock, for example). These guys have proven themselves over and over so 1,500 and an ATP is simply overkill. As noted, the feds are already doing work arounds. We can expect those work arounds to grow, no lessen over time.

The new regs missed the target: Instead of using a mix of experience, flight time and training source they went for the easy score. Now they've set up a whole new problem which they are already being forced to address and will be forced to further address.

Washington is disfunctional. There can be no better proof than this.

 

[HA25]

I'm guessing you never had to sit left seat in an RJ with some wunderkid child of the magenta in the right seat trying to keep up with the airplane and either doing multiple things that make you question who gave them their CMEL or outright panicking the first time you get an abnormal and trying to do something REALLY stupid where, in both cases, no matter how much you try to talk them through it, you basically have to take the airplane, tell them to sit on their hands and shut up, and deal with the situation.

I had the dubious pleasure of being at PCL when they hired a TON of those kinds of pilots and it made life rather irritating, and made me start watching what airplanes my family got on when a wunderkid got paired with one of our near-obese older pilots that were coronaries waiting to happen.

I shudder to think what would have happened in an emergency with one of those crew pairings if the CA checked out (stroke, heart attack, whatever) and the new-hire 250-hr wonder was left to deal with it. Probably something like the Colgan accident. Or what happened with PCL 3701.

Having directly experienced what happens when you put a 250 hour pilot in the right seat of an RJ (serious degradation in safety), I've been advocating an ATP for ALL 121 airline pilots for about 11 years now (go back and research my postings, you'll see it pop up once every year or two when this topic comes up).

I guess at 41 I'm just an old-school, 3rd generation pilot, been around this all my life. Fly the Wing and Aerodynamics for Naval Aviators is sitting over here on my shelf, well-read and studied, not because it was required in a course, but because someone in my career shoved it under my nose and I wanted to be a better aviator. You give that kind of training to ALL pilots, make them UNDERSTAND the aircraft they're flying, HOW it works beyond just pushing the buttons and following the pretty magenta line, then make them develop stick skills that PROVE they can handle the plane, not just a rote checkride and a question and answer bank they can memorize, then MAYBE, just MAYBE I'd be OK reducing those hours now required.

Otherwise, no. They need the experience. Personally I believe the ATP course should REQUIRE mandatory understanding and oral testing on Chapters 1-5 of Aerodynamics for Naval Aviators and the entire book of Fly the Wing. The testing standards for the FAA for the CMEL and ATP are laughable; that's part of the problem.

Any idiot can memorize 1,000 multiple choice questions enough to get 70% and flying a Duchess through maneuvers isn't exactly equivalent to blowing an engine on takeoff so badly it catches on fire, kills half the hydraulic system, and makes the obese Captain stroke out from the sudden shock and stress, leaving the F/O to deal with all of that on his own.

Show me a training course that can teach that successfully and I'll gladly retract my position.

VERY well said.... too bad more don't think and behave like you do... I can't imagine how this profession and job market would look if the FAA required at least this level of "professional" involvement to get a license.

I mean if the Medical Certification boards were as relaxed about issuing licenses to doctors, we'd have an epidemic of medical mal practice... the difference is that Airplane technology, ATC and the fact that there are ALWAYS two pilots in the cockpit today makes it so easy to mask a weak pilot...

 

[pilotyip]

Again, the idea that training equals experience is ludicrous. You can't replicate being tired after being up all day then getting called for a night flight to an airport served by an NDB in a snow storm, get a crappy runway report from some 19 year old idiot, then landing and having no braking action when you weren't expecting it, or a hundred other similar abnormal scenarios when tired and not expecting them.

That's what makes a good pilot. Experience that teaches you to always be vigilant and to stay current on the systems even when it's not checkride time and sharp with hand-flying skills.

(sorry about the post above yesterday. Posting from my iPhone always makes for spelling errors - putting the wrong word in and I don't catch it).

Sounds like a sales job for one of those fantastic jobs at KYIP!