yet another airbus plunged from the sky

[Evanson]

Originally Posted By: Astro14
How about this rule (present at every major US Airline): Two people in the cockpit at all times. When one pilot is ready to use the lav, a flight attendant comes up, then the pilot can step back. The FA has control of the door, and admits the pilot back in. No locking folks out. No single pilot control.

Not one of your pilot suicide examples had this rule in place.

Simple. Effective. Already in place in the US.


I mentioned this in the other thread as it leapt out to me.

Can't believe they don't have this precaution in place worldwide. Not for suicide but for any event that incapacitated the pilot left in the cockpit.

It may not have prevented this incident or others, but I'm sure the relatives wish there was someone else in the cockpit with him.

 

[72te27]

Evanson,
I understand that, and I agree that it all points towards the F/O being purposeful.
A very tedious and unimaginably detailed investigation will take place. A huge amount of information will be sifted through, almost none of which is public yet.
I am curious how a 630 hour pilot (I guess around 430 hours when hired) gets into the front seat of an A320 in any country.

 

[Astro14]

Originally Posted By: 72te27
Evanson,
I understand that, and I agree that it all points towards the F/O being purposeful.
A very tedious and unimaginably detailed investigation will take place. A huge amount of information will be sifted through, almost none of which is public yet.
I am curious how a 630 hour pilot (I guess around 430 hours when hired) gets into the front seat of an A320 in any country.


Discount airline...low wages...giving the consumer what they want: cheap!

 

[clarkflower]

Originally Posted By: Astro14
Originally Posted By: 72te27
Evanson,
I understand that, and I agree that it all points towards the F/O being purposeful.
A very tedious and unimaginably detailed investigation will take place. A huge amount of information will be sifted through, almost none of which is public yet.
I am curious how a 630 hour pilot (I guess around 430 hours when hired) gets into the front seat of an A320 in any country.


Discount airline...low wages...giving the consumer what they want: cheap!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colgan_Air_Flight_3407

 

[72te27]

Originally Posted By: Astro14
Originally Posted By: 72te27
Evanson,
I understand that, and I agree that it all points towards the F/O being purposeful.
A very tedious and unimaginably detailed investigation will take place. A huge amount of information will be sifted through, almost none of which is public yet.
I am curious how a 630 hour pilot (I guess around 430 hours when hired) gets into the front seat of an A320 in any country.


Discount airline...low wages...giving the consumer what they want: cheap!
Yep.

 

[andrewg]

Originally Posted By: clarkflower
Originally Posted By: Astro14
Originally Posted By: 72te27
Evanson,
I understand that, and I agree that it all points towards the F/O being purposeful.
A very tedious and unimaginably detailed investigation will take place. A huge amount of information will be sifted through, almost none of which is public yet.
I am curious how a 630 hour pilot (I guess around 430 hours when hired) gets into the front seat of an A320 in any country.


Discount airline...low wages...giving the consumer what they want: cheap!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colgan_Air_Flight_3407

The First Officer on that flight went to the same high
school I did. Much later than I though.
I remember the accident well.

 

[kozanoglu]

Originally Posted By: 72te27
I'm waiting for something a touch more official and factual than a "French Prosecutor" declaring from his office in Paris that the F/O crashed the jet on purpose. He may have. I'm a little leery of jumping to conclusions. Crash explainations are rarely as simple as they may appear. Lots of reports that his breathing remained steady and even to the end. Even a mental case (or perhaps especially a mental case) is going to have involuntary physiological reactions to banging on the door, people screaming or, at least, the ground rising up to meet you. I'm not convinced he was conscious. There are modes on some Airbus aircraft that allow the autopilot to be manipulated through the stick or yoke vs. a mode control panel. Bumping the stick while going unconscious could have put the aircraft into a controlled descent. Not likely and not saying that's what happened, just saying it's a little early for officials over there to be making declarative statements, as the investigation has just started.


He must be innocent, a white Protestant good boy, can't do bad.

 

[Astro14]

Originally Posted By: kozanoglu
Originally Posted By: 72te27
I'm waiting for something a touch more official and factual than a "French Prosecutor" declaring from his office in Paris that the F/O crashed the jet on purpose. He may have. I'm a little leery of jumping to conclusions. Crash explainations are rarely as simple as they may appear. Lots of reports that his breathing remained steady and even to the end. Even a mental case (or perhaps especially a mental case) is going to have involuntary physiological reactions to banging on the door, people screaming or, at least, the ground rising up to meet you. I'm not convinced he was conscious. There are modes on some Airbus aircraft that allow the autopilot to be manipulated through the stick or yoke vs. a mode control panel. Bumping the stick while going unconscious could have put the aircraft into a controlled descent. Not likely and not saying that's what happened, just saying it's a little early for officials over there to be making declarative statements, as the investigation has just started.


He must be innocent, a white Protestant good boy, can't do bad.


Can you keep your obvious racism out of this thread?

We got to see plenty of your bias in your posts in this thread: http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/3678889/1

Same topic.

Ugly then. Ugly now.

 

[Mr Nice]

Originally Posted By: Astro14
Originally Posted By: 72te27
Evanson,
I understand that, and I agree that it all points towards the F/O being purposeful.
A very tedious and unimaginably detailed investigation will take place. A huge amount of information will be sifted through, almost none of which is public yet.
I am curious how a 630 hour pilot (I guess around 430 hours when hired) gets into the front seat of an A320 in any country.


Discount airline...low wages...giving the consumer what they want: cheap!


That is very troubling they would hire a pilot with sooooooo little seat time and experience.
I agree most consumers ONLY care about low cost air fares.

 

[MNgopher]

Have to recognize that the path to being a commercial airline pilot in the US is different than the path in much the rest of the world. It is not uncommon to have much lower seat time for new pilots in the rest of the world compared to the US. Not judging whether that's good or bad, just different.

The Copilot in this incident went through a flight school run by Lufthansa. Not sure I would call Lufthansa a "budget" airline, though he ended flying in that part of the company...

Know any US airlines that run their own flight school? More or less, you are on your own to get your flight school and seat time before getting hired at a US major.

 

[friendly_jacek]

Quote:
How Germanwings co-pilot hid secret mental illness: Families' fury at airline as police find pile of torn-up sick notes in home of killer nicknamed 'Tomato Andy' - including one for day he crashed jet

Investigators into Alps crash find killer co-pilot Andreas Lubitz had 'hidden illness' from airline bosses
He had suffered from depression and 'burnout' and was once deemed 'unfliable' but was later passed as fit to fly
Head of Lufthansa admitted the 28-year-old had slipped through the 'safety net' - with devastating consequences
Friends said he was teased and called 'Tomato Andy' because he worked as a flight steward before qualifying
Police said they have found evidence of mental illness, but no suicide note at flat he is said to share with girlfriend
Chemist close to his home confirms he regularly picked up medication but cannot confirm what it was to treat


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...l#ixzz3Vb3jYy9H

 

[Astro14]

Originally Posted By: MNgopher
Have to recognize that the path to being a commercial airline pilot in the US is different than the path in much the rest of the world. It is not uncommon to have much lower seat time for new pilots in the rest of the world compared to the US. Not judging whether that's good or bad, just different.

The Copilot in this incident went through a flight school run by Lufthansa. Not sure I would call Lufthansa a "budget" airline, though he ended flying in that part of the company...

Know any US airlines that run their own flight school? More or less, you are on your own to get your flight school and seat time before getting hired at a US major.


Ab initio training may be coming to the U.S. soon, but for now, most of our major airline pilots come up from commuters or through the military.

And Germanwings is a discount airline. Created by Lufthansa to compete specifically against the European discount carriers. From Wikipedia:

Germanwings GmbH is a German low-cost airline based in Cologne, which is wholly owned by Lufthansa.[1] Its main hubs are Cologne Bonn Airport, Stuttgart Airport, Hamburg Airport, Berlin Tegel Airport and Düsseldorf Airport; further bases are Hannover Airport and Dortmund Airport.[2]

 

[MNgopher]

Yes, Germanwings is a discount carrier. No disagreement there.

The training he received was from another arm of Lufthansa that operates their flight school. Thus my point that he was not "trained" by a budget airline.

The basic point was that the rest of the world doesn't build seat time for its pilots in the same way the US does. No good or bad, just different.

Just out of curiosity, where do pilots in the US get their seat time prior to starting at a "commuter" airline, if its not the military? It's the chicken and the egg problem.

 

[Astro14]

Originally Posted By: MNgopher
Yes, Germanwings is a discount carrier. No disagreement there.

The training he received was from another arm of Lufthansa that operates their flight school. Thus my point that he was not "trained" by a budget airline.

The basic point was that the rest of the world doesn't build seat time for its pilots in the same way the US does. No good or bad, just different.

Just out of curiosity, where do pilots in the US get their seat time prior to starting at a "commuter" airline, if its not the military? It's the chicken and the egg problem.


Great question...that was just made more complicated by the higher flight time/rating requirements imposed by the FAA in recent years. You now must have an ATP (roughly, 1500 hours) in order to be in the right seat of a commuter aircraft.

That raised the bar considerably for commuters, who now face a pilot shortage (after a decade of no advancement, low wages, and terrible working conditions, this should be no surprise to anyone).

So, if you're not military, you have to build your 1,500 hours through flight instructing, borrowing money, going through an approved aviation university, or a combination of all three. I've posted about this before on BITOG, and the point is: non-military pilots face $100,000 in loans to get to the right seat of a commuter, where they make about $25,000/year...

But that's changing rapidly as the majors hire, and the commuters are losing pilots up to the majors. So, commuters are paying signing bonuses, referral bonuses, raising wages and canceling flights for crew shortages.

We now face a pilot shortage (the result of a decade of wage shortages from bankruptcy and outsourcing to the commuters in the first place, as well as a surplus of pilots resulting from the increase in mandatory retirement age) and it will be interesting to see the industry response. Ab initio (from the beginning) training is common in Europe. It may begin here in the US. The crisis in pilot availability is about 3 - 5 years away.

 

[MNgopher]

Just want to say thanks to Astro14 and others for their participation in these threads. The insight into the aviation world is fascinating to many of us, and the amount of second guessing, speculation, and flat out fear mongering by some in these threads would have me second guessing my choice to participate in them too...

 

[fdcg27]

I have an honest question, Astro.
How many hours TT did you have when you were first set loose in an awesomely capable single seater?
The point that I'm trying to make is that there is a difference between a highly structured results-oriented training environment with constant evaluations and boring holes in the sky sitting in the right seat of C172 as an instructor.
A pilot can have fairly low hours yet still be higly competent and well trained in operating a heavy, fast, complex airplane.
In a way, it may be better to have a pilot accumulate most of his hours in an aircraft incapable of flight at anything less than a hundred knots plus and not amenable to any attempt to save an unstabilzed approach.
Slow and easy aircraft can teach some bad habits that may come back to bite a pilot in later years in a difficult situation.
An Airbus or Boeing can do things that a light single can't do, but you can do things with a light single without risk that no jetliner is capable of.

 

[Astro14]

You guys would be frightened to know that! I had very little time, less than most, right at the minimums (no repeated flights, no cancellations) for each phase of flight...and I am in the middle of transposing my USN Logbook into excel, so I can answer your question precisely.

The first airplane that I ever flew was the T-34C. Turbine, retractable gear, acrobatic.

Solo'd the T-34C at 14.4 hours, total time. Ever. And that's not pattern work, I flew out into our working area...

Next airplane: T-2C. Twin engine jet, acrobatic, carrier-capable.

Solo'd the T-2C at 94.8 hours total time. There was more to be done in the T-34C, formation, instruments, acrobatics, so I finished up with 67.9 T-34C hours. Flew it out to the MOA, did some acrobatics, came back to Meridian and practiced my landings.

Flew it solo aboard a carrier (The "Lady Lex") with 165.8 hours.

By then, I had flown it in air to air gunnery, acrobatics, on instruments, everything. Flying the hundred miles or so from Pensacola out to the Lex was a piece of cake. Landing it was a challenge, it was the first time I had ever seen a carrier.

Next airplane: TA-4J. Single engine jet, acrobatic, attack and carrier capable. First solo at 202.7 total time. Same as the T-2, out to the MOA, flew acrobatics, came back and practiced landings. Went on to fly formation, drop bombs, fire to 20mm guns, and land on a carrier. I would call the A-4 an awesomely capable single seater...while our TA models lacked the nuke capability, we could carry all sorts of bombs and had twin 20mm guns in the wing root. It would roll quickly, turn well, and was easily capable of flying over 500 KIAS at low level.

Next airplane: F-14A Tomcat. Twin engine, variable geometry, supersonic fighter. First flight was my first flight, no back seat flights, no dual-control models. Total time: 281.6 hours

I flew my first combat mission with 699.6 hours. By then, I was pretty comfortable in the jet, and my first mission was night launch, night recovery.

The real point, I think, is this: hours are not all the same. My hours were high-pressure, focused, and demanding. I was flying airplanes upside down before most civilians had even solo'd an airplane. I was landing a twin engine jet on a carrier, solo, before most folks ever flew a twin.

We washed a lot of guys out, and we had a few memorial services along the way, but the training really was outstanding.

 

[fdcg27]

That was the point I was making.
You trained in a highly structured environment where those who couldn't cut it were washed out.
I suspect that Lufty does the same with its ab initio candidates.
The Navy doesn't need semi-competent guys flying missions, nor does any airline.
As you note, not all hours of experience are equal.
A side note:
The T-34 is a Bonanza with a turboprop and a canopy, no?

 

[72te27]

I had written a fairly long explaination of my progression through civilian aviation as a counter-balance to the "boring holes in the sky in a C172" mentality here, but my computer dumped it and I don't have the time or interest to re-write it. Suffice to say, civilian flight training is a critical time that should be administered by a knowlegable, motivated CFI. The student will get out of it what they put into it.
I went from college to my first major airline job in a few months less than five years. I had given 2300 hours of dual as an instructor, had two different corporate jet jobs, flown over 80 different makes and models of airplanes and been hired by, but hadn't flown a single hour for, a commuter. So yes, you can get to the majors as a civilian with no commuter time.

Total time is one thing. What you guys are missing with the ab initio thing is seasoning. Operating aircraft in a wide variety of conditions, literally experiencing the change of seasons and the operational changes and differences that brings to your aircraft operation is a huge part of ones well of experience. Some of the early ab initio programs were somewhat rote type learning curriculums. I haven't stayed up with it, though, and don't know what they do with those programs now. I do continue to take ab inito with a health grain of salt.

 

[d4d]

Originally Posted By: Astro14
... the training really was outstanding.



As a former Blue Suiter and Instructor/Check Pilot in USAF Air Training Command, Astro's comments are equally applicable to USAF Pilot Training. Our pilot candidates came to initial jet training from the Zoo (USAFA), college AFROTC, and OTS. All had at least undergone basic flying screening programs that included solo flight in light aircraft. Many went on to obtain their Private license after the initial screening portion was over.

After entering USAF Pilot Training, they received about a 100 hour initial jet program in the T-37, side by side jet trainer. Like Astro, we taught them aerobatics,spin recovery, formation, instruments, low level VFR nav, etc. After that, we soon turned them loose solo in the supersonic T-38 advanced trainer for another 100-125 hours or so to further hone their newly learned skills in formation, aerobatics, instruments, low level VFR navigation, etc. At the end of their year long Undergraduate Pilot Training pipeline, they had accumulated some 200-225 flying hours in jet aircraft that was extremely challenging in its scope, and pacing. Of course, along with the flying, came the endless hours of academic instruction in instrument procedures, supersonic aero, formation procedures, emergency procedures,etc. Unlike Astro, our pilot trainees were too smart to fly a jet out into the Gulf of Mexico and try to fly close formation with a moving ship until they collided with the pitching deck in a semi-controlled crash by snagging the 1-3 wire.

At the end of UPT, the students were rated by their T-38 IP's and determined to be Fighter/Attack/Recce (FAR) qualified or not. Could they go straight to follow-on training in a single seat airplane (F-16, F-15, A-10, etc) or did they need more seasoning in a crew aircraft (KC-135, B-52, C-141, etc)? Much of the assignment process was of course driven by the block of aircraft available for that class.

Bottom line: I would put a brand new USAF Pilot Training graduate with only about 200-225 hours in any airline cockpit in the world. Their experience level and procedural knowledge, although newly minted jet pilots, was superb. These were really bright young men and women who excelled at everything that was asked of them...they were easily teachable in any follow-on pipeline.

I am not suggesting that US military trained pilots are without peer in the airline industry. In fact, just the opposite. Over my 25 year airline career from narrow body F/O to wide body Capt, I flew with some excellent pilots who were civilian trained. The difference was in the end product out of our initial training pipeline vs. a similar university aviation program and their flight experience and knowledge at that time. With years of accumulated experience, the differences began to diminish. Others on this board instructed in the airline environment and can speak to some of those issues.