do you trust your pilot?

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Fritz

Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
Apr 19, 2018 - 07:28pm PT
Cool as a Cucumber!

The Southwest woman pilot, who had just had an engine explode & had also suffered explosive decompression of her 737, when a window was blown out by debris from the explosion. Two major problems that crews are trained for, happened at the same time.

A short, but proufound, pilot to air traffic controller recording.

[Click to View YouTube Video]


I appreciate kunlun_shan posted this link to the whole air traffic controller communication with the Southwest Air plane with the blown engine & explosive decompression. It's a little over 10 minutes long, but teared me up. Goddamn, but it's great, how some folks can be so brave.

https://soundcloud.com/themorningcall/swa1380-left-engine-failure-april-14th
Flip Flop

climber
Earth Planet, Universe
Apr 19, 2018 - 07:53pm PT
I think the teen girl is the star.

I grew up in little planes in central and South America and bouncing around plantations and tropical islands on lots of commercial airlines. I was in a few spicy events. Like the time the single prop Cessna lost power. Or in Honduras with the flame shooting out of the engine. I still want to clap when we touch down. I don't hardly fly since 2001 for socially conscious reasons. It's kinda bougey and wasteful and, like cocaine, has a lot of negative consequences.
7SacredPools

Trad climber
Ontario, Canada
Apr 19, 2018 - 08:09pm PT
More than just spicy Flip Flop. Can't imagine feeling helpless for so long.
Flip Flop

climber
Earth Planet, Universe
Apr 19, 2018 - 08:45pm PT
7 Sacred,
Props to my dad for making it seem like no big deal. While the pilot is twisting the key like a VW Bug on an icy morning " When we get home, don't tell your Mom about this." Just three of us in a little 6 seater. I'm playing with my bougey puppy then watching the propeller spin in lazy circles, pushed by the wind, thinking " I'm about to die for this effin Dog".
perswig

climber
Apr 20, 2018 - 04:19am PT
Cool as a Cucumber!

Agree, Fritz.
Heard part of that on NPR and thought "stone cold pro".
Bravo Zulu, Navy.

Dale

(edit: props to final controller and pilot in the pattern in front as well, all were on it by the sound of things)
7SacredPools

Trad climber
Ontario, Canada
Apr 20, 2018 - 05:19am PT
That's quite the childhood memory Flip Flop!
Gunkie

Trad climber
Valles Marineris
Apr 20, 2018 - 05:55am PT
As a one time Chairman Platinum frequent flyer for many years, did I have a choice?

On a side note, I took a position with a firm where the only travel I do is via the regional commuter rail lines on a daily basis. It took about 60 days to go from Chairman Platinum to full-time schlub who gets to board with the steerage class and never sees a 1st class upgrade. Those airlines really know how to winnow out the chafe, me in my current station, from the high rate, high paying customer, me in my previous life, very quickly.
Winemaker

Sport climber
Yakima, WA
Apr 20, 2018 - 09:28am PT
Taxiing down the tarmac, the 757 abruptly stopped, turned around and returned to the gate. After an hour-long wait, it finally took off.

A concerned passenger asked the flight attendant, “What was the problem?”

“The pilot was bothered by a noise he heard in the engine,” explained the flight attendant,” and it took us a while to find a new pilot.”
Moof

Big Wall climber
Orygun
Apr 20, 2018 - 10:31am PT
We are in the creepy valley of automation for commercial flying. The pilots more and more manage the systems rather than fly the plane. Thankfully those systems are really good for the most part. The reliability of the planes themselves are really good. Exploding engines are a once a decade event.

However we have had a couple trends that are worrisome.

The first trend is that automation has lead to pilot skill atrophy. The skill level demonstrated in the Air France crash in 2009 was an example where pilots were trained less to fly the plane, and more to manage the auto-pilot. When the autopilot threw warnings due to ice in a pitot tube, the pilots took over and stalled the a perfectly good aircraft all the way into the drink. Other less fatal incidents since have raised the red flag that basic flight skills have atrophied in the face of automation. Most commercial pilots today will go years and years, if not their whole career, never being tested with an actual emergency requiring piloting skill, so vigilance in maintaining the high skill level needed to take over when the auto-pilot craps out gets harder and harder.

The second is money. Airlines drive down costs relentlessly. You have to get thousands of hours in various aircraft to get into a commercial cockpit. Those hours come either out of your own pocket, or from flying for regional airlines, and that is only after getting hundreds of hours in small aircraft of your own dime. Small operations are on even more of a shoe-string, and they know pilots need the hours in multi-engine aircraft, so they basically allow you to fly their aircraft for free to get your hours as a quasi win-win (you get hours, they get a pilot for near-free). These perverse arrangements are sketchy as hell, and result in starving pilots flying way too many hours as they try to get to the big leagues before their personal debt load sinks them.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Apr 20, 2018 - 10:40am PT
You have to get thousands of hours in various aircraft to get into a commercial cockpit.

Sadly, that is no longer true, either. Was just in a country north of us visiting the bro-in-law who is a captain for a certain large carrier there. He says they are hiring first officers with



wait for it...






200 freaking hours!!!!!!!!!

Now, since they have no PIC time they will never change seats but, excuse me, 200 hours?
Must have been a couple of those who highjacked a plane and tried to land on the SFO taxiway, nawmean?
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Apr 21, 2018 - 09:11am PT
An excellent LATimes/Washington Post article:

What are the odds an ex-fighter pilot like Capt. Tammie Jo Shults is flying your airline plane?


WASHINGTON POST APR 20, 2018

Southwest Airlines Capt. Tammie Jo Shults personifies a dying breed.
The icy calm Navy veteran, who told air traffic control "we have part of the aircraft missing, so we're going to need to slow down a bit" while her plane limped along with an exploded engine and a blown-out window, comes from the last big generation of military-trained pilots.
The pipeline that brought Shults and fellow fighter pilot/media obsession Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger into the cockpit of commercial airlines is drying up.
Thanks to rising commercial demand and changes in how the military recruits and retains its pilots, a third of private-sector U.S. pilots have military backgrounds. That's down from more than 80% in the 1960s.
Shults and Sully joined the military when it was still the dominant career path for aspiring pilots. Shults was one of the Navy's first female fighter pilots and flew the F/A-18 Hornet before leaving in 1993. Sullenberger flew the Air Force's F-4 Phantom II before leaving for Pacific Southwest Airlines in 1980.
Veterans like Shults and Sully are becoming increasingly rare in commercial aviation, and their numbers are set to fall further. Pilots with experience in the Air Force, Navy or Army skew far older than their civilian-trained counterparts, and thus will be hitting 65 — the mandatory retirement age for commercial pilots — sooner and in larger numbers.
Military pilots often spend their 20s and sometimes 30s in the service, but they're underrepresented even in the 35-50 age ranges.
Shults is 56. Sullenberger was 57 when US Airways Flight 1549 splashed down between New York City and New Jersey after losing power in both engines. He's now 67.

Lifeblood of the airline industry

Military pilots were the lifeblood of the airline industry as it grew, along with Americans' appetite for travel, in the post-World War II era.
"The military was considered the primary method of gaining flight experience for a later career at the airlines," said Louis Smith, president of FAPA.aero, a pilot-focused career consultancy.
Airlines preferred military pilots for many of the same reasons as today.
The services recruit the best prospects they can find and vet them with care — which makes pilots' extensive background checks far easier for their future employers. The military's rigorous training weeds out all but the most promising candidates. Of more than 90 recruits in Smith's class, fewer than 50 made it through.
Plus, military pilots get hands-on experience and additional training, often above and beyond what's required of their civilian counterparts.
Taken together, that amounted to a major subsidy for major carriers, Smith said.
It costs $11 million to train a fighter pilot on the latest hardware, Air Force Lt. Gen. Gina Grosso, deputy chief of staff for manpower and personnel services, said last year. The cost would be somewhat lower for other classes of pilot and other military services.

A new generation’s choices

The military has grown increasingly reluctant to let these multimillion-dollar investments walk off into the private sector after a few years.
In the late 1960s, Air Force pilots were required to serve four years after getting their pilots' wings. That number is now 10 years, and the military has tried to get pilots to stay even longer through aggressive bonuses as high as $455,000 for an extra 13-year commitment.
The change has drastically reduced turnover and the number of new pilots being trained: One pilot serving 10 years now does the work of 2.5 pilots serving four years each.
It also deters some aspiring pilots who saw a four-year commitment as a viable alternative to flight school but weren't willing to commit to 10 years of flying, after a year or more of training.
Now, most pilots are choosing a civilian education even though flight-time requirements for commercial co-pilots have climbed to 1,500 hours from 250. It can cost as much as $300,000 to attend a private, four-year aviation university, Smith said. But the returns are immediate: Entry-level co-pilots earn $30,000 to $50,000 a year, and veterans at major carriers can earn $300,000 or more.
The private sector still wants military-trained pilots, and it has moved to accommodate longer military service periods. Carriers that in the 1970s refused to hire anyone older than 29 now will hire pilots of any age, Smith said.
That means military pilots can accept their hefty retention bonuses, serve a full 20 years in the military and secure their pension, then move on to the private sector and put in 25 years before retirement.

Not enough military veterans

An annual average of about 2,400 trained pilots a year left the military between fiscal years 2001 and 2012, according to the Government Accountability Office.
That isn't enough to fill commercial cockpits. Big airlines hired about 5,000 pilots last year, to say nothing of regional carriers and freight operations.
Smith's surveys show that Delta Air Lines, where veterans made up 98% of incoming pilots just 20 years ago, now gets less than half its new hires from the armed services.
At the same time, the Air Force is facing its own pilot shortage. Despite a generous bonus system, 21% of Air Force fighter-pilot positions stood vacant in 2016.
The dynamics that drove the industry's shift from a haven for ex-military pilots to one dominated by civilians will only accelerate. On top of everything else, the onrushing wave of forced retirements will necessitate more new hires, and there will be fewer veterans available to fill them.
This generation of fighter pilots-turned-commercial heroes are on their way out, and there won't be many coming in to replace them. Sullenberger hit the mandatory retirement age a couple of years ago, and in less than a decade, Shults, too, will pass age 65 and be forced to retire.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-airline-pilots-military-20180420-story.html
nature

climber
Boulder, CO
Apr 24, 2018 - 05:39pm PT
I'm just gonna leave this here...

The second best part of the flight was when we were coming in to land and I say to Mike, "Hey, maybe you should land the thing?". He responds, "I'm not very good at landing from the right seat". Tim comes on, "guys, this isn't exactly the conversation I want to be hearing right now". First time landing a 182. Can't say I buttered it but the shiny side stayed up.

Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Apr 24, 2018 - 05:45pm PT
As long as you walked away, mate! 🤪

It beggars blief that that BA captain didn’t break his back or neck. Hard to believe BA didn’t require them to fasten their shoulder straps then.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
May 4, 2018 - 10:14am PT
As a follow up to my comments on the low hour hires I was talking with my bro-in-law yesterday.
The other day he got paired with a fairly new hire. It was the punk’s leg to fly. When they got
the ATIS for their destination it said 15 kt gusting to 18 crosswind. The punk turned to my
bro-in-law and asked him to do the landing.

WEAK, BRAJ! YOU WEREN’T HIRED TO SERVE COFFEE, YOU KNOW!
Jon Beck

Trad climber
Oceanside
May 4, 2018 - 10:48am PT
ATP (Airline Transport Pilot) course $4595

Only prerequisite is a Private Pilots License.

http://www.sportys.com/pilotshop/atp-certification-training-program-atp-ctp.html?utm_source=google_shopping&m=configurable&455=6508&aid=20283&mrkgcl=596&mrkgadid=3052702981&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Training&adpos=1o1&creative=74938227262&device=c&match

Simulators have reduced the number of flight hours it takes to get competent. However it is a bit like top-roping versus leading. Nothing like the real deal. I thought about getimg my commercial ticket in the 80s but was not willing to endure the abuse necessary to build hours, such as move to Alaska and load and fly freight for crap wages.
Rick A

climber
Boulder, Colorado
May 4, 2018 - 05:43pm PT
My brother retired from American last week and I got to go on his last flight. 27,000 hours, so I liked the odds of a safe landing. Greased it, too.

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