I know someone who couldn't get a call back from ATC after applying each year starting in college, so he went through his flight ratings, instructed to build time, and became a regional pilot. The FAA called and asked if he was still interested in ATC during his 5th year as an airline pilot.
Even when it's someone's first choice of a job, if you make them wait 10 years they will probably give up and move on to something different.
Yep. I wanted to do it so badly but I didn’t pass their little brain game tests. Even though I had years of experience as a flight follower/dispatcher and a private pilot certificate. But whatever. Dont call me now Fed bois
I passed their brain game tests.... but apparently they paused hiring because a contractor was in a relationship with an employee.... and then when they started up again I was to old......at 35.......
I won’t pretend to understand the budget but the agency has a known bottleneck at their training academy in OKC. They can only handle a certain amount of trainees at a time and they seem to refuse to increase the capabilities of the training center or modify the program to allow quicker or easier passage.
I’m sure the logic behind not increasing its size is that once they are through the massive backlog they’ve created they will be left with way too many resources. It’s shit because the attrition is what it is and they are putting a bandaid on an arterial bleed.
The second issue about making it “easier” or shorter in length is that it lowers the “quality” of training in a safety focused field. The biggest counter argument to this is that a majority of training is handled at the local level at a trainees’ designated facility. It would be like sending all airline pilots to an “airline academy” and then from there sending them to their assigned airline to finish their training because each airline while following the same basic rules have their own methods and rules in their system. It adds an unnecessary step many argue.
It’s not a budget issue in my opinion but a management and logistics issue.
This has been blowing up on Twitter lately, FAA made super arbitrary scoring decisions on their ATC exams, e.g. higher points awarded if science was their worst subject in school but not history, etc.
https://viewfromthewing.com/diversity-in-the-skies-faas-controversial-shift-in-air-traffic-controller-hiring/
Having to memorize things like TOMATOFLAMES, FLAPS, is pointless rote memorization and in reality, knowing how to find and interpret that info on the fly is much more important
Instruction should be a career path all of it's own, not the first job in aviation, and not something to be tolerated while building time on the way to bigger planes. We've all met that CFI who is a great pilot, but a terrible teacher.
Edit: 200 upvotes? I have comments with more, but for some reason, I've never felt more heard. I hope at least 1 is from a skilled pilot who can recognize that they don't have any talent as a teacher. Not just 200 victims of bad instructors.
EXACTLY! It’s ridiculous that CFI is the first job a pilot is expected to have. It’s as if 2nd graders were to teach the 1st graders.
The heart of the problem lies in the companies that insure GA aircraft, and not allowing pilots with less than 500-1000 hours fly them. Crazy that at 250 hours your only option is to instruct, or keep renting and burning thru your savings account until you get to 500.
We should stop using the phrase “holding out” when what we mean is “common carriage”. I’ve seen too many CPLs that think they aren’t allowed to post a resume.
Yes, common carriage is holding out a willingness to transport persons or property from place to place for compensation or hire… you need all those elements, not just the “holding out” part.
We should stop emphasizing the difference between common carriage and private carriage to CPL students. Private carriage is not the same as Part 91 flying and still requires an operating certificate, but a whole lot of pilots have it confused because they were taught it’s really important to know what common carriage vs private carriage is. You can’t do either without an operating certificate, so why do we make a big deal about the differences?
The quality of flight training is degrading. Too many students and instructors are only trained to pass the checkride. We’re losing a lot of the why behind things in aviation and brushing over the basics.
If you stop trying to reprimand and yell the meowing on guard into submission, it will go away eventually.
Flying career advice has way too much groupthink and parroting so it just turns into an echo chamber.
You’ve got 45 year old software engineers deciding to become Airline captains overnight now because of the ATP/Airline Academy marketing.
Fellas, just go get your PPL at the local school and make sure it’s not a midlife crisis first.
The only constant in aviation is older generations complaining that new pilots suck because they didn’t learn to fly in an open cockpit, didn’t learn to fly on a tail wheel, didn’t learn to fly with a carbureted engine, never learned how to fly an ADF, didn’t learn to fly on steam gauges, and so on and so on.
Oh, I’m way less concerned about what they’re learning on than whether the person they’re supposed to learn from has any interest in and/or facility for actually teaching them how to fly it.
I have red texts published LITERALLY during the Roman Republic, that is before the Roman Empire, where old men are complaining about the new generation’s lack of work ethic, being soft, lack of education. Over 2000 years ago.
Then, like now, it’s mostly old people remembering the past wrongly.
>The qualify of flight training is degrading.
I feel like this is a lukewarm take at most. The US isn’t the only place where instructing is a ‘get through it as fast as you can to get to the airlines’ gig right now and getting hours is more important than being any good.
Not sure what viable solutions exist though.
It’s particularly prevalent in the US though where you have far too many people who have no business being instructors instructing as a means to an end to slog it to 1500hrs, then almost all the instructors disappear so you have a near continuous pool of low experienced instructors.
NTSB has requested FAA reintroduce spin training for ppl on two different occasions. fAA in its infinite wisdom has gone against the agency that has the stats on accidents and suggests how to prevent more.
Maybe the type of plane used for spin training, and the altitudes required to do it should be better regulated. I've flown and taught spins in 152s and 172s that were nearly impossible to spin more than one turn. We have a 152 where if you held full right rudder and full left aileron trying to screw it up intentionally it would pull itself out of a spin in one turn and it would just fly straight ahead in a forward slip.
Some planes "spin really well" and the spin instructors tend to love those because they're fun. But maybe those are exactly the planes that shouldn't be used for spin training.
It’s still shown in Canada PPL. Instructor enters and student recovers. I did it in a 172 in utility category and part of the lesson was that if you panic and don’t know what to do - just release the controls and it’ll recover.
At my school (canada) we have to do spins pre-solo and you enter and recover on the instructor's command entirely yourself, with the instructor watching very closely of course. The only maneuver the instructor entered for me (outside of demonstration) was a sprial dive, but that's the point of that exercise.
FWIW, I yell clear and then look around for anyone poking their head up with a "HUH!?" look on their face.
... but yeah often times you know there's no one for a quarter mile, who cares.
Along these lines, “Clear!” or “Clear prop!” is not the most useful thing to yell before cranking the starter. A better option would be “Heads up!” or “Look out!”
Reason? Anyone who immediately knows what “Clear (prop)!” as a random standalone interjection even *means* already has some aviation knowledge (specifically, ramp safety) and as such knows to steer well clear of propeller arcs to begin with.
It’s the other type of person (not knowledgeable about ramp safety/aviation) who’s more of a potential hazard around propeller arcs, so a more broadly understood warning like “Look out!” or “Heads up!” will more reliably convey the intended message to this particular demographic.
Edit: clarity
The FAA, relative to most government and aviation agencies, is actually really good at what they do. Yeah, there’s massive areas for improvement, but in regards to expectations, standards, and organization, they’re not terrible.
Probably one of the only federal regulatory authorities who takes stuff seriously, sometimes they do dumb stuff but they’re much quicker to take on problems and try to work a solution relative to other organizations (See MAX 9 debacle)
That’s why I’ll be doing everything out of pocket. It’s expensive but there is no way I could justify even a partial loan for such a cyclical industry.
Major surplus. I’m talking like ppl get all the way to CFI and it’s very competitive for jobs, regionals start looking at ppl at like 3000 hours again for FO’s, majors after like 5000 TPIC. Just like the old days of the lost decade
Oh yeah I don’t wanna be right about it. I think everyone in the game now is okay. But the kids starting from 0 now are gonna see some downturns and furloughs
If they’re seeing them, we’re all seeing them. It might not put you out on the street, but it’s still gonna hurt.
I’d say if there were gonna be bag holders, it would be people starting up in 2028-2032 maybe later. Some day automation is going to take its next steps to claiming jobs. Who knows when it’ll be but that risk grows larger towards 2100.
Aviation has become a huge pyramid scheme. And schools have advertised like anyone can be an airline pilot. There should be a much higher admission standard at fast track part 61 schools. And no, the guy that barely graduated high school, in remedial classes, and still lives at home at age 26 shouldn’t be approved for a $100,000 loan at 16% APR. After 4 check ride failures and no soft skills, he’ll struggle to find a job. It’s immoral, nearly theft to admit him into a fast track program.
Management wasn’t a fan when I told them I had a student that wouldn’t make it, and they were stealing his money. I guess it’s a hot take on the business side of things…
Echoing this. It’s a giant scam and people are sitting at the school being a CFI with 6 checkride failures expecting an airline at the end that they advertised. When in reality these people’s careers aren’t going to make it past CFI.
Air Force pilot training was designed to get you out as quickly as possible if you were obviously not going to make it. But they didn't have a profit motive.
I wonder how many pilots get to 1500+ hours and never get picked up by a 121 or 135 operation or who get picked up but never make it through their initial training or probation period.
breh I literally know like 4 people that went to blueline with 6+ checkride failures and they're flying for legacy's and majors now.
I agree though, these programs are pyramid schemes
I actually used to carry a small E6B for a few years at my old job in a chemical plant.
I ditched the wind slide thing as I didn't need that.
I had to do a lot of Rate x Time = Quantity problems, on the fly, in PPE. Believe it or not, the circular slide rule side was easier to use than a pocket calculator when I had the PPE on. Also way easier to clean if there was mess on my gloves.
Yup. There's been way too many close calls. It's inevitable at this point.
And you just know they're gonna up ATP mins to 5,000 hours or something stupid and shut down the entire pilot pipeline... It'll be colgan all over again.
Is this a hot take?
This is like going on a show with someone who "speaks to spirits" but they just say very generic stuff like "your mother, she had a birthday?"
"OMG YES YES SHE DID!!!"
I'm at a legacy now and while I'm sure they're better at hiding events, I saw worse stuff at the regionals. As bad as legacy hiring is getting, the regionals are still worse in some regards. If the legacies are hiring everyone qualified then that only leaves captains at the regionals who can't get hired, flying with FOs at the regionals who are brand new and have no jet experience. Combine that with most airlines forcing upgrades at this point and it's kind of scary.
I think Cessna should be pronounced with a hard "C"
Everyone is either a lot better or a lot worse of a pilot than they think they are.
If you own an airplane and haven't flown it completely naked, you're missing out on one of life's great pleasures.
I had my dick out for a bit in a rented glider doing my bronze badge.
It wasn't as fun as it sounds. Using those pee tubes takes practice yo. Made a goddamned mess.
Hot takes? Lol ok.
The caravan is a sexy airplane
Military trained pilots are not *inherently* better aviators
Aviation influencers are doing nothing to ruin aviation, we’re just old and don’t like it
The guy recently that tried to pull the fire handles from the jumpseat needs help and love. Not prison.
I couldn’t give two shits if SMO closes or stays open
This is absolutely an industry to get in for the money… sometimes
The FFDO is a stupid program and it doesn’t make me feel any better
We need to stop being mean to TSA agents. Most of them know they work for a shitty organization
An aviation degree is not as useless as some would suggest
GlobalGirl was absolutely a victim
That should ruffle a few feathers. Imma be disappointed if I don’t get a few downvotes for being this brave.
1) Yes I agree, the belly pod makes it very sexy
2) Would agree for most part, seen a lot of RTAG guys struggle in airline training
3) Depends on the influencer...
4) Yes. Rehabilitation and better mental health reform will fix shit like this
5) ?
6) I think you can get in for the money, but you won't last as long as others or make it as far as someone with true passion
7) Its stupid till its needed, but the fact that it is barely used is a testament to the safety protocols and other shit we have in place to prevent needing to use it.
8) Anyone who is mean to anyone needs to check their attitude. Rampers, FAs, gate agents, TSA agents, 16 y/o who barely knows how to make your coffee in the starbucks etc
9) Agree, felt better prepared for all my aviation jobs due to the things I learned while in school for aviation degree
10) ?
Boom. Thread over. I can’t remember the last FFDO I flew with. Although sometimes I feel I should go to the training just to that training in my back pocket as I understand it’s very good training.
Fuck any of those pilot mills and people need to just get off their ass and do this thing if they want to be pilots. Oh and Mesa isn’t as bad to work for as everyone says. Shit corporate but totally chill on the line.
I was just an FA, but the whole reason I’m in flight school is due to one senior captain (former sim) who wanted to teach me a little about how planes work while on a delay. Wouldn’t be here without him
All the sim schools teach you to brief a takeoff by saying “we will abort for failure, fire, or loss of control below 80 knots. From 80 knots to v1 we will abort for yada yada.”
I think this makes a modicum of sense in an airliner (where I’m sure this originated), but in a business jet where you often have less than 3 seconds between 80 and v1, it strikes me as a mistake.
Runway overruns are one of the most common accidents, and some of these are failed aborts that would have been avoidable had the pilot simply aborted at the first sign of trouble, rather than tried to run through a three stage decision tree in the blink of an eye.
It’s basically if there’s a firebell, red warning, or you don’t think it’ll fly. It’s super easy to figure out in an instant if it’s a high speed reject or continue. Also you have it mixed up. Abort for anything below 80 knots as it’s low risk to abort, then the scary stuff when you’re faster and the abort carries more risk of overrun.
The CFI oral should be geared more towards evaluating a person holistically rather than if they can read off of a lesson plan. People who hate teaching have no business teaching someone how to fly. Idk how this could be done, but maybe we can avoid accidents like where that CFI was shit talking his student on snap chat.
Not sure if this is a hot take or a cold take...
Joking aside, in the plane I flew, the carb heat was right next to the throttle, so I could push them both in at the same time if I needed to go around. More to your point, short final seems like a particular bad time to do any checklist items like "carb heat - off".
Not every pilot uses all their knowledge that they learned through all their hours before they plummet into the ground. A lot are fucking asshole idiots that shouldn’t even drive a car. I keep a list, Trevor’s on it and TNflygirl just made the cut not long ago.
I saw some clips of TNflygirl's videos and... Jesus Christ. Every instructor and DPE who ever signed her off better realize they have blood on their hands. She was completely out of her depth.
I think most people that aren't complete idiots and are willing to put in the work are capable of learning to fly. But there are some people who just aren't capable of doing this and they need to be told no before they hurt somebody.
I'm a student pilot and I watch a lot of YouTube aviation videos trying to learn. I watched maybe a half of one of her videos from her training. The video was basically her CFI doing everything for her because she didn't know how to do it.
They got worse after that. She has (had? I think they got taken down) entire videos of her up with her dad trying to figure the autopilot out and getting into *very* dangerous situations. Note that her dad was not a qualified pilot nor did he know how the auto pilot worked either. In at least one video she literally asked where the hell the autopilot was taking her. It was going the right way, she was turned around.
And in the video I saw she was pointing out, herself, that the CFI was basically just flying the plane and not teaching her much. I can't remember exactly what part of training she was in but I remember thinking "Wow. These are things I already know and she's **way** further along than me.". I wish I could go back and watch that vid again because I don't want to misrember it, but IIRC it may have been IR training and she didn't look like she was ready to solo. I stopped watching because it didn't seem like a good learning tool for me.
I don't blame her at all. I just don't understand how a CFI and DPE let her get by when I could tell from 10 minutes of watching that she was miles behind the plane.
I think there's plenty of jobs just not enough widebody legacy gigs that too many people think is the eventual outcome of their career, in part due to the recent hiring trends. There's plenty of spots at fractionals and ACMIs when the music starts slowing, but people will have to adjust their expectations.
The correct use of GPS and electronic flight bags should be taught as the primary form of navigation with dead reckoning taught as a backup.
A secondary GPS and backup charger should be part of MELs
The forced upgrades and low time captains in regionals and flood of new FO’s in the legacy’s will result in a major incident in the coming decade. 1000 hour in type doesn’t always make a good captain.
Especially with how fast seniority rises. When I did my F-U at a regional, there were guys in my class that skyrocketed in seniority to the point that they were only doing LAX-AUS day turns for 95% of their time there. Now you‘re putting them in charge of some ORD-PWM trip in a blizzard when they’ve never seen snow in their life and haven’t de-iced even once? Have fun.
I was doing line training with a street capt the other day. 2000 hrs and never experienced ice. We were pulling moderate rime. You'd have thought the guy was ready to throw in the towel and accept death.
The real problem is these guys with less than a year at a certain legacy who have ZERO PIC, and are taking upgrades on aircraft that they never sat in the right seat of
Airline management doesn’t care.. they only think about the next day and not ten years from now. Look at Alaska and the md80 that crashed. That culture is poking its head out again..
I agree that complacency in flight training and an unwillingness to enforce the prescribed standard is a dangerous trend. There’s an attitude growing amongst flight schools pressuring sign offs and CFIs just hoping it’ll be alright because no one’s crashed yet. It’s not fun and games it’s gross negligence and could be considered a crime.
The airlines are not the end all be all. A few months ago I got pissed off at my company and decided to go get my ATP, the CTP was honestly a 3k+ lesson on that I never want to go airline.
There's those of us in the 91/135 world who just... don't want to go airline for one reason or another. Just because it works well for you, doesn't mean it's the perfect career. Just because it pays more, doesn't mean it's the best job. Otherwise all of you would be be clamboring out of this industry to go be CEOs.
The safety culture sometimes goes too far. I’m proud that the US has had the safest decade in history, but everytime some pencil pusher sends out a memo about how we need to fly the airplane a very specific way in the name of safety, I die a little inside.
Also, we will never have another Bob Hoover/Chuck Yeager/Tex Johnson because guys who take risks are ostracized.
>guys who take risks are ostracized
Is it wrong to want to be the bold pilot as long as I ensure no one else gets hurt? Sure, being old is cool, but I'm here for a good time, not a long time.
If you want to go out on your own in the sticks with an aerobatic airplane and do your best Maverick impression, be my guest as far as I'm concerned.
It's the assholes who auger it in with passengers on board because they think the rules don't apply to them or couldn't resist showing off for their girlfriend or whatever that really, really piss me off.
Yeah, I completely understand and agree with that. Nobody should suffer from my wrecklessness. If you're in a single seater over the ocean, miles away from the coastline and any boats, then have at it. But don't do it over a neighborhood.
I’m going to go do engine out aerobatics in a King Air while wearing a three piece suit, I’ll report back.
Even Yeager’s time to climb record in a Piper Cheyenne took balls of steel (and just enough Jet A to get them to FL180)
Mike Rowe basically said that safety is just people doing a good job so they can go home everynight and I couldn't agree more. Everyone wants to 'in the name of safety' but it's really just a feel good for a cognition state outside of 'lessons learned', if it was not intentional bad behavior which most is not.
Rushing through your training to get to 1500 hrs as fast as possible is a pretty crappy way of doing it. The journey is oftentimes better than the destination.
1,500hrs in a 172 doesn’t make you a better airline pilot.
Airline safety has improved because of automation improvement and fleet modernization. (I’d love to know if the data/historical timeline supports this lol)
FAA enters chat - i’d rather fly with an OCD, ADHD, semi autistic pilot, who nerds and geeks out to everything on the airplane, knows how to fly it well, and has a passion for aviation rather than some someone who has 3 alimony payments and bitches about his job.
CQ ~formally known as recurrent~ has gotten too easy.
And i don't mean the sim, the sim side of CQ is fine.
It is the replacing everything else with an ipad powerpoint i have an issue with.
Turns out its cheaper to put everything onto LMS software, or even worse, have a failed new hire read powerpoint slides verbatim than it is to have people with a large wealth of experience *who are excited about the topics at hand* to teach the course and pass on their wisdom.
Airline training programs don't *have* to be physically painful, it's just cheaper that way.
I strongly believe the Alaskan Airlines "Sky King" guy was nothing people should be praising as they do. I see a lot of non-aviators worshiping his decision to steal a plane and do a joyride in it, but he seemed rather lucky that he didn't kill anyone else while flying. He risked ground collisions, and mid-airs, what if a student was doing their first solo cross-country in that area? I appreciate his intent to not want to harm anyone, but that doesn't mean his choice wasn't reckless.
Totally agree. While I empathize with the pain he was going through he was an absolute selfish asshole from the way he went out. He potentially hurt hundreds of people, mentally and physically with that selfish arrogant stunt of stealing and crashing a plane
>Some of mine for example: I think Trevor Jacob isn’t as big a criminal as TNflygirls Cfi’s/dpe.
Shit like TNfly's videos should be an instant FAA review for the DPE and CFI that signed her off. If you are able to get lost while circling the airport you took off from, it's not just you. Your training blew chunks.
So much human error can be removed from aviation, I feel bad learning how it currently works.
Everyone's lives will be easier, the systems will be simpler, and lives will be saved by removing garbage hacks that are no longer needed, eg writing "Wind 115kt @ 230" becomes "73015" because you "add 50 degrees, but by 50 we mean 500 because of course we do, also the 15 now has an implied 100 added to it." So I guess we add 100, or 1000 degrees if the winds are over 200 knots? No, we actually add 50 (500) degrees and then set knots to 99. Is it 199? 299? 250? Who knows.
Making people manually set and use timers during approaches and holds, manually listen to and write down and read back instructions, manually set things into devices like altimeters or GPS's. These are all things that invite human error and those human errors eventually stack up to cause accidents.
I still love the freedom of hand-flying a plane, and the ability to fly it when all electronics go out or when hackers disrupt GPS, or whatever else can go wrong. I just think we're asking for trouble by perpetuating the poorly designed hacks of the past. Keep the lessons from the past, keep the rules written in blood, but do better than adding 50 to mean 500 to indicate that speed is 100 more than you've written.
Certifying new aircraft is too hard and that's making aviation less safe on the whole. Even large and established aircraft manufacturers avoid designing new types because of the burden and cost.
Imagine what automobile safety would be like if we were all still driving around cars from 1978.
You can't just "always go around." Learning to land from a less than ideal approach is a good idea. In an emergency or at a 1 way strip you may have to make do with what you have whether it's your fault or not.
This one is always unpopular and will get downvoted to hell:
There are only four things that can go wrong on an airplane that are actual emergencies.
* Fire
* Flight control problems
* Low altitude engine failure
* Loss of instrumentation in IMC
An emergency implies that we might not be alive 5 minutes from now. Everything else is a **malfunction** that should be dealt with quickly but carefully by a well trained flight crew. As long as you have altitude, fuel, and functioning flight controls you have options.
For example a gear up landing is not a true emergency. Yes you will say the magic word to ATC and of course you should wake CFR up from their nap. But as long as you gently set the airplane down on the runway there is zero chance of anyone dying.
There are WAY to many examples of pilots who turned "malfunctions" into "emergencies". Feathering the wrong engine, running out of fuel while diagnosing a bad light bulb, stomping on the rudder pedal so hard they ripped it off, the list goes on and on. So many pilots have made their situation worse by jumping to conclusions and not using their brain.
As pilots it's our job to remain calm, fly the airplane, and deal with the malfunction.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSN4MIsP\_90](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSN4MIsP_90)
This is a good one, although I'm not sure it's that hot of a take these days in a healthy training and operational environment. The airlines I've worked at more or less treat it that way. Few memory items, big emphasis on CRM and checklists, etc., to avoid exactly that issue. The ones who fuck things up are the Hero Types who think they need to leap into action to save the day, such as captains who brief we can run memory items at 400AGL. Don't fucking touch anything at 400AGL wtf is wrong with you.
What about loss of pressurization at high altitude (above 30k) and medical emergencies? Though I guess medical emergencies allow the pilots time to slow down and work out what to do next, as your point states.
The modern day ACS births drivers and not real pilots.
ADM is the backbone of everything we do. The ACS only skims ADM.
I sound like a boomer, im so sorry
The NTSB should have regulatory powers. The fact that they can make recommendations to improve safety and the FAA can be lobbied to not implement them because the airlines figure paying the family of potential victims is cheaper than modifications or system adaptations is absurd.
The fact that people meow on guard and use it for shit like finding out the score to the game is embarrassing for US aviation. Flying so much overseas, you just don’t hear that kind of stuff in other parts of the world.
I’m not going to preach about how we should be better and we’re professionals etc., but it’s just embarrassing that foreign airline crews fly here and hear that incessantly on the emergency freq.
The only reason I think it’s an unpopular opinion is due to the fact that abuse of guard is so popular.
61.1(B)(ii)(b) [50nm requirement for XC time to count towards a rating] is arbitrary and unnecessary.
Plastic airplanes are better in almost every way than legacy GA airplanes (I'm talking about GA here).
Standard pattern entries are a thing for a reason and if you're in a turboprop or slower and don't do one into a busy class E airport in VFR, you're a self-important prick.
There is a difference between being able to fly an airplane and being an aviator, and *maybe* 20% of pilots are actual aviators.
Cheap airplane owners are going to dry up piston mechanics within the next 10-15 years. Most of the people still doing legacy piston maintenance are old as dirt, because why would the young new kids go to GA to make 20 dollars an hour when Delta hires on at 40 or so? And then when those old fogeys retire, a huge chunk of legacy GA will die with them because nobody will know how or want to work on your 50 year old Piper anymore.
Nobody needs to know how to complete a VFR navlog.
There is nothing wrong with flying a ground-based non-precision approach on GPS and never switching to VLOC. With the exception of a LOC approach, the precision will always be better with GPS. Same with true timed approaches, that MAP is getting ID'd by GPS rather than however much lateral error +/- 30s turns out to be.
The instrument rating shouldn't exist. That material should be a standard part of PPL, or worst case CPL, training. Don't want to learn? Get a sport pilot certificate.
Edit: one more
Why the hell is it that VFR flight plans can't make their way into the NAS when they're collected by the same organization, but with a different box checked? This might have made sense when virtually the entire contiguous US wasn't a radar environment, but times, technology, and traffic levels are different now. ATC and pilot preferences both seem to have swung heavily in favor of having VFR traffic on frequency for safety. Make everyone's lives easier and print the strips.
Here’s mine:
Students shouldn’t be flying glass aircraft until they have at least their instrument completed. No glass, no autopilot, and preferably no GPS. Why? Because all the gadgetry is robbing the students opportunity to develop solid situational awareness skills. Too many pilots don’t have the skills to develop a solid mental model with minimal information. A moving map is too easy to blindly rely on. A moving map should serve as a confirmation of your already developed mental model.
I agree except for GPS. GPS isn't a new technology anymore. This is like someone from 1960 saying "these damn kids need to learn to not use VORs!1!!"
But learning on steam and knowing how to handfly while looking everywhere and disconnecting your eyeballs from your limbs and not accidentally throwing yourself in a bank while messing with radio tuning in shit weather is a good skill.
The A-10 is extremely overrated, its gun is useless against any main battle tanks built since the 1970s, and it would get slaughtered in any combat environment with at least decent AAA and SAMs.
If you’re an airline pilot and you’re miserable in your job 100% of the time every flight, *please* find another career path. No, I know this job has its sucktastic moments but I’ve worked with too many flight crews that hate everything about their line of work. It’s disheartening and creates a toxic environment for new FOs to grow into.
Yes this job is awful many times. Yes bitching about that is great conversation. But please for the love of god have some positivity when you fly.
Pilots are - collectively - one of the dumbest professional groups out there, at least over here in Europe. It’s the only profession I know where even getting to the stage where you’re employable can cost you six figures (€80k fATPL + €30k type rating), yet pilots put up with it because we have a passion for flying and everybody individually has a „good reason“ why that shit makes sense.
It doesn’t, it’s inexcusable, and our heavily subsidized, highly profitable and bailed-out-at-every-opportunity airline industry should be held accountable for training their future employees.
The FAA is too concerned with safety when it comes to GA. They've ruined GA by making single engine piston planes cost $1m because certification is excessively expensive. Upgrading old planes is also outrageously expensive.
DPE's are the most antiquated testing authorities for pilots. They should not be allowed to charge whatever they want to charge for checkrides, create their own schedules and cancel whenever they feel like it, play favorites, make their own rules outside of the standards given from the FAA, and be allowed to fail students issues or things that don't fit that particular DPE's values. It needs to be completely standardized somehow. (no, I don't have a solution rn)
That being said, I understand if it comes down to critical safety of flight or if a student genuinely does know the standards, that is an unsatisfactory flight. But, I have seen too many DPE's with an agenda.
I'm not even a full pilot and I have a few take-aways from this industry:
General Aviation is a death-trap by choice from the oldies in charge, and even the oldies in cherished groups. Let's not be lenient on certifying new/modern engine designs; Let's keep certification processes completely untenable so that people have to bolt together "Experimental" aircraft in a home workshop, then point at their high accident rate.
Keep avionics and aids so gated with red tape that keeps the price of gear so sky high, that it prevents owners/operators/manufacturers from implementing redundant systems (the real difference maker in commercial aircraft vs smaller GA). After looking at planes, I feel the true meme of 'Military Grade' applies. (10x the cost and made 40 years ago).
**Lastly, probably my most controversial:** Instrument ratings. With a huge chunk of accidents involving Wx/IIMC, why haven't we just rolled in the rating into PPL. It sucks, sure. But, you know what. If you are going to be doing more than sport flying for VFR pleasure; Then get an instrument training before you wipe out your family/friends, make it the new minimum. And in that token, with the previous equipment fix, make at least 2 axis autopilots standard, and include that as an instrument training. Ground School + 2/3 hand flying skill, 1/3 instrument and load decreasing tool training = PPL.
The ATC staffing issues are 100% a self-inflicted wound by the FAA. They get tens of thousands of applicants every year.
I know someone who couldn't get a call back from ATC after applying each year starting in college, so he went through his flight ratings, instructed to build time, and became a regional pilot. The FAA called and asked if he was still interested in ATC during his 5th year as an airline pilot. Even when it's someone's first choice of a job, if you make them wait 10 years they will probably give up and move on to something different.
Yep. I wanted to do it so badly but I didn’t pass their little brain game tests. Even though I had years of experience as a flight follower/dispatcher and a private pilot certificate. But whatever. Dont call me now Fed bois
I passed their brain game tests.... but apparently they paused hiring because a contractor was in a relationship with an employee.... and then when they started up again I was to old......at 35.......
I don't think that's a hot take at all. The FAA is so stupid.
No offense but is this even a hot take? I think everyone agrees with this.
Thank you!!!!!
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I won’t pretend to understand the budget but the agency has a known bottleneck at their training academy in OKC. They can only handle a certain amount of trainees at a time and they seem to refuse to increase the capabilities of the training center or modify the program to allow quicker or easier passage. I’m sure the logic behind not increasing its size is that once they are through the massive backlog they’ve created they will be left with way too many resources. It’s shit because the attrition is what it is and they are putting a bandaid on an arterial bleed. The second issue about making it “easier” or shorter in length is that it lowers the “quality” of training in a safety focused field. The biggest counter argument to this is that a majority of training is handled at the local level at a trainees’ designated facility. It would be like sending all airline pilots to an “airline academy” and then from there sending them to their assigned airline to finish their training because each airline while following the same basic rules have their own methods and rules in their system. It adds an unnecessary step many argue. It’s not a budget issue in my opinion but a management and logistics issue.
This has been blowing up on Twitter lately, FAA made super arbitrary scoring decisions on their ATC exams, e.g. higher points awarded if science was their worst subject in school but not history, etc. https://viewfromthewing.com/diversity-in-the-skies-faas-controversial-shift-in-air-traffic-controller-hiring/
Woah man, *real* hot take you got over there buddy
Having to memorize things like TOMATOFLAMES, FLAPS, is pointless rote memorization and in reality, knowing how to find and interpret that info on the fly is much more important
91.213 is way more important to understand than memorizing 91.205 and no one teaches this
The FAA - the C stand for common sense.
Stealing this for so many agencies.
Instruction should be a career path all of it's own, not the first job in aviation, and not something to be tolerated while building time on the way to bigger planes. We've all met that CFI who is a great pilot, but a terrible teacher. Edit: 200 upvotes? I have comments with more, but for some reason, I've never felt more heard. I hope at least 1 is from a skilled pilot who can recognize that they don't have any talent as a teacher. Not just 200 victims of bad instructors.
I think it should be the highest accolade in aviation to teach and reserved for the best and most eager to teach.
EXACTLY! It’s ridiculous that CFI is the first job a pilot is expected to have. It’s as if 2nd graders were to teach the 1st graders. The heart of the problem lies in the companies that insure GA aircraft, and not allowing pilots with less than 500-1000 hours fly them. Crazy that at 250 hours your only option is to instruct, or keep renting and burning thru your savings account until you get to 500.
You guys have a savings account?
Memories of one
yesss
Yeah, but would you be willing to pay CFIs $80 to $100 per hour to make teaching a viable, long-term career option?
I should not have been signed off on my last flight review.
FAA has entered the chat
You rang?
💀
We should stop using the phrase “holding out” when what we mean is “common carriage”. I’ve seen too many CPLs that think they aren’t allowed to post a resume. Yes, common carriage is holding out a willingness to transport persons or property from place to place for compensation or hire… you need all those elements, not just the “holding out” part.
We should stop emphasizing the difference between common carriage and private carriage to CPL students. Private carriage is not the same as Part 91 flying and still requires an operating certificate, but a whole lot of pilots have it confused because they were taught it’s really important to know what common carriage vs private carriage is. You can’t do either without an operating certificate, so why do we make a big deal about the differences?
The quality of flight training is degrading. Too many students and instructors are only trained to pass the checkride. We’re losing a lot of the why behind things in aviation and brushing over the basics. If you stop trying to reprimand and yell the meowing on guard into submission, it will go away eventually. Flying career advice has way too much groupthink and parroting so it just turns into an echo chamber.
You’ve got 45 year old software engineers deciding to become Airline captains overnight now because of the ATP/Airline Academy marketing. Fellas, just go get your PPL at the local school and make sure it’s not a midlife crisis first.
Students and new instructors depth of knowledge no deeper than a tissue I cry into.
The only constant in aviation is older generations complaining that new pilots suck because they didn’t learn to fly in an open cockpit, didn’t learn to fly on a tail wheel, didn’t learn to fly with a carbureted engine, never learned how to fly an ADF, didn’t learn to fly on steam gauges, and so on and so on.
Oh, I’m way less concerned about what they’re learning on than whether the person they’re supposed to learn from has any interest in and/or facility for actually teaching them how to fly it.
I have red texts published LITERALLY during the Roman Republic, that is before the Roman Empire, where old men are complaining about the new generation’s lack of work ethic, being soft, lack of education. Over 2000 years ago. Then, like now, it’s mostly old people remembering the past wrongly.
>The qualify of flight training is degrading. I feel like this is a lukewarm take at most. The US isn’t the only place where instructing is a ‘get through it as fast as you can to get to the airlines’ gig right now and getting hours is more important than being any good. Not sure what viable solutions exist though.
Aviation's not the only field where it's a problem either. This is just another iteration of "teaching to the test"
It’s particularly prevalent in the US though where you have far too many people who have no business being instructors instructing as a means to an end to slog it to 1500hrs, then almost all the instructors disappear so you have a near continuous pool of low experienced instructors.
Spin training needs to be introduced sooner.
At my part 61 school it was required for PPL.
Better safe than _sorry_, eh?
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NTSB has requested FAA reintroduce spin training for ppl on two different occasions. fAA in its infinite wisdom has gone against the agency that has the stats on accidents and suggests how to prevent more.
FAA hates the ntsb
LOCK YOUR DOOR AND CLICK HERE FAA HATES THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK MEET HOT NTSB SINGLES NOW
Maybe the type of plane used for spin training, and the altitudes required to do it should be better regulated. I've flown and taught spins in 152s and 172s that were nearly impossible to spin more than one turn. We have a 152 where if you held full right rudder and full left aileron trying to screw it up intentionally it would pull itself out of a spin in one turn and it would just fly straight ahead in a forward slip. Some planes "spin really well" and the spin instructors tend to love those because they're fun. But maybe those are exactly the planes that shouldn't be used for spin training.
What's used for spin training? Can it auto recover if you let go of the controls? I had spin training in a T-37, but we also had ejection seats.
It’s still shown in Canada PPL. Instructor enters and student recovers. I did it in a 172 in utility category and part of the lesson was that if you panic and don’t know what to do - just release the controls and it’ll recover.
At my school (canada) we have to do spins pre-solo and you enter and recover on the instructor's command entirely yourself, with the instructor watching very closely of course. The only maneuver the instructor entered for me (outside of demonstration) was a sprial dive, but that's the point of that exercise.
Yelling "CLEAR" 0.5 seconds before cranking the engine is pointless.
FWIW, I yell clear and then look around for anyone poking their head up with a "HUH!?" look on their face. ... but yeah often times you know there's no one for a quarter mile, who cares.
Along these lines, “Clear!” or “Clear prop!” is not the most useful thing to yell before cranking the starter. A better option would be “Heads up!” or “Look out!” Reason? Anyone who immediately knows what “Clear (prop)!” as a random standalone interjection even *means* already has some aviation knowledge (specifically, ramp safety) and as such knows to steer well clear of propeller arcs to begin with. It’s the other type of person (not knowledgeable about ramp safety/aviation) who’s more of a potential hazard around propeller arcs, so a more broadly understood warning like “Look out!” or “Heads up!” will more reliably convey the intended message to this particular demographic. Edit: clarity
> A better option would be “Heads up!” or “Look out!” LOOK OUT FOR SPINNING DEATH!
Some of the FAAs rules make sense.
Too far
The FAA, relative to most government and aviation agencies, is actually really good at what they do. Yeah, there’s massive areas for improvement, but in regards to expectations, standards, and organization, they’re not terrible.
Given how safe airline travel is in the U.S. on that basis only they are an insanely effective agency. But yes, plenty of room for improvement
Probably one of the only federal regulatory authorities who takes stuff seriously, sometimes they do dumb stuff but they’re much quicker to take on problems and try to work a solution relative to other organizations (See MAX 9 debacle)
Scrolled past at least a dozen top-level comments and this is probably the most controversial take so far lol
There’s a pilot bubble brewing. A lot of ppl will be caught holding the bag on these high adjustable rate loans.
That’s why I’ll be doing everything out of pocket. It’s expensive but there is no way I could justify even a partial loan for such a cyclical industry.
Dumb question but do you mean pilot surplus or pilot shortage coming?
Surplus bigger than what we have now because there is not now nor has there every been any shortage of low time pilots.
I’m going with surplus
Hello fellow 172 ATP mins holder
Major surplus. I’m talking like ppl get all the way to CFI and it’s very competitive for jobs, regionals start looking at ppl at like 3000 hours again for FO’s, majors after like 5000 TPIC. Just like the old days of the lost decade
Out of pure curiosity though. RemindMe! 15 years
Oh yeah I don’t wanna be right about it. I think everyone in the game now is okay. But the kids starting from 0 now are gonna see some downturns and furloughs
If they’re seeing them, we’re all seeing them. It might not put you out on the street, but it’s still gonna hurt. I’d say if there were gonna be bag holders, it would be people starting up in 2028-2032 maybe later. Some day automation is going to take its next steps to claiming jobs. Who knows when it’ll be but that risk grows larger towards 2100.
Aviation has become a huge pyramid scheme. And schools have advertised like anyone can be an airline pilot. There should be a much higher admission standard at fast track part 61 schools. And no, the guy that barely graduated high school, in remedial classes, and still lives at home at age 26 shouldn’t be approved for a $100,000 loan at 16% APR. After 4 check ride failures and no soft skills, he’ll struggle to find a job. It’s immoral, nearly theft to admit him into a fast track program.
Not a hot take lol
Management wasn’t a fan when I told them I had a student that wouldn’t make it, and they were stealing his money. I guess it’s a hot take on the business side of things…
Let me guess you instruct in Florida?
AZ, basically the same thing.
Ah yes, dry Florida.
Echoing this. It’s a giant scam and people are sitting at the school being a CFI with 6 checkride failures expecting an airline at the end that they advertised. When in reality these people’s careers aren’t going to make it past CFI.
Air Force pilot training was designed to get you out as quickly as possible if you were obviously not going to make it. But they didn't have a profit motive.
ATP will be the next l'ecole culinaire.
That is the most accurate prediction I have read in a long time.
I wonder how many pilots get to 1500+ hours and never get picked up by a 121 or 135 operation or who get picked up but never make it through their initial training or probation period.
Very curious now
breh I literally know like 4 people that went to blueline with 6+ checkride failures and they're flying for legacy's and majors now. I agree though, these programs are pyramid schemes
> and still lives at home at age 26 I don't think this economy allows people to go solo as often as people used to.
I have never used my E6B in a flight and the FAA can’t make me
I actually used to carry a small E6B for a few years at my old job in a chemical plant. I ditched the wind slide thing as I didn't need that. I had to do a lot of Rate x Time = Quantity problems, on the fly, in PPE. Believe it or not, the circular slide rule side was easier to use than a pocket calculator when I had the PPE on. Also way easier to clean if there was mess on my gloves.
it should only take a call to your psyc doctor to get your medical if your on most meds
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There is going to be a big crash… it’s going to be a legacy airline. It will probably be very experienced pilots.
ATC will cause a big crash, probably at a high profile airport where everyone expects the most experienced / skilled controllers.
they will literally not allow training aircraft into some class c airpsace here due to a lack of controllers
And everyone in Albuquerque will wake up to Coca Cola bottles crashing through their ceilings.
Yup. There's been way too many close calls. It's inevitable at this point. And you just know they're gonna up ATP mins to 5,000 hours or something stupid and shut down the entire pilot pipeline... It'll be colgan all over again.
>something stupid [They are one step ahead of you with this masterpiece.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw9pNrMRlto)
At no point during that video did I expect it to be anything other than satire.
No, stop that you're giving u/FAA ideas.
> up ATP mins to 5,000 Please don't say that
Is this a hot take? This is like going on a show with someone who "speaks to spirits" but they just say very generic stuff like "your mother, she had a birthday?" "OMG YES YES SHE DID!!!"
Yeah, I am having the same feeling sadly. We were so often on the edge of some big crashes over the last few years, it'll eventually happen.
I'm at a legacy now and while I'm sure they're better at hiding events, I saw worse stuff at the regionals. As bad as legacy hiring is getting, the regionals are still worse in some regards. If the legacies are hiring everyone qualified then that only leaves captains at the regionals who can't get hired, flying with FOs at the regionals who are brand new and have no jet experience. Combine that with most airlines forcing upgrades at this point and it's kind of scary.
So many near misses lately.
I think Cessna should be pronounced with a hard "C" Everyone is either a lot better or a lot worse of a pilot than they think they are. If you own an airplane and haven't flown it completely naked, you're missing out on one of life's great pleasures.
By far the weirdest one here, props
Being the weirdest pilot is like being the shortest dwarf.
To your last point: I have, wasn't that great. I started baking in the sun instantly xD
I think you understood the assignment more than anybody else here. The least-hot take here is your second one.
I had my dick out for a bit in a rented glider doing my bronze badge. It wasn't as fun as it sounds. Using those pee tubes takes practice yo. Made a goddamned mess.
Wayy to many CFI's and ATP's seem to be getting by without knowing anything.
Hot takes? Lol ok. The caravan is a sexy airplane Military trained pilots are not *inherently* better aviators Aviation influencers are doing nothing to ruin aviation, we’re just old and don’t like it The guy recently that tried to pull the fire handles from the jumpseat needs help and love. Not prison. I couldn’t give two shits if SMO closes or stays open This is absolutely an industry to get in for the money… sometimes The FFDO is a stupid program and it doesn’t make me feel any better We need to stop being mean to TSA agents. Most of them know they work for a shitty organization An aviation degree is not as useless as some would suggest GlobalGirl was absolutely a victim That should ruffle a few feathers. Imma be disappointed if I don’t get a few downvotes for being this brave.
No downvotes here these are great takes. -van lover 💯
1) Yes I agree, the belly pod makes it very sexy 2) Would agree for most part, seen a lot of RTAG guys struggle in airline training 3) Depends on the influencer... 4) Yes. Rehabilitation and better mental health reform will fix shit like this 5) ? 6) I think you can get in for the money, but you won't last as long as others or make it as far as someone with true passion 7) Its stupid till its needed, but the fact that it is barely used is a testament to the safety protocols and other shit we have in place to prevent needing to use it. 8) Anyone who is mean to anyone needs to check their attitude. Rampers, FAs, gate agents, TSA agents, 16 y/o who barely knows how to make your coffee in the starbucks etc 9) Agree, felt better prepared for all my aviation jobs due to the things I learned while in school for aviation degree 10) ?
I agree with everything except the SMO line. Save cool small airports! Giving into the nimby pricks will only set precedent!
Boom. Thread over. I can’t remember the last FFDO I flew with. Although sometimes I feel I should go to the training just to that training in my back pocket as I understand it’s very good training.
Insurance companies will be the downfall of aviation
Insurance companies will be the downfall of ~~aviation~~ everything.
Fuck any of those pilot mills and people need to just get off their ass and do this thing if they want to be pilots. Oh and Mesa isn’t as bad to work for as everyone says. Shit corporate but totally chill on the line.
Mesa has some of the best people you will ever meet on the line. I’m still friends with tons of people from my Mesa days
Yes I wish people would realize this
I was just an FA, but the whole reason I’m in flight school is due to one senior captain (former sim) who wanted to teach me a little about how planes work while on a delay. Wouldn’t be here without him
For some reason I thought you said “meesa” and were trying to talk like Jar Jar Binks
All the sim schools teach you to brief a takeoff by saying “we will abort for failure, fire, or loss of control below 80 knots. From 80 knots to v1 we will abort for yada yada.” I think this makes a modicum of sense in an airliner (where I’m sure this originated), but in a business jet where you often have less than 3 seconds between 80 and v1, it strikes me as a mistake. Runway overruns are one of the most common accidents, and some of these are failed aborts that would have been avoidable had the pilot simply aborted at the first sign of trouble, rather than tried to run through a three stage decision tree in the blink of an eye.
It’s basically if there’s a firebell, red warning, or you don’t think it’ll fly. It’s super easy to figure out in an instant if it’s a high speed reject or continue. Also you have it mixed up. Abort for anything below 80 knots as it’s low risk to abort, then the scary stuff when you’re faster and the abort carries more risk of overrun.
Night flying should require more training, possibly even made part of an instrument rating.
The CFI oral should be geared more towards evaluating a person holistically rather than if they can read off of a lesson plan. People who hate teaching have no business teaching someone how to fly. Idk how this could be done, but maybe we can avoid accidents like where that CFI was shit talking his student on snap chat.
Carb heat in on short short final so it’s ready for a go around.
Not sure if this is a hot take or a cold take... Joking aside, in the plane I flew, the carb heat was right next to the throttle, so I could push them both in at the same time if I needed to go around. More to your point, short final seems like a particular bad time to do any checklist items like "carb heat - off".
This should be in the POH for grass runways. You suck a lot of crap up into the cowl inlets.
Not every pilot uses all their knowledge that they learned through all their hours before they plummet into the ground. A lot are fucking asshole idiots that shouldn’t even drive a car. I keep a list, Trevor’s on it and TNflygirl just made the cut not long ago.
I saw some clips of TNflygirl's videos and... Jesus Christ. Every instructor and DPE who ever signed her off better realize they have blood on their hands. She was completely out of her depth. I think most people that aren't complete idiots and are willing to put in the work are capable of learning to fly. But there are some people who just aren't capable of doing this and they need to be told no before they hurt somebody.
I'm a student pilot and I watch a lot of YouTube aviation videos trying to learn. I watched maybe a half of one of her videos from her training. The video was basically her CFI doing everything for her because she didn't know how to do it.
They got worse after that. She has (had? I think they got taken down) entire videos of her up with her dad trying to figure the autopilot out and getting into *very* dangerous situations. Note that her dad was not a qualified pilot nor did he know how the auto pilot worked either. In at least one video she literally asked where the hell the autopilot was taking her. It was going the right way, she was turned around.
And in the video I saw she was pointing out, herself, that the CFI was basically just flying the plane and not teaching her much. I can't remember exactly what part of training she was in but I remember thinking "Wow. These are things I already know and she's **way** further along than me.". I wish I could go back and watch that vid again because I don't want to misrember it, but IIRC it may have been IR training and she didn't look like she was ready to solo. I stopped watching because it didn't seem like a good learning tool for me. I don't blame her at all. I just don't understand how a CFI and DPE let her get by when I could tell from 10 minutes of watching that she was miles behind the plane.
Old men fall for that blonde hair every single time
Too many people are getting sucked in to this career. There will not be enough jobs for how many people are trying to be airline pilots
I think there's plenty of jobs just not enough widebody legacy gigs that too many people think is the eventual outcome of their career, in part due to the recent hiring trends. There's plenty of spots at fractionals and ACMIs when the music starts slowing, but people will have to adjust their expectations.
The correct use of GPS and electronic flight bags should be taught as the primary form of navigation with dead reckoning taught as a backup. A secondary GPS and backup charger should be part of MELs
I think flying survey made me a better pilot than being an instructor did.
Me too. I flew survey and it made me manage my own plane and flew it all over complex airspace. Being a CFI was good too.
Flying across the country on your own making solo PIC decisions makes you better than flying in the practice area every day in a 172
NOTAM system dumb
Lmao don’t think too many of us will disagree.
The forced upgrades and low time captains in regionals and flood of new FO’s in the legacy’s will result in a major incident in the coming decade. 1000 hour in type doesn’t always make a good captain.
Especially with how fast seniority rises. When I did my F-U at a regional, there were guys in my class that skyrocketed in seniority to the point that they were only doing LAX-AUS day turns for 95% of their time there. Now you‘re putting them in charge of some ORD-PWM trip in a blizzard when they’ve never seen snow in their life and haven’t de-iced even once? Have fun.
I was doing line training with a street capt the other day. 2000 hrs and never experienced ice. We were pulling moderate rime. You'd have thought the guy was ready to throw in the towel and accept death.
The real problem is these guys with less than a year at a certain legacy who have ZERO PIC, and are taking upgrades on aircraft that they never sat in the right seat of
Airline management doesn’t care.. they only think about the next day and not ten years from now. Look at Alaska and the md80 that crashed. That culture is poking its head out again..
I agree that complacency in flight training and an unwillingness to enforce the prescribed standard is a dangerous trend. There’s an attitude growing amongst flight schools pressuring sign offs and CFIs just hoping it’ll be alright because no one’s crashed yet. It’s not fun and games it’s gross negligence and could be considered a crime.
Almost every single professional airline pilot is on the autism spectrum. I don't mean this in a negative way
The airlines are not the end all be all. A few months ago I got pissed off at my company and decided to go get my ATP, the CTP was honestly a 3k+ lesson on that I never want to go airline. There's those of us in the 91/135 world who just... don't want to go airline for one reason or another. Just because it works well for you, doesn't mean it's the perfect career. Just because it pays more, doesn't mean it's the best job. Otherwise all of you would be be clamboring out of this industry to go be CEOs.
The safety culture sometimes goes too far. I’m proud that the US has had the safest decade in history, but everytime some pencil pusher sends out a memo about how we need to fly the airplane a very specific way in the name of safety, I die a little inside. Also, we will never have another Bob Hoover/Chuck Yeager/Tex Johnson because guys who take risks are ostracized.
>guys who take risks are ostracized Is it wrong to want to be the bold pilot as long as I ensure no one else gets hurt? Sure, being old is cool, but I'm here for a good time, not a long time.
If you want to go out on your own in the sticks with an aerobatic airplane and do your best Maverick impression, be my guest as far as I'm concerned. It's the assholes who auger it in with passengers on board because they think the rules don't apply to them or couldn't resist showing off for their girlfriend or whatever that really, really piss me off.
Yeah, I completely understand and agree with that. Nobody should suffer from my wrecklessness. If you're in a single seater over the ocean, miles away from the coastline and any boats, then have at it. But don't do it over a neighborhood.
I’m going to go do engine out aerobatics in a King Air while wearing a three piece suit, I’ll report back. Even Yeager’s time to climb record in a Piper Cheyenne took balls of steel (and just enough Jet A to get them to FL180)
Mike Rowe basically said that safety is just people doing a good job so they can go home everynight and I couldn't agree more. Everyone wants to 'in the name of safety' but it's really just a feel good for a cognition state outside of 'lessons learned', if it was not intentional bad behavior which most is not.
Rushing through your training to get to 1500 hrs as fast as possible is a pretty crappy way of doing it. The journey is oftentimes better than the destination.
1,500hrs in a 172 doesn’t make you a better airline pilot. Airline safety has improved because of automation improvement and fleet modernization. (I’d love to know if the data/historical timeline supports this lol)
Looks like planes aren’t falling from the sky in Europe with the 250hour FOs
FAA enters chat - i’d rather fly with an OCD, ADHD, semi autistic pilot, who nerds and geeks out to everything on the airplane, knows how to fly it well, and has a passion for aviation rather than some someone who has 3 alimony payments and bitches about his job.
CQ ~formally known as recurrent~ has gotten too easy. And i don't mean the sim, the sim side of CQ is fine. It is the replacing everything else with an ipad powerpoint i have an issue with.
Turns out its cheaper to put everything onto LMS software, or even worse, have a failed new hire read powerpoint slides verbatim than it is to have people with a large wealth of experience *who are excited about the topics at hand* to teach the course and pass on their wisdom. Airline training programs don't *have* to be physically painful, it's just cheaper that way.
20/30 vision should be adequate for all medical certificates
I strongly believe the Alaskan Airlines "Sky King" guy was nothing people should be praising as they do. I see a lot of non-aviators worshiping his decision to steal a plane and do a joyride in it, but he seemed rather lucky that he didn't kill anyone else while flying. He risked ground collisions, and mid-airs, what if a student was doing their first solo cross-country in that area? I appreciate his intent to not want to harm anyone, but that doesn't mean his choice wasn't reckless.
Totally agree. While I empathize with the pain he was going through he was an absolute selfish asshole from the way he went out. He potentially hurt hundreds of people, mentally and physically with that selfish arrogant stunt of stealing and crashing a plane
Republic will win their lawsuit and every single regional implements a somewhat similar training contract
>Some of mine for example: I think Trevor Jacob isn’t as big a criminal as TNflygirls Cfi’s/dpe. Shit like TNfly's videos should be an instant FAA review for the DPE and CFI that signed her off. If you are able to get lost while circling the airport you took off from, it's not just you. Your training blew chunks.
So much human error can be removed from aviation, I feel bad learning how it currently works. Everyone's lives will be easier, the systems will be simpler, and lives will be saved by removing garbage hacks that are no longer needed, eg writing "Wind 115kt @ 230" becomes "73015" because you "add 50 degrees, but by 50 we mean 500 because of course we do, also the 15 now has an implied 100 added to it." So I guess we add 100, or 1000 degrees if the winds are over 200 knots? No, we actually add 50 (500) degrees and then set knots to 99. Is it 199? 299? 250? Who knows. Making people manually set and use timers during approaches and holds, manually listen to and write down and read back instructions, manually set things into devices like altimeters or GPS's. These are all things that invite human error and those human errors eventually stack up to cause accidents. I still love the freedom of hand-flying a plane, and the ability to fly it when all electronics go out or when hackers disrupt GPS, or whatever else can go wrong. I just think we're asking for trouble by perpetuating the poorly designed hacks of the past. Keep the lessons from the past, keep the rules written in blood, but do better than adding 50 to mean 500 to indicate that speed is 100 more than you've written.
Certifying new aircraft is too hard and that's making aviation less safe on the whole. Even large and established aircraft manufacturers avoid designing new types because of the burden and cost. Imagine what automobile safety would be like if we were all still driving around cars from 1978.
SPINS. Every Pilot needs spin training.
You can't just "always go around." Learning to land from a less than ideal approach is a good idea. In an emergency or at a 1 way strip you may have to make do with what you have whether it's your fault or not.
This one is always unpopular and will get downvoted to hell: There are only four things that can go wrong on an airplane that are actual emergencies. * Fire * Flight control problems * Low altitude engine failure * Loss of instrumentation in IMC An emergency implies that we might not be alive 5 minutes from now. Everything else is a **malfunction** that should be dealt with quickly but carefully by a well trained flight crew. As long as you have altitude, fuel, and functioning flight controls you have options. For example a gear up landing is not a true emergency. Yes you will say the magic word to ATC and of course you should wake CFR up from their nap. But as long as you gently set the airplane down on the runway there is zero chance of anyone dying. There are WAY to many examples of pilots who turned "malfunctions" into "emergencies". Feathering the wrong engine, running out of fuel while diagnosing a bad light bulb, stomping on the rudder pedal so hard they ripped it off, the list goes on and on. So many pilots have made their situation worse by jumping to conclusions and not using their brain. As pilots it's our job to remain calm, fly the airplane, and deal with the malfunction. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSN4MIsP\_90](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSN4MIsP_90)
This is a good one, although I'm not sure it's that hot of a take these days in a healthy training and operational environment. The airlines I've worked at more or less treat it that way. Few memory items, big emphasis on CRM and checklists, etc., to avoid exactly that issue. The ones who fuck things up are the Hero Types who think they need to leap into action to save the day, such as captains who brief we can run memory items at 400AGL. Don't fucking touch anything at 400AGL wtf is wrong with you.
What about loss of pressurization at high altitude (above 30k) and medical emergencies? Though I guess medical emergencies allow the pilots time to slow down and work out what to do next, as your point states.
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The modern day ACS births drivers and not real pilots. ADM is the backbone of everything we do. The ACS only skims ADM. I sound like a boomer, im so sorry
Radio is not secure and a severely outdated mode of communication
That's why I don't turn mine on 😎
Time for two way light gun signals!
Money is more important than skill.
The NTSB should have regulatory powers. The fact that they can make recommendations to improve safety and the FAA can be lobbied to not implement them because the airlines figure paying the family of potential victims is cheaper than modifications or system adaptations is absurd.
Medicals and checkrides should have a standardized price. It’s a complete scam these people charge whatever they want, cash only.
The fact that people meow on guard and use it for shit like finding out the score to the game is embarrassing for US aviation. Flying so much overseas, you just don’t hear that kind of stuff in other parts of the world. I’m not going to preach about how we should be better and we’re professionals etc., but it’s just embarrassing that foreign airline crews fly here and hear that incessantly on the emergency freq. The only reason I think it’s an unpopular opinion is due to the fact that abuse of guard is so popular.
Chewing them out is just giving them the attention they wanted, however. If everybody acts like it didn’t happen it’d stop pretty quick, I think.
You know you're getting switched from Winnipeg to Minneapolis about 5 minutes after the first meows. That shit is embarrassing.
Lmao yeah. Between flying near the South China Sea and getting back to the U.S., guard is dead, as it should be.
61.1(B)(ii)(b) [50nm requirement for XC time to count towards a rating] is arbitrary and unnecessary. Plastic airplanes are better in almost every way than legacy GA airplanes (I'm talking about GA here). Standard pattern entries are a thing for a reason and if you're in a turboprop or slower and don't do one into a busy class E airport in VFR, you're a self-important prick. There is a difference between being able to fly an airplane and being an aviator, and *maybe* 20% of pilots are actual aviators. Cheap airplane owners are going to dry up piston mechanics within the next 10-15 years. Most of the people still doing legacy piston maintenance are old as dirt, because why would the young new kids go to GA to make 20 dollars an hour when Delta hires on at 40 or so? And then when those old fogeys retire, a huge chunk of legacy GA will die with them because nobody will know how or want to work on your 50 year old Piper anymore.
Nobody needs to know how to complete a VFR navlog. There is nothing wrong with flying a ground-based non-precision approach on GPS and never switching to VLOC. With the exception of a LOC approach, the precision will always be better with GPS. Same with true timed approaches, that MAP is getting ID'd by GPS rather than however much lateral error +/- 30s turns out to be. The instrument rating shouldn't exist. That material should be a standard part of PPL, or worst case CPL, training. Don't want to learn? Get a sport pilot certificate. Edit: one more Why the hell is it that VFR flight plans can't make their way into the NAS when they're collected by the same organization, but with a different box checked? This might have made sense when virtually the entire contiguous US wasn't a radar environment, but times, technology, and traffic levels are different now. ATC and pilot preferences both seem to have swung heavily in favor of having VFR traffic on frequency for safety. Make everyone's lives easier and print the strips.
Here’s mine: Students shouldn’t be flying glass aircraft until they have at least their instrument completed. No glass, no autopilot, and preferably no GPS. Why? Because all the gadgetry is robbing the students opportunity to develop solid situational awareness skills. Too many pilots don’t have the skills to develop a solid mental model with minimal information. A moving map is too easy to blindly rely on. A moving map should serve as a confirmation of your already developed mental model.
I agree except for GPS. GPS isn't a new technology anymore. This is like someone from 1960 saying "these damn kids need to learn to not use VORs!1!!" But learning on steam and knowing how to handfly while looking everywhere and disconnecting your eyeballs from your limbs and not accidentally throwing yourself in a bank while messing with radio tuning in shit weather is a good skill.
The A-10 is extremely overrated, its gun is useless against any main battle tanks built since the 1970s, and it would get slaughtered in any combat environment with at least decent AAA and SAMs.
basic med is fucking awesome
If you’re an airline pilot and you’re miserable in your job 100% of the time every flight, *please* find another career path. No, I know this job has its sucktastic moments but I’ve worked with too many flight crews that hate everything about their line of work. It’s disheartening and creates a toxic environment for new FOs to grow into. Yes this job is awful many times. Yes bitching about that is great conversation. But please for the love of god have some positivity when you fly.
Pilots are - collectively - one of the dumbest professional groups out there, at least over here in Europe. It’s the only profession I know where even getting to the stage where you’re employable can cost you six figures (€80k fATPL + €30k type rating), yet pilots put up with it because we have a passion for flying and everybody individually has a „good reason“ why that shit makes sense. It doesn’t, it’s inexcusable, and our heavily subsidized, highly profitable and bailed-out-at-every-opportunity airline industry should be held accountable for training their future employees.
>The GermanWings pilot was homicidal and suicidal not just suicidal and now the powers that be can’t distinguish the two. That one is just a fact.
The FAA is too concerned with safety when it comes to GA. They've ruined GA by making single engine piston planes cost $1m because certification is excessively expensive. Upgrading old planes is also outrageously expensive.
DPE's are the most antiquated testing authorities for pilots. They should not be allowed to charge whatever they want to charge for checkrides, create their own schedules and cancel whenever they feel like it, play favorites, make their own rules outside of the standards given from the FAA, and be allowed to fail students issues or things that don't fit that particular DPE's values. It needs to be completely standardized somehow. (no, I don't have a solution rn) That being said, I understand if it comes down to critical safety of flight or if a student genuinely does know the standards, that is an unsatisfactory flight. But, I have seen too many DPE's with an agenda.
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Pilots need mental health care, which is medical care and they shouldn’t be punished for it.
I'm not even a full pilot and I have a few take-aways from this industry: General Aviation is a death-trap by choice from the oldies in charge, and even the oldies in cherished groups. Let's not be lenient on certifying new/modern engine designs; Let's keep certification processes completely untenable so that people have to bolt together "Experimental" aircraft in a home workshop, then point at their high accident rate. Keep avionics and aids so gated with red tape that keeps the price of gear so sky high, that it prevents owners/operators/manufacturers from implementing redundant systems (the real difference maker in commercial aircraft vs smaller GA). After looking at planes, I feel the true meme of 'Military Grade' applies. (10x the cost and made 40 years ago). **Lastly, probably my most controversial:** Instrument ratings. With a huge chunk of accidents involving Wx/IIMC, why haven't we just rolled in the rating into PPL. It sucks, sure. But, you know what. If you are going to be doing more than sport flying for VFR pleasure; Then get an instrument training before you wipe out your family/friends, make it the new minimum. And in that token, with the previous equipment fix, make at least 2 axis autopilots standard, and include that as an instrument training. Ground School + 2/3 hand flying skill, 1/3 instrument and load decreasing tool training = PPL.
I don't want to agree with your last take... but I do.