Airline Pilots: Is Anybody Interested in Being One?

[Major Nikon]

32. I'm completely convinced that the safety record of US air carriers is almost wholly dependent...

on the professionalism of their aircrews.

My instrument rating instructor was an American Eagle first officer. She became a first officer late in her career and had little hope of making captain. She eventually retired as a first officer. Before getting on with the airlines she had spent decades as a flight instructor and was very much old school in her approach to training. It took me over twice as many hours of flight training to get my rating compared to my peers who were getting theirs at the same time. However, I was taught to a completely different standard that far exceeded anything in the PTS. I knew what I was getting into when I asked her to be my instructor as I had flown with her on many occasions. There was no such thing as "close enough". I either flew to her standards, or we kept doing it until I did. My approaches were flown to within 1 dot or I went around and we tried it again. If I didn't land on the centerline, we threw the coals to it and I flew the whole approach over again. Holds were brutal as I trained in the spring in Texas when 40 kt crosswinds were routine, but I learned how to do them with those kinds of winds while staying in the protected area. Everything was done to perfection, every time to the smallest detail. Even all my radio calls had to be done with perfect phraseology. My instrument checkride was actually the easiest one out of all I have taken, including the single engine commercial.

Where I think the entire industry is going south is with the training these pilots receive before they ever get to the airlines. Most instructors today teach minimum standards, and they send their students to easy DPEs who fly the exact same checkride routine every time which the instructors teach. I'm seeing more and more accidents with an instructor in the plane. Just a few months ago there was an accident at DTO where the instructor was trying to fly an approach with two students in the plane. He augered in a half mile from the threshold, killing himself and injuring the students. Although the weather was near minimums, it was a straightforward ILS approach at his home airport. It should have been routine, but you can see him start to make simple mistakes before he got anywhere near the airport.