I have several airline pilots in my squadron, as well as a couple current fighter pilots (Hornets). The airline pilots are ex-fighter pilots as well. Anyhow, there has been a discussion on our squadron forums for quite a while about this. Especially about the Air France Airbus crash. Seems that all of the airlines are skimping on training to save money and hiring less experienced and lower pay grade guys while at the same time forcing higher paid/high hour guys to "retire". One of ours who flies for Northwest (now Delta) is retiring. We hear all about the charlie foxtrot that the airlines are now and commercial air travel is in worse shape than it was at the turn of the last century. You're going to see more crashes, more dead people and it will still be cheaper to pay off a lawsuit rather than pay for proper pilot training. Be it initial or ongoing refresher training.
It's not just the U.S. that is seeing this, one of ours is a 747 driver for Qantas. Same s**t, different airline and country.
|