High Total Time overrated ?

[DeltaHotel]

There was an accident yesterday in Mont-Laurier, Qc that got my attention. A small helo crashed on the side of a road killing the pilot a cameraman. They reported that the pilot had over 10000 hours flight time ... flying on a PPL.

Have you ever noticed how ... with most accidents; the PIC usually has lots and lots of time ?
I am not trying at all to diminish the value of experience and flight time, but there must come a point where, the extra thousand hours just doesn't have to same weight.

Is a Captain with 10,000 hours safer than a Captain with 6,000 ?
I think there's a huge difference between a pilot with 200 hrs and one with 500 hrs, again a huge difference between 500 and 1500 ...
But is there really a big diff. between 2000 and 4000 ? 5000 and 10,000?
(Please bear in mind that I'm talking about total time and not Time on type)

When it comes to recruiting, airlines usually look at total flight time FIRST and I think this practice can be misleading. Like many of you I'm sure, I know some high time pilots that are totally undisciplined and unprofessional. I do think that there are some sharp, disciplined pilots with "lower" time out there that are safer than some of the high ranking 10,000 hours veterans.

I also think that, after a certain point, flight time alone is NOT a good indication of the quality of a pilot and shouldn't be used as such.
In any other industry, the employer reading "20 years experience" on a candidate's resume, would have to sense to ask himself "ok but, was he good at it? ". This is a notion that, sadly, doesn't seem so common in aviation.

Am I alone to think like that ?

[Hedley]

Somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 hrs, a pilot
is probably going to get as good as he's going to get.

I remember reading somewhere that pilots who learned
to fly younger tended to have fewer accidents than pilots
with the same flight time who learned to fly when they
were older.

It's true that if you want to learn a language, play a
musical instrument, or swing a bat at a baseball
going 90 mph, you're always better at it if you
start younger. Maybe the same thing is true of
flying.

You don't see too many 40 or 50 year old guys
start racing motoGP after they retire from their
first career.

[aviation_tutor]

+ 1

[Odysseus]

I remember reading somewhere, I think it was in Flying the Wing, that a pilot reaches his full potential at around 3,000 hours. If a pilot is no good at 3,000 hours, there's a good chance he won't be any good at 10,000 hours, if he survives that long. That's why it's so important to be dilligent and pick up good habits early on in your career, because good airmanship is not a function of total time. If you haven't picked it up good airmanship by the time you've been flying for 3 years or so, there's very little chance you will after 10 years of flying.

[Lost Lake]

Hey Hedley, thanks for that. I started flying at late 30's. My first commercial job was at 40. Got my ATPL at 56. Never holed a float, l never crashed an airplane. Got a few thousand hours flying all over Caanada and the rest of the world. I tried surfing at 58. I can still out hit and play 20 year olds in golf or most sports. According to you, I guess I should hang it up!

Guess what.. the more you do something, the more chance you have of screwing up or something happening to you out of your control. Remember the old saying, listen to what others have to say, you won't live long enough to learn all the shit that can happen in life.

To the original poster, the more time you spend doing something, the better odds something is going to happen. Having said that, you can't have enough experience, no matter hours you have. I can guarantee that if you live long enough to accumulate 10,000 hours, you will have something happen which will make you think about the rest of your life.

Gotta go have another dirnk

[just curious]

I don't believe that large carriers look for total time above a minimal level, with the caveat that some with higher levels (like 10,000 hours) as compared to the desired amount (WestJet's original hiring requirement of 5000 TT Heavy) are easier to find out about in a small industry.

As well, it depends on what they were doing with their time. I have some 3000 trips to Tuk in my repetoire. Which is great if a Tuk contract materializes. Not so good for flying in Papua New Guinea.

If time can be broken down into qualifiable areas, 2000 instructing, 2000 navajo, 2000 Dash 8, 2000 EMB, 2000 732, a better picture can be formed.

Reg Spence from the Hamilton Flying Club had some 25000 hours 150 time ten years before he stopped. He would have been ideal in the flight instruction world for a variety of things. But I wouldn't have put him on a Boeing, and I believe he had sense enough not to seek one out.

I've got 25000 or so now. And it's got some variety. But I wouldn't want to jump to an A340 any time soon, because I know I would be trying to relate it to my experience.

[KAG]

Depends on weather or not your still learning new aircraft types, flying to new places, and learning more in general.
If you’ve been sitting in the same plane for 10,000 hours in the same environment, not adding to your skill set, then I would argue that total time is not as important, if not a detriment as your probably becoming somewhat complacent in the repetitiveness.

I have around 7000 hours and I’m still learning new tricks, and I am just scratching the surface of knowing the plane and how it works. Also given that I fly to new parts of North America and the Caribbean, you’re also being kept out of your comfort zone and forced to keep a closer watch.

It also comes down to the person. I have flown with some guys who are only a few years from retirement and are as sharp as a razor and on top of what’s going on at all times. On the other hand, I have flown with those who are not nearly as with it, and biding their time till they can golf every day.

At the end of the day, there is no substitute for experience, but it’s also how and when you apply that knowledge that counts just as much.

[_dwj_]

There was an accident yesterday in Mont-Laurier, Qc that got my attention. A small helo crashed on the side of a road killing the pilot a cameraman. They reported that the pilot had over 10000 hours flight time ... flying on a PPL.

According to thestar.com, "he worked in commercial aviation for many years. He was retired but he still had his own helicopter and plane", so I'm guessing he did have a CPL (possibly lapsed).

Is a Captain with 10,000 hours safer than a Captain with 6,000 ?
I think there's a huge difference between a pilot with 200 hrs and one with 500 hrs, again a huge difference between 500 and 1500 ...
But is there really a big diff. between 2000 and 4000 ? 5000 and 10,000?
(Please bear in mind that I'm talking about total time and not Time on type)

If you look at the Nall report (http://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/07nall.pdf) you'll see that the accident rate drops as your experience increases to about 2000 hours, and after that it remains the same - so anything above about 2000 hours doesn't make you any safer. For time on type, it looks like about 300 or 400 hours is the sweet spot.

[PanEuropean]

Have you ever noticed how ... with most accidents; the PIC usually has lots and lots of time?

Uh, what you are implying there (that high time pilots have a greater possibility of an accident) is self-evident. If the global average accident rate for pilots is (for example only) 1 accident per 10,000 hours, then a pilot with 10,000 hours has ten times the probability of having experienced an accident than a pilot with 1,000 hours.

I see what you are getting at, though, and I don't mean to dismiss your hypothesis - only to point out that 'correlation is not necessarily causation'. By example, have you noticed that most CFIT accidents take place when the aircraft is in flight, rather than during taxi?

Michael

[Cat Driver]

Interesting subject and one that is very difficult to quantify.

Some people are accident prone and others are not and what makes a big difference between the two is how they think and approach each flight.

I have a fair amount of hours on a lot of different flying devices and so far have not bent one.

I like to think that part of the reason is because I know my own limitations and am not reluctant to ask questions and or get checked out on every new device I operate.

As an example I am flying a new Husky Amphib. now and have about forty hours on it.

I will be doing some training on the thing soon and have not flown it from the back seat yet, before I will fly it from the back with a pilot in the front that is low time I will get a high time float plane pilot to get in the front while I get use to what it is like in the back.

Can I do it without bothering with using a high time pilot in the fromt?

Yes.

Will I ?

No, because I like to do things the safe easy way in case something goes wrong and I get myself in a place I have not been before.

I like to think of that as good airmanship.

[Prairie Chicken]

Very well said, Cat. That's the way I operate as well, and it demonstrates common sense & logic, rather than financial considerations, regulations, or testosterone.

[magyar]

to add to all of this there is also a thing called Proficiency. It's funny how rusty one can get on there IMC skills if they don't use it for a while, so on top of your total time I would also consider Proficiency.

[Cat Driver]

It's funny how rusty one can get on there IMC skills if they don't use it for a while, so on top of your total time I would also consider Proficiency.

Few pilots realize how important proficiency is, they understand they get rusty at pool or golf or any other physical game but seem to be in denial when it comes to flying.

After I retired in the fall of 2005 I never even looked up at an airplane flying over head and then one day an old friend called me and got me back into flying for him.

I was really disappointed in how ham handed my flying was for the first couple of hours after two and a half years away from it and it took real thinking to get back into simple things like flying in class C airspace.

Even if you have tens of thousands of hours flying your proficiency goes down hill in direct relation to the length of time you are away from it......however it comes back relatively quickly.

[Hedley]

I will get a high time float plane pilot to get in the front
while I get use to what it is like in the back

That sound good, ., but what do you do when you're
dealing with an aircraft that absolutely no one around is
current on?

A while back, I flew a Piaggio Royal Gull for the first time -
as PIC. I am told there are four flying in the world, and
as far as I could find out, absolutely no experienced
instructors on type. So, my first flight in it was PIC.

If you want a checkout on something ridiculously easy
to fly like a little Cessna, there are plenty of kids around
that got their commercial licence last year to give you 2
hours of dual before you can rent one solo at an FTU

But when it's a much more challenging aircraft, odds
are there will be absolutely no one around to check
you out in it - especially if it is single seat!

I had to check myself out on a Beech 18 last year -I
couldn't find anyone to give me any dual in it. First
flight was PIC.

Recently, to get a high performance type rating, I
had to bring a pilot up from the USA. Transport
didn't think much of the idea, but I simply couldn't
find a qualified Canadian pilot. There are probably
less than 5 pilots in all of Canada with that type
rating, and absolutely none of them were available
to give training.

It must be nice to always have an experienced, current
check pilot on staff to spoon feed you type conversion
training with a complete training syllabus!

[Cat Driver]

That sound good, ., but what do you do when you're
dealing with an aircraft that absolutely no one around is
current on?

Hedley you know the answer to that as well as I do.

You read the flight manual, ask someone that has flown one if you can find someone and check your self out.

But when it's a much more challenging aircraft, odds
are there will be absolutely no one around to check
you out in it - especially if it is single seat!

The first single seat airplane I ever flew was a Mooney Mite at the Toronto Island Airport in 1954 it was a delight to fly.

I had to check myself out on a Beech 18 last year -I
couldn't find anyone to give me any dual in it. First
flight was PIC.

Yes and as I recall I told you it was just another airplane and opined that you would have no problem flying it.

It must be nice to always have an experienced, current
check pilot on staff to spoon feed you type conversion
training with a complete training syllabus!

True, but with proper attention to detail one can fly anything without a check out.

In 1998 I was used as a test subject by Airbus Industries in Toulouse to see how intuitive their fly by wire wonder would be for a pilot to just climb into the left seat and teach himself how to fly it by asking questions of the Airbus instructors. I started out by asking how do I start it and they pointed to a selector on the console and said read that....I went on to teach myself how to fly it and they did not give me a manual until I had several hours on it.

Flying airplanes is not a superman endeavor as they were designed for the average person to be able to fly them.

Having said that I try and get some dual on new airplanes if it is available because that makes things easier.

We have to get together some day Hedley before I get to senile so we can impress each other.

[Hedley]

re: Beech 18:

I told you it was just another airplane and opined that you would have no problem flying it

Yes, and you were right. Of course, I looked it up on the net (like AvCan,
a mixture of good stuff and trash), asked pilots that used to fly it, etc.

I even asked my father about the Expeditor, which I understand he
involuntarily flew some hours in, when he was an air force pilot.

"It's a piece of sh1t", he replied, and wandered off.

If anyone cares, I learned that there are 5 things you need
to know, to fly a Beech 18:

1) lock the tailwheel before takeoff

2) set the engine control friction lock before takeoff

3) enormous gyroscopic precession from the two metal
props means that when the tail comes up on takeoff, it
will dart for the left side of the runway, which you oppose
with differential power - some more left throttle

4) wheel land it. When the tail comes down, same as #3
above, it will dart for the right side, so bring the tail down
slowly, and be ready for it.

5) don't fly it unless the brakes are perfect, and don't
be afraid to poke at the brake (or even a burst of power)
on rollout with a gusty crosswind, to keep it straight.

Why couldn't someone tell me that before I flew it? Why
did I have to teach myself that? Am I the only person
capable of typing stuff in?

I don't keep stuff like this secret. Anybody asks, I will
tell them, for free. Why do people try to obscure the
important stuff? Even after a lifetime, I don't understand
this part of the pilot culture.

[Cat Driver]

Headley, I'm sure I mentioned a couple of those things.

For sure I told you the B18 is not difficult to fly.

[Hedley]

Yes, I'm sure you did, .. And yes, the Beech 18
is not the fire-breathing dragon that some people make
it out to be.

But whenever I get the manual for an aircraft I've never
flown before, it's often hundreds of pages thick, and
filled with all sorts of irrelevant information.

For example, front tire pressure (not on a Beech 18).

All I want to do, is correclt set the front tire pressure.
Is that too much to ask?

After scouring through hundreds of pages, I find that
the manual recommends 14mm of deflection of the
tire. So, I'm supposed to get a ruler, and measure
from the center of the tire to the top, and measure
from the center of the tire to the ground, and put
air in it until the measurements are 14mm apart?!

Are these people on crack? All I want is a frikken
psi value, which should be on the front page of
the manual.

Similarly, POH/AFM are horribly written, with salesmen
and lawyers the major apparent contributors.

Every POH/AFM needs a single cover page, that says:

Unless you are a complete moron,
the following are the X things that you NEED
to know, to fly this aircraft

which explains essential or different/weird
stuff about this particular airplane.

Too easy, I know. The important, need-to-know
stuff always has to be buried in some obscure
section on page 122.

Like an approach plate. The most important
stuff on an approach plate - the notes in the
top left corner - are always in the smallest
print, sometimes requiring use of the local
university's electron microscope to read in
a dark cockpit.

WTF?! Why do people try to create traps
to cause accidents?

[Pretend-A-Jet]

I like this adage.


An idiot with 100 hours is a 100 hour idiot.

When the idiot gets 1,000 hours he'll be a 1,000 hour idiot.

If the idiot manages to get 10,000 hours, he'll be a 10,000 hour idiot.


Common sense and good judgment don't increase with total time.

[Stearman]

Hedley

Hey you did do that Beech 18 trip good for ya!

Just as a side note ya never did tell me how ya made out on that trip.

That and I did tell ya that stuff, and yes I would have been available to fly a Beech 18.

[TG]

The Beech 18 is a delight to fly, maybe not to drive the first couple of hour for someone who never had previous tail wheel experience.
Those who will say bad things will typically have less than 50hrs total on it.

Never the less, I would highly NOT recommend a three point landing with it!
Or just make sure it's clear path each side of the runway for the first try
Unless your name is Hedley and you fly Pitts regularly, a Pitts would be definitely more of a b!ch to land in my view.

Sorry, thread drift.

[Rockie]

Many years ago I changed airplanes at my company for no other reason than because I felt I was getting too comfortable with the old one. I had been on it a long time (6000 hours) and caught myself thinking that I had seen pretty much everything there was to see. Bad bad bad news in this business.

Bottom line is it isn't the hours, it's the attitude. In my case a new airplane brought my full attention back to where it should be.

[square]

I think the law of diminishing returns would be applicable here. But what makes you think the pilot in this and other "high-timer" crashes didn't just have some catastrophic failure of some kind? And no I don't think high-timers crash more than low-timers, but the fair way to compare it would be something like this:

What group has more crashes per pilot, pilots during their first 1000 hours or pilots during their 8000th to 9000th hours? Not anytime over 2000 hours. There's simply wayyy more time for something to go wrong.

[Liquid Charlie]

A foot note to this subject - there is a growing concern that basic stick and rudder skills are on the decline and will do so more and more as the move towards automation increases. This is specifically worrisome for the new fledgling pilot group over the next few years -- meaning the next generation - there is also the issue of degrading skills in the current group. Automation is great but it does have it's short comings too. So back to the original topic -- high time and flight experience before all the new automatics will help and maintain the "muscle memory" better than low timers to keep the skill level of basic flying -

[Dash-Ate]

http://www.flyingmag.com/piloting/1458/ ... xpert.html


What Makes an Expert?


By Jay Hopkins
April 2009

Most pilots like to think they do pretty well at the whole flying thing. In fact, surveys show that overall most people rate themselves as above average in performance. This is obviously impossible, as half of all pilots would have their performance rated as less than average. In his new book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell looks at the top end of the performance scale to determine what makes someone an expert, the very top of their field. He found that experts obviously had a lot of innate talent. They also had typically received many "lucky breaks" of being in the right place at the right time. However, there were many very talented people who never rose to the level of being considered an expert. The final deciding factor was experience. From musicians to athletes to economists to chess players, those at the very top of their fields typically hit their prime after achieving at least 10,000 hours of practice and experience.

Since the average person works about 2,000 hours in one year, it would take five years of dedicated eight hours a day, five days a week effort to reach 10,000 hours. Many of the experts Gladwell looks at achieved much more experience in a much shorter time. Mozart's father made him practice relentlessly from the time he was a young child. Gladwell says that by the time Mozart composed his first masterpiece at the age of 21, he had been composing concertos for 10 years. Early in their career, the Beatles got a job playing eight hours a night, seven nights a week, in Hamburg, Germany. By the time they achieved their first success, they had performed over 1,200 times. Gladwell points out that many bands don't perform that many times in their entire career. By the time Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard to start Microsoft, he had been programming practically nonstop for seven consecutive years, and had much more than 10,000 hours experience.

So what does all this have to do with flying an airplane? Technically a person can become a licensed pilot after only 40 hours of training and practice. Most people take more than that, but very few people require more than 100 hours before they pass their written and flight tests. Add in some time for ground school and self study, and you still end up well under 200 hours, which is a mere drop in the bucket when you consider the 10,000-hour threshold for being considered an expert.