OK Gannet, I was just trying to make a point, and I suppose I beat it to death. There are a couple of things however that are wrong about some of the statements being made here: First, that a co-pilot who can't tell a good decision from a bad one has no place in the cockpit. That isn't true. I'll just throw one example out there: The co-pilot on a Twin Otter who has come up north and gotten a perfectly legitimate check-out and finished his line indoctrination and is then sent to Resolute Bay to spend the rest of the summer accompanying a captain who is busy bopping around caching helicopter fuel on riverbeds, on top of mountains and on eskers, glaciers and alluvial floodplains. You can't expect him to have any idea whatsoever if any of this is a good idea or not. It doesn't make him a bad co-pilot and it doesn't make the captain a petty tyrant just because he doesn't change the plan every time the co-pilot is a little nervous.
sstaurus wrote:FS, you say first you would've done what B52 did, then at the end say you would've probably done the same as gannet.
Well, I did say "amended" there. I guess I would
like to say I would have done as B52, but I
probably would have done the same thing as Gannet.
sstaurus wrote:I witnessed at one company a similar situation to B52, where a newly minted captain was promoted, only to crash and kill all but one about a month later. Several training captains did not approve of the upgrade, but the chief pilot approved it anyway. I don't remember anything making it in the TSB report about the CPs decision to ignore the warning from the guys who'd actually flown with the new captain...
Right? This happens all the time! ...but while we're talking about homicidal-bad captains who are killing co-pilots left, right and centre, why aren't we also concerned about the special type of co-pilot, we all know at least one of them, who has decided that he is just as competent as any captain and doesn't feel he needs to listen or take orders from anyone because he knows best. The reason we don't worry about that kind of guy is that there's supposed to be a captain there to mitigate this type of attitude. So when you get a meek, deferential captain flying with an arrogant know-it-all copilot, you have a recipe for disaster as well. This type of co-pilot is most often the one who has captains sitting on the edge of their seats with their hands twitching and their feet hovering an inch over the rudder pedals ready to whip out and seize the controls in the split second between the co-pilot's first bounce and his ensuing attempt to smear them both along with the unsuspecting cargo in a diagonal trail from one side of the runway to the other. Especially not-fun when you're on floats. To add insult to injury this kind of co-pilot is usually the one whom the chief pilot decides to promote despite the misgivings of all his training captains, and then you get the kind of new captain that you guys are all talking about.
Really, alongside the issue of how, as a co-pilot, can you tell whether the guy you're flying with has any idea at all what the hell he's doing, we need to acknowledge the parallel issue of how, as a captain, or as a chief pilot, can you tell if the guy
you're flying with has any idea at all what the hell
he's doing. I think we're trying to be politically correct here and while we can all agree that the over-bearing, intractable dictator captains are unacceptable, nothing at all is ever said about the cocky, know-it-all co-pilot who overestimates his own skill and gives himself too much credit for the overall success of the operation. Captains pretty much have to suffer these fools in silence lest they be branded as "hitlers" by the politically-correct egalitarian committee-cockpit proponents. Maybe I've spent too long working in the entry-levels. You guys can "flame" my attitude if you like, but I guarantee that for every one of you who thinks I'm being a dick, there are an equal number of twin otter (or similar) skippers who know
exactly what I'm talking about. I have been saved from being humiliated (or worse) on one or two occasions by a co-pilot. I make no bones about that. But I think we're leaning a little too far these days towards telling young, inexperienced and unworldly people in the right seat and in their first job that "
you're the voice of reason in the cockpit. Captains will kill you if you let them. Don't take any wooden nickels from any of them. You also need to respect authority and understand that no matter what level you're at, there is always someone around who knows a lot more than you do, and if you're smart you'll let them teach you some things rather than riding around acting like you've already figured it all out.
