BusBoe

LOL yall are acting like this is the most hardest thing to do on planet earth. almost every nation outside of the USA fly 250 hour total time pilots who flew nothing but cessna 172's prior, in airbus a380's and boeing 777's over NYC and LA on a daily basis.

Quit acting like its impossible. It's not rocket science.

Birdsmash

The difference is their training programs have evolved to accommodate those pilots. The US ACMI programs are geared towards someone coming from similar equipment. That is a vastly different training experience.

idontknoworcare

" It's like me trying to get a date with Taylor Swift, it's just not going to happen."

you could EASILY get a date with taylor. all you have to do is ask her one simple question. does this smell like chloroform to you?

BusBoe

This is completely flase. Thier training program is not any harder than US training program. And in fact, is more difficult.

itsbrokenagain

Makes complete sense.... not

APCbot

Several pilots have done this at Kalitta, it's not impossible. How hard are you willing to study?

APCbot

But this is also true, if you do it, you'll have to study your ass off. But it can and has been done.

trip

They also get a year in training at the respective airline after being cadets for a couple years.

JohnBurke

This is a thread asking about the feasibility of someone with no more experience than an entry level flight instructor teaching at the local school, moving to a 777 or 747, not flying passengers to company bases at every turn with 30 mile finals and ample radar and facilities, but flying in weather at night to a runway held by non-descript armed personnel who surround the airplane and take the cargo. Flying the next day to an airport where the downwind in the traffic pattern is 22,000' with active volcanos nearby, and a day later landing in a combat zone.

Let me ask you this: have you ever gone from flying a single engine airplane to a 747; one day in the single engine propeller driven airplane, the next day in ground school for the 747? Are you speaking from experience? I am.

Have you ever flown an approach to a blue-water runway in an Atlantic storm, crosswinds stiff enough that you're seeing the black-hold runway out the side window, on the approach, or pulled into a gate that's rusted in place, with catering passed up the nose gear? Do you fly into places where one must go down to take fuel tests and samples, where the food is unsafe, where the airspace has a surface-to-air threat, or into locations where you must file your own flight plan? Make multiple flights into Ebola locations? Ever fly an airplane with 30 DMI's? Where cages and fans are put on the gear on the ground to cool brakes, or where the gear is dropped at 20,000' to pre-cool the brakes for landing?

Do you have the experience to be talking about this? Just three months ago, you posted the opposite of what you espouse here. Here, you tell us that it's not rocket science to jump from the single engine piston cessna instructor into the 747; it's no big deal, anyone can do it, and yet just three months ago, you sang a different tune:

In that post, you're warning of the difficulty of jumping from a Cessna 172 to a low cost carrier airline (where your hand is held in training and the majority of the applicants come from low-experience backgrounds). Go to a regional, you said, don't come to the low cost carrier. Too hard. Go get five hundred hours at the low cost carrier then come to the "big boy jet LCC's."

If you think the small Boeings and Airbus operated at the "big boy jet LLC's" should be a leap, you really think i'ts no big deal to move to an ACMI carrier? The training at the ACMI carrier is not the same as the training at overseas airlines, or places that have cadet academies, or even regionals or low cost carriers in the US. Not remotely so, because the demands on the new hire are the same as the demands on the 10-year ACMI veteran. There's no care taken to send the new hire to places that baby or coddle him: right into the fire. If you've not been between the mountains at night, headed for a hold in Afghanistan, with a complete electrical failure while the communications are jammed, you might not know that's not a good time to have a zero-experience recent CFI for the other half of the cockpit...the time it becomes a single pilot cockpit. Also not the place, should the captain become incapacitated, that the yesterday-cessna CFI wants to find himself the new commander of a crippled 747 at maximum gross landing weight. Have these things not happened to you? You must not fly ACMI.

You spout two very different opinions; both aren't true. Which one do you really believe? Simple-as-pie not-rocket-science, or eat-your-lunch evil-low-cost-carrier tough?

Busboe on coddled training at Mesa:
It's not that way in ACMI training.

Trained to proficiency, however long it takes, huh? Must be nice.

Cleared4appch

I think that’s excellent advice. I have about 500 hours at the regionals and the more experienced I get, the more I realize just how much I don’t know. I couldn’t imagine going from a piston 172 or piper Cherokee to a heavy Boeing. It was challenging enough going from a 172 to a CRJ. Am I starting to get more comfortable with jets? Yes. But it has been a humbling process. Just because one meets the minimum qualifications for a job these days, doesn’t mean one should apply.