Experience essential

The caption read: “And I’m sure you will learn. But don’t ever think you’ve learnt it all. That’s when you find out there’s a whale of a lot more to learn that only experience can teach you. Another thing. Don’t ever be careless with your plane.

“Treat it as your most prized possession. Don’t depend on anyone else. After the best ground man has gone over it, you go over it yourself.”

Great words, and all in line with what I wrote up in that maintenance checks article.

Aircraft are strange beasts and all have their own “quirks” as I call them.

That is the reason you do a pre-flight inspection of your aircraft and ensure that it has enough fuel and oil for the intended flight plus a reserve. Often that knowledge comes with experience.

On the fuel side, the new CASA fuel reserve requirements came into being because CASA was getting reports that one aircraft a week was running out of fuel – and they were only the ones they heard about!

A lot of this comes down to experience, and good flight instruction. There can be no better instruction than that from an instructor who has gained real in-the-field experience over the years in a variety of aircraft.

Now the current regulations allow a person to start as a zero time student, get a private pilot’s licence, then a commercial pilot licence, and then an instructor’s rating.

This can all be obtained in as few as 200 hours and in as few as two or three aircraft.

The ADF, the airlines and the helicopter industry use experienced pilots as instructors, but in the civil, fixed-wing area, an instructor can have as little as those 200 hours.

Do remember it is said that it takes all of 200 hours for a pilot to have real confidence in the outcome of a flight. Could it be that a pilot should have some 400 hours total time before being allowed to be an instructor?

Experience usually comes with flight hours.

The pilots’ award is no more than a safety net

The negative side of this is how do get experience without a job and how do you get a job without experience?

Yes, we have heard it all before. If a pilot obtained a bare commercial licence and wanted to become an instructor, he or she would need to gain extra experience, usually by becoming a charter pilot.

But after becoming a charter pilot would he or she then want to become an instructor with all the issues of low pay and conditions?

The Pilots’ Award is after all no more than a safety net.

Another aspect could be that some charter pilots would not want to become instructors which would affect the income of flight schools doing instructor ratings.

Alternatively, with fewer flight instructors the flight schools would have to raise their instructors’ pay rates to get, and retain, suitable staff. That, in turn, may affect their viability.

And what of the experience that an instructor passes to the commercial student?

Only this week I heard from an experienced charter operator about new commercial pilots. He said that in recent times he had to say ‘No’ to some job applicants because they were just not up to standard.

It was a consequence of their attitude of ‘you owe me a job’, a poor mix of aircraft type experience, and a general lack of what was required to be an entry level, working commercial pilot.

Then there were others he had taken on board but who required 20-plus hours of re-training to attain the required standard.

Expensive and time-wasting.

That should not be the way. Those new commercial pilots should have been job-ready, but clearly were not. That, in turn, devolves to the quality of the flight training they had received.

It has been said, quite rightly, that new instructors with “low time” are like the blind leading the blind.

At the end of the day it must be remembered that experience comes in many forms, but the normal yardstick is that more flight hours (and experience on different aircraft types) delivers a greater chance of obtaining an entry level instructor or charter job.

Instructor tip of the month

Ever left the master switch on only to find a flat battery next morning? One way to prevent this is to give your aircraft the ‘High Fives’. As you leave the machine at the end of the day/flight, turn and raise a hand. Five fingers equates to five things to check:

1. That the beacon light is not flashing. (The beacon switch should be on permanently);
2. That the pitot cover is on;
3. That the tie downs are on;
4. That the gust and security locks are in place;
5. That you have all your kit and have not left something behind.