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[quote="Butt Reactor" post=""442627467"] Is it unusual to have FO-FO pairings during sim training rather than CA-FO? [/quote] The pairings generally depend on how many new hires and upgrades are In each class, as well as how a particular training department decides to run things. I went through most of my sim training with another FO, but for the last few lessons (which work like normal lime flights), I was paired up with captains who were sitting on reserve and got called in for sim support. I can sympathize with struggling with FMS programming, since those things generally aren't terribly user friendly, and making changes to things like flight plans (especially on the fly) can be a pain until you've used the box enough that most of the common tasks become automatic, and you start to figure out the logic (or lack thereof) the manufacturer used. One thing that really helped someone who struggled with the FMS in my class was spending some time on an FMS trainer (basically a software emulator for the FMS and autopilot), since it provided a chance to just run through various scenarios with the FMS and build those skills without the time pressure of the sim.
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Mar 12, 2015 04:20
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KodiakRS posted:Dick Wolf Blitzer reports: WAS MH370 CREW TRYING TO DRAW GIANT SKY PENIS?
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Mar 14, 2015 05:14
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Rickety Cricket posted:Can someone please walk me through the procedure for flying this http://155.178.201.160/d-tpp/1503/05222VDTZ15.PDF in a G1000 It's been a while since I flew a G1000, but I'd think the easiest way to fly the approach would be to just using the bearing pointer (slaved to the VOR) to fly the arc. You'd still want to load/activate the approach with SLOAF as the IAF for the extra situational awareness on the MFD, but you'd have to use the VOR as the primary navaid beyond the FAF.
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Mar 21, 2015 06:37
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To be more specific, the combination of the mandatory retirement at age 65 and the economy getting better means that major airlines are having to hire a lot of pilots, and most of them are coming from regional airlines. In the past, regionals would just lower their hiring requirements for first officers to keep pace with attrition, but since all airline FO's now need to have an ATP (which requires 1000-1500hrs of flight time to get), regionals find themselves struggling to find people willing to work for a pay scale that's only slightly better than what Wal-Mart pays in many cases. As a result of those factors, regional airlines are having serious trouble finding new pilots (most of these companies are run by sociopaths with MBA's, who don't want to pay FO's a living wage), so they're whining to Congress and in various editorials about a "pilot shortage" to try and generate sympathy to change the law requiring FO's to have an ATP.
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Mar 23, 2015 06:17
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Animal posted:So my pilot group is finally getting EFBs on May/June. Its gonna be Microsoft Surface, the new model which is still unreleased. I can't wait to take my flight kit to the backyard light it on fire and shoot it. We started using iPads for approach plates a couple of months ago, and they're so much easier than paper charts. We had been using them to replace paper manuals for about a year prior (which cut probably 15 lbs of paper out of my flight case), and we're still required to carry updated paper charts on trips during the validation period, but we should be able to ditch the paper Jepps in the next month or two. The only downside to the iPad is that battery life can be an issue, since we don't have an approved way to charge the devices in flight, despite having a permanent EFB (which lets us get weather, satellite phone and text messages MX/dispatch) with a USB port mounted right next to the iPads. A bunch of us have bought external battery packs that solve the issue nicely, and it sounds like the airline is trying to come up with a better solution.
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Mar 23, 2015 23:39
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PT6A posted:Yeah, I wasn't really responding to you specifically when I wrote my post (although I agree that's what it looks like). Still, some (non-industry) people might say, "well, a more experienced pilot would've known to avoid a stall!" when it's basically the first emergency pilots are taught how to handle. Interestingly, the pilots of Colgan 3407 had actually never been taught actual stall recoveries in the Q400. At the time of the accident, Colgan's training program only took stalls to the stick shaker, and not the stick pusher. Because the Colgan crew had turned on the "increase ref speeds" switch (used in icing conditions to modify when the stick shaker triggers), the captain actually had about a 25-30kt margin from the stick shaker until the stick pusher went off and actual stall occurred, so had he not hauled back on the yoke in response to the stick shaker, the airplane would have easily flown out of the situation without losing any altitude or actually stalling.
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Mar 24, 2015 06:51
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KodiakRS posted:Might be possible in Washington State. Hell with all the sun deprived hipsters up there you'd blend right in and no one would even notice that you were a zombie. From what I've read, the A320 actually touched down about 1,000 ft before the runway threshold (collapsing the gear somewhere along the line), and then slid for about 2,000ft before coming to a stop on the runway. There was a snowstorm in progress at the time, but the ceiling and visibility were reported as being slightly above the approach minimums, so it'll be interesting to see what the probable cause ends up being.
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Mar 30, 2015 10:16
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ZombieLenin posted:I mean, I don't fly airplanes or work on them, but how quickly would your standard flight attendant catch on if a pilot set the autopilot for a gradual decent into a mountain? I think the idea behind the "two person cockpit" rule is that the second person is mostly there to open the cockpit door if the flying pilot gets incapacitated or starts doing something obviously crazy, rather than having them monitoring everything the flying pilot is doing. Unless the flight attendants happen to be listening to the radio calls (and knew ATC phraseology), the pilot could probably start a descent without them questioning anything by saying ATC had assigned a new altitude, but if they started a rapid descent (especially towards terrain), I'm guessing even the most dense flight attendant is probably going to realize something isn't kosher.
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Mar 30, 2015 21:32
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hjp766 posted:In Europe it is no longer legal to operate commercial air traffic to an uncontrolled field. Can't tell you if that is company specific but if that happens to me at work I must divert. Must with a capitalised bold type m.... unless I have a pressing emergency. Eg uncontrolled fire. Too many incidents. There are some laughably small uncontrolled airports in the US that have airline service. I frequently fly into an airport that was clearly never intended for anything larger than a King Air (to say nothing of a 65,000lb regional turboprop) since the taxiway is close enough to the runway that extra holding lines had to be added to keep us from whacking a 172 with our wingtip when landing, and we have to check with the ramp crew that no one parked an airplane in the wrong spot before we're allowed to land there. Adding to the fun, the presence of a hill off the end of the runway not only cuts the usable landing distance going one direction to just over 5200ft, but it's also in a perfect location to frequently cause the GPWS and radar altimeter to disagree, which results in the stick pusher disabling itself after landing. Going into that airport in good weather is interesting, and it gets really challenging in the winter, since any airframe icing forces us to add 15kts to our approach speed, in an airplane that loves to float even at the clean approach speeds.
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Apr 10, 2015 05:16
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The Ferret King posted:Why would TACAN azimuth be required? I see the note on the chart. I just don't get the reason. It looks like a TACAN radial is used to identify the holding course for the missed approach, but that's the only thing I can find that requires azimuth from the TACAN. azflyboy fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Apr 11, 2015 |
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Apr 11, 2015 05:38
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AWSEFT posted:I'm sure one of you is more versed in the new regs regarding ATPs and can answer this for me. From looking through the current ATP Practical Test Standards, it looks like you'd have to do the entire ATP checkride in a single engine airplane, since the FAA doesn't do an "add on" like they do for private and commercial certificates. I don't think you'd have to take the written again, and unless you've failed the checkride before, you wouldn't need an endorsement from an instructor either.
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Apr 24, 2015 19:56
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fordan posted:The plus side is that this may have saved me from an impulse purchase consisting of roughly 2/3 of what my house costed. I held off on visiting Paradise City until Sunday around noon and the Evolution Trike folks were too busy packing up and getting ready to fly all the way back to Zephyrhills (15nm from Lakeland) to answer questions about the Revo WSC Trike (like why I'd buy a new aircraft without ADS-B out in 2015). The wording of the current ADS-B proposal would exempt ultralights, since it only requires ADS-B in airspace that already requires a transponder, and the FAA is going to exempt aircraft that weren't originally certified with electrical systems, so I'd assume that since ultralights are never certified at all, they're probably exempt as well.
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Apr 27, 2015 04:15
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I had to deal with my first medical emergency as an airline pilot yesterday, which ended up being very straightforward thanks to a bizarre set of coincidences. Shortly after we pushed back (just as the captain was releasing the parking brake to taxi), the flight attendants called to tell us that there was a passenger having a pretty bad seizure, and we needed to get medical help ASAP. Since we'd just pushed back from the gate, the captain was able to just make a sharp turn back into the parking spot we'd just left, and the paramedics were on board within probably three minutes of me asking the ramp controller to send them. The leg before, we'd taken a 20 minute delay due to a mix of flow control and a closed runway at another airport, and ATC added another few minutes of vectors and speed restrictions on top of that. Once we got to the gate, the idiots we contract to "assist" passengers with wheelchairs added about another 10 minutes to our delays by deciding not to show up, and we took a final, brief (maybe 30 second) delay when the ground controller asked us to follow an aircraft that took some time to taxi past us. Had we not taken that final delay, the situation would have been only slightly more complicated, since we probably would have had to pull off and shut down on a taxiway to wait for the paramedics, but had we actually been running on time for the flight, the seizure would have hit when we were in the middle of nowhere over Montana, and it would have been at least 20 minutes before we'd have been able to get to an airport that had any kind of medical services available, so it ended up being a situation where Murphy's Law turned out to be helpful.
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May 2, 2015 03:56
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My employer just told our union that they want the pilot group to take concessions (the pay cuts alone would be about 10% less than our current contract, on top of cuts in benefits), in exchange for not parking 20% of our fleet when the leases expire in a couple of years. This comes about two weeks after our parent company announced record quarterly earnings, and in the middle of meetings that could result in 50% of our bases being shut down (less than three years after they opened) so to say that the pilot group is going to be pissed is probably an understatement. Given that there are regionals with one year upgrades and flow agreements out there, I'm kind of curious how our management plans on drawing new hires to an airline with 7 year upgrades, no jets, no flow, an aging fleet, and a pay scale and benefits that are just as bad as everyone else in the industry, azflyboy fucked around with this message at 08:49 on May 8, 2015 |
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May 8, 2015 03:24
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The Slaughter posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtyfiPIHsIg The FAA only specifies what items have to be covered in the briefings (125.327 if you're really bored), but doesn't specify how the briefings are conducted as long as those items are covered. Airlines are required to publish a procedure for doing the briefings in their flight attendant manuals (which are signed off on by the FAA), but my guess is that procedure often isn't a lot more specific than "these items must be mentioned in the briefing".
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May 22, 2015 09:33
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Duke Chin posted:In my mind AZPilot looks like he's 12 as well. Everytime I fly to my hometown from Seattle I keep on the lookout for a baby-faced gooney-type pilot and wonder if it's him. I'm pretty sure I look like I'm in my 20's, but we do have quite a few FO's that look like they're about 12. Until that runway construction gets done in September, I'm trying to avoid Seattle as much as possible (flow delays suck), but since I think every trip in our system goes through Seattle at least once, it's not working real well.
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May 30, 2015 08:40
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I got to deal with my first "we're returning to the field" situation flying for an airline recently. Shortly after takeoff, we got a master warning chime/light, accompanied by a "Fuselage Door" annunciator . This was followed about two seconds later by a "thump" from somewhere in the back of the airplane, and my ears popping as the cabin pressure changed. A quick look at the pressurization controller verified that the cabin had dumped for some reason, and flipping over to the "doors" page on one of the cockpit displays indicated that the aft cargo door indicated as unlocked or open. Since the door let go early in the climb, I stopped the climb at about 3000ft, and told ATC what was going on, while the captain (I was flying this leg) started running through the relevant checklist, which (somewhat unnecessarily) indicated that we should land as soon as practical. After about ten minutes of various calls to flight attendants, ops, dispatch and maintenance, PA's to passengers, and assorted checklists and FMS reprogramming, we did a normal approach and landing, although ATC decided to have an ops truck follow us down the runway to make sure we weren't shedding luggage or airplane parts behind us. From talking with the maintenance guys who met the airplane, it sounds like the cargo door didn't get latched correctly on the ground (either a ramper made a mistake, or the latch didn't work properly), and the pressure differential in the climb was enough to break the seal on the door and vent the cabin. The door was secure enough that there's no way it could have actually opened in flight, and the "thump" turned out to be the blowout panel in the aft bulkhead letting go to equalize the pressure between the cargo hold and cabin. Aside from one flight attendant having some ear pain (sinus congestion and rapid pressure changes don't mix) after we landed, everyone on board ended up being fine, albeit an hour late to where they wanted to go.
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Jun 7, 2015 10:34
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DNova posted:What altitude was the cabin pressure when the door popped? From what I can find, cabin was probably somewhere around 500ft when the door popped, so it would have been about a 2000' difference in altitude. After we got on the ground, it took the captain and I several minutes of discussion to decide what altitude we'd been at when the door popped, since we wanted to make sure our reports were consistent, and that we hadn't oversped the flaps during the event. Eventually, we decided that since we had just been handed to departure, and I remembered checking the flap position before pitching down after acceleration height before the master caution tripped, we were probably somewhere around 2000-2500' when the door popped.
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Jun 7, 2015 19:39
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DNova posted:Hmm. Can you tell me about how the cabin pressure is generally managed during ascent? It always seems like immediately after we leave the ground, the pressure drops more quickly than the ascent rate would explain, but I never have an altimeter with me to watch it happen. Basically, I suspect you airline pilots of cranking down the cabin pressure very quickly and it is not pleasant! J'accuse!! On the Q400, the system goes into a "pre-pressurization" mode once the power levers go past a certain angle (to avoid a pressure bump on takeoff), where it pressurizes the cabin to 400ft below the takeoff elevation, and it'll stay in that mode until one of two specific conditions are met (or ten minutes pass), at which point it switches over to a pre-programmed pressurization schedule for the rest of the flight. In the flight deck, all we do is set the elevation of the landing airport on the pressurization panel, and verify that the cabin altitude and differential pressure stay within limits during flight, so 99% of the time, the pressurization is basically a "set and forget" system. If the pressure controller doesn't work quite right on departure or we take off without the bleed air on (typically in hot/high conditions where we need the extra performance from the engines), there will be a pretty distinctive pressure "bump" once the pressurization kicks in and a differential pressure develops, but usually the change is pretty gradual. azflyboy fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Jun 7, 2015 |
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Jun 7, 2015 21:03
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Rickety Cricket posted:When going in for a new medical do you have to disclose things like dentist visits or eye doctor visits? According to the FAA, the answer is no for routine checkups or exams. The FAA Guide for Aviation Medical Examiners posted:Routine dental, eye, and FAA periodic medical examinations and consultations with an employer-sponsored employee assistance program (EAP) may be excluded unless the consultations were for the applicant's substance abuse or unless the consultations resulted in referral for psychiatric evaluation or treatment
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Jun 9, 2015 19:55
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Rickety Cricket posted:Thanks. Where did you find that? I've been searching the FAA site and don't see that The FAA doesn't make it super easy to find, but here's the link to the index for the full Guide for Aviation Medical Examiners. It tends to be somewhat dense (it's written for doctors, not pilots), but there's some good information in there. https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/avs/offices/aam/ame/guide/
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Jun 9, 2015 21:14
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From what I've heard, there were several low speed incidents at altitude this year, which may have been exacerbated by SKW issuing ECON cruise speeds that were slow enough to be a setup for an inattentive crew to get themselves in trouble, which is why they also issued new minimum cruise speeds. Skywest also limited their CRJ-200's to a maximum of FL280, which is equal parts depressing and entertaining.
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Jun 23, 2015 05:44
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The Slaughter posted:That's crazy, but at least there will be more ride reports for the Horizon guys. One of the advantages of being capped at FL250 is the fact that since no one else flies in our altitude range, we can pretty much change altitudes at will to find smooth air, so we don't seem to request anywhere near as many ride reports as CRJ operators tend to. The lack of traffic at our altitudes also makes it pretty easy to get shortcuts or deviations for weather, which does come in handy during thunderstorm season. I know the CRJ-200's weren't making that much money before the altitude restrictions, so I'm sure burning the extra gas by flying at turboprop altitudes isn't going to help SKW's financials at all. PT6A posted:Isn't it more economical to cruise at a higher altitude? Yep. Those restrictions were likely put in place because some crews were having problems paying attention to their airspeed at higher altitudes (where there's a smaller margin between the cruise and stall airspeed), so Skywest is basically trading higher fuel costs for reducing the odds one of their crews does something stupid and makes CNN. azflyboy fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Jun 23, 2015 |
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Jun 23, 2015 06:29
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In addition to the altitude caps, there are also minimum cruise speeds going into effect to provide more of a cushion above the stick shaker, so the airspeed is also being addressed. The CRJ-200 is somewhat notorious for having lousy climb performance at altitude in hot/heavy conditions, so it's distinctly possible that the airplanes simply don't have the performance to fly fast enough to maintain what someone at SKW thinks is a reasonable buffer at higher altitudes. The CRJ-7 and -900 have substantially better climb performance, which is why they're allowed up to FL350.
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Jun 23, 2015 07:11
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Hauldren Collider posted:I think the article is being a bit generous by describing him as a "Republican presidential candidate", maybe "nominally Republican pretend-presidential candidate slash idiot clown". A lot. Pretty much any large airport is going to have at least one arrival or departure that includes references to the local sports teams, and procedures named for famous local things (Vegas has a LUXOR arrival, there's a TECKY departure in San Jose with CISKO and EBAYE, etc...) are really common as well. One of the best I've seen is an approach in New Hampshire that requires crossing (in order) ITAWT, ITAWA, PUDYE and TATT, with IDEED being the missed approach fix. I think the FAA usually won't approve anything that could be construed as controversial or obscene, but someone managed to put BUXOM (which sits right over a nude beach) on an approach in Portland, OR. azflyboy fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Jul 9, 2015 |
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Jul 9, 2015 22:29
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Hauldren Collider posted:So on the FAA's MedXpress website to apply for a medical it asks "have you seen a health professional in the last 3 years?" You don't have to report routine checkups, unless they were for substance abuse issues or resulted in a referral for psychiatric career evaluation.
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Jul 10, 2015 01:24
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MrChips posted:And when you make it to the airlines, make sure you wear the captain's hat on your walk-around. That way you don't get yours wet, dirty, dented, etc. I took the approach of working for an airline where most of the pilots don't wear hats (captains who choose the hat and blazer combo here tend to be douchebags for some reason), and that operates airplanes where there's basically nothing close to head height on preflights unless you're well over 6'. We make up for that by installing a fairly beefy HUD combiner on the captains' side, which is in a perfect location to draw blood if someone tries to get into the seat without paying attention.
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Jul 11, 2015 19:53
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CBJSprague24 posted:
I had to do the same thing when I was instructing, but I never needed a booster. In the Q400, I move my seat as far forward as it'll go, adjust the rudder pedals as far aft (towards the seat) as they'll go, and then set the height about halfway up. Since changing my seat position results in my landings going to hell for a few days until I adjust to the new sight picture, I've learned not to try and experiment with anything but where the rudder pedals are adjusted.
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Jul 14, 2015 04:13
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The two pilots were apparently the VP of flight ops, and the director of safety at Allegiant, so I'm assuming they've decided the entire thing was the fault of the dispatcher.
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Jul 28, 2015 22:11
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I don't think the cause was unclear NOTAMS, but probably a mix of Allegiant not wanting to put anything more than the bare minimum fuel on the airplane (there was a perfectly viable alternate about 70 miles away), and no one actually bothering to pay attention to the NOTAM. If you're flying in a 121 environment, reading NOTAMS is part of the job description (especially if you're in a management position where and rank-and-file pilots would love to see you screw up), so there's really no excuse for managing to dispatch a flight to an airport that was going to be NOTAM'ed as closed, and then declaring an emergency to land there anyway. Also, under Part 121, the director of operations and the PIC are jointly responsible for the "initiation, continuation, diversion, and termination of a flight in compliance with this chapter and the operations specifications", and that same rule also says that the director of ops cannot delegate the responsibility for those functions to anyone else. Since the PIC on that flight was apparently the director of operations (meaning dispatch ultimately reports to them), there's legally no way for Allegiant to blame anyone else for the screwup, so I'm guessing that individual is going to have some very interesting conversations with the FAA about what happened.
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Jul 28, 2015 23:42
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I didn't mean to imply that the current NOTAM system isn't screwed up, since it clearly is. In this case, the NOTAM had been out for some time (probably a couple of weeks), so the fact that no one seems to have bothered to actually read the NOTAM during that period (and the fact that every other 121 carrier in the US manages not to dispatch flights to closed airports) seems to indicate that the burden of this particular screwup is on Allegiant, and not the FAA. The only reason I brought up that particular FAR was because Allegiant's management loves shifting blame to everyone but themselves when something goes wrong there, so having a situation where one of said managers not only screws up in a spectacularly public manner, but is also the person the FAA says is ultimately responsible for said screwup is some pretty great schadenfreude. What really confuses me about the whole incident is how the crew got to the point where they had to declare an emergency in the first place. Ignoring the NOTAM issue, the crew had a perfectly good alternate (GFK) about 70 miles north, so the fact that they didn't have an extra 15 minutes of fuel on board indicates that either the flight departed with less than the required reserves, or the crew decided that flying in circles and arguing with ATC was a better use of time and fuel than just admitting they screwed up and landing somewhere else.
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Jul 29, 2015 00:46
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Hauldren Collider posted:I was wondering why aviation engines are so bad. Someone told me that they need avgas and so much oil because they run at high RPMs, but I watched my Honda's RPM while I was cruising at 75 on the interstate and it ran at similar RPMs to the Cessna 172 I fly. Needs an oil change every 2 years, runs on regular gas, probably doesn't even weigh more than the 172's engine and has a higher horsepower. And it'll run till the heat death of the universe with no maintenance whatsoever. Is there an actual *good* reason we can't put car engines in airplanes? It's been tried before (Mooney used Porsche engines in 1988, but Porsce backed out of the program shortly thereafter), but most of the reasons come down to what the respective engines are designed to do. Car engines are generally designed to put out a higher amount of horsepower for a short time, then settle into a much lower power output (and RPM) for any kind of sustained operations. Aircraft engines are designed to run at full power for relatively long periods of time, followed by cruise settings at 65-75% power, all while turning at RPM's that are close to their redline, and they'll usually do so reliably for somewhere near 2000 hours. Since car engines aren't designed with that kind of sustained, high power operations in mind, getting them to exhibit the kind of reliability that is expected from a certified aircraft engine is difficult (and expensive), to say nothing of the added complexity and weight of a reduction gearbox and a liquid cooling system. That said, there have been cases of auto engines (air cooled VW units, Subaru's 4-cylinder boxer, and Corvair engines) being used successfully in homebuilt airplanes for a number of years, but in most cases the cost and time (not to mention liability) of getting something new certified for use in a production aircraft makes it completely unattractive for engine or aircraft manufacturers. azflyboy fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Aug 3, 2015 |
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Aug 3, 2015 02:31
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Hauldren Collider posted:See, I just flat out don't believe this. My car puts out a pretty constant 2000+ RPM on the highway at speed, same as a Cessna when cruising, has absolutely no problem powering up steep hills while going 75+ mph, and I SERIOUSLY doubt Honda would have much difficulty modifying a car engine for whatever minor difference in performance is required for an airplane anyway, particularly given past success and the capabilities of modern automobile engines. The issue is that a typical small car only requires somewhere around 35HP to maintain highway speeds, which means it's turning at 2500RPM, but it's only putting out around 25% (assuming a 150hp engine) of it's rated power to do so, and is turning nowhere near it's maximum RPM. From calculations I could find online, even climbing a 5% grade at 70 mph, the engine only needs to produce about 50% of rated power, which should still be well under the redline RPM. On a Cessna 172 with only slightly more power (160HP), the engine is expected to run at full power during takeoff and climb (maybe 10-15 minutes, and with reduced cooling airflow), and in cruise, it'll be running at 65-75% power, while turning at somewhere around 80-90% of redline. Properly maintained and operated, most small airplane engines can comfortably do this for somewhere beyond 2000 hours before they'll need an overhaul. I'm guessing that running the engine in a typical Honda or Toyota on that same cycle would result in some kind of catastrophic failure well before it hit the 2000 hour mark, largely because having the internal bits of an engine only moving at 23-2500 RPM for sustained periods is a lot less stressful on things like pistons, valves, and connecting rods than spinning at 5-6000 RPM would be. azflyboy fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Aug 3, 2015 |
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Aug 3, 2015 03:57
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Another issue is that even if an automaker were to decide "Let's make piston airplane engines!", the investment needed to convert a car engine to work reliably in an airplane would probably never pay itself off, even ignoring the cost of FAA certification. As an example, GM sells about 34,000 Corvettes each year (which is small potatoes by car standards), whereas worldwide, there are maybe 1000 piston engine airplanes sold every year, so the economies of scale simply aren't there for something operating on the level of a carmaker.
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Aug 3, 2015 04:28
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Rickety Cricket posted:We couldn't have gotten above FL180. A turboprop would be so much more efficient for that route. The issue with turboprops is that there are currently only two on the market (the ATR-72 and Bombardier Q400), and they're both not terribly attractive in the US for various reasons. Since the ATR-72 is relatively slow, only has 68 seats, and has somewhat limited hot/high performance, it doesn't work terribly well for American regionals that generally need the airplane for longer routes and/or more flights per day and need more seats. While the Q400 is a more capable airplane than the ATR by most standards, it requires more maintenance than something like a CRJ, and unless an airline is willing to invest the money to build up a decent sized fleet and properly support it, the increased "touch time" and some reliability issues can make the Q400 lose substantial amounts of money. When you combine those issues with the fact that regional airlines in the US operate a substantial number of routes that are simply too long for a turboprop (anything past about 500NM), and the public perception that "propellers = dangerous", it's not terribly surprising that large turboprops don't sell well in the US. azflyboy fucked around with this message at 08:08 on Aug 6, 2015 |
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Aug 6, 2015 08:06
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Armyman25 posted:A quick question. Does military simulator time count towards total time when applying for a job? As far as I know, most airlines don't count simulator time as being part of total flight time, but they often allow a flight time adjustment of some type (usually an extra .2 or .3hrs per sortie) for military pilots to account for differences in how the military logs flight time compared to civilian operations.
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Aug 6, 2015 20:09
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I used one of the Sportys Flight Gear bags for about nine years (including five years flight instructing), and it held up really well to all kinds of abuse while being able to carry a lot of stuff. That bag got retired in favor of a flight case when I started an airline job, since all I need to carry now is a headset, iPad, flashlight, and various pens and chargers for stuff.
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Aug 9, 2015 06:46
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I also fly with a full size iPad, and agree with what Kodiak said about most of the hassle being from the gigantic mounts we have to use. In the Q400, the problem is made slightly worse by the fact that the iPad mount has to fit in a fairly small gap between the window frame and the permanently mounted EFB on the cockpit sidewall, which can make reaching around it to change the altimeter settings or speed bugs a bit awkward.
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Aug 9, 2015 16:48
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Captain Apollo posted:Who is flying these days without using the mini? Weird I use a full size iPad for the simple reason that it's the only tablet the FAA has approved my employer to use, and the company pays for the iPad, data plan, and replacement of said iPad once the battery decides to crap out.
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Aug 10, 2015 00:52
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Hummer Driving human being posted:Why aren't there any turbo-prop only discount airlines in the US? Would they not cost less per hour to fly, especially regional hops where the difference in speed and distance covered in smaller? There are two airlines in the US (Piedmont and Horizon) that have done fairly well using fleets of turboprops, and both of them have route structures in areas where the legs are short enough to work well with turboprops. In addition to those two airlines, there are also some companies that use smaller airplanes like Beech 1900's, Saab 340's, and Cessna Caravans (Great Lakes, SeaPort and PenAir come to mind), but they're generally limited to essential air service routes, and at least in the lower 48, they generally struggle to be profitable and have trouble attracting and keeping pilots.
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Aug 23, 2015 05:29
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