US ULCC

[Col. Panic]

Ok, you try bombing around the circuit with a student trying to kill you every 4 minutes, and then tell me it isn’t valuable experience. Fast forward to being a captain flying with an inexperienced FO, those skills help you decide how far to let them go before you take control.

It’s amazing how much you learn when you scare yourself in an airplane. It’s best to do that when there aren’t 200 passengers in the back.

[NotDirty!]

I think just as there are instructors who are good at teaching, and ones who are less good at it, there are some instructors who will get more value out of being an instructor than others.

[88gtst]

Ok, you try bombing around the circuit with a student trying to kill you every 4 minutes, and then tell me it isn’t valuable experience. Fast forward to being a captain flying with an inexperienced FO, those skills help you decide how far to let them go before you take control.

It’s amazing how much you learn when you scare yourself in an airplane. It’s best to do that when there aren’t 200 passengers in the back.

Also you know, 703/704 experience gives you that same knowledge. Flying around in a King Air with 500 hour pilots, then a DHC8 with 300 hour pilots, and zero instructor experience I was more than capable of knowing when to take control, and for the record that was virtually never.

[Col. Panic]

I didn’t say that instructing was the only way to get experience, I was justifying the value of instructing. My second paragraph about scaring yourself wasn’t limited to scaring yourself as an instructor. Scaring yourself in a King Air is great learning too. I just think you’re a better prepared airline pilot if you have a couple of thousand hours in small aircraft, preferably in situations that have tested your decision making, without a co-authority dispatcher supporting you.