Airlines Archives - Golf Hotel Whiskey

Ryanair’s latest stunt: Would you fly with a teenage airline pilot?

Nineteen year old Ryan Irwin, from Wirral, Merseyside, has been offered a job with budget carrier Ryanair after qualifying as a pilot from the Oxford Aviation Academy back in February. Apparently, he was also offered a job with Jet2, another budget airline. After completing his training in September, he will take to the skies and fulfill a life long dream of flying.

However, news of a nineteen year old airline pilot has naturally attracted some criticism. In a Decision Heights blog post entitled Acne in the Cockpit, Alan Cockrell complained that Ryan won’t be required to pay his dues via a “seasoning” period (e.g. night cargo runs and the like) as other airline pilots must do. He also asked:

What good is he other than as a captain’s “assistant”? Suppose, for example he gets paired with a weak captain. (They exist.) Will he have the means, knowledge and skills to mitigate the captain’s mistakes? Or suppose he gets paired with an egotistical captain—one who espouses the time-tested suicidal cockpit management technique called, “my way or the highway”? (There are many.) Will he have the fortitude to speak out against the boss’ ill-advised decisions? Not likely. More likely he will silently let the captain fly him all the way into the crater, assuming he even sees it coming.

Certainly, Alan has a point and he also added at the end of his post:

But young Ryan will soon realize that on Ryan pay he will be able to pay off his Oxford Aviation Academy debt in a about three decades and the glitter of his not-so-long awaited-for dream-come-true will fade.

And while its easy to dismiss Ryan’s hiring as just another Michael O’Leary publicity stunt (like threatening to install coin operated toilets or making passenger stand), he may not be the only nineteen year pilot at the airline as someone posted the following comment on the Daily Mail article about his hiring:

I’m sorry Mail, get your facts straight. I know at least 3 more pilots, who been with Ryanair for years, and joined at 19, becoming captains at 23-24. But there are definitely many many more. This boy is not an exception in any way.
– Ruta , Liverpool, United Kingdom, 17/5/2013 15:08

Granted, we should point at that there are probably many nineteen year old pilots in the various air forces of the world entrusted with flying some very expensive and very dangerous aircraft.

With that said, we want to ask you our readers: Do you think a nineteen year old should be in the cockpit of an airline flying passengers? Moreover and even if you won’t fly Ryanair, would you want to fly in an airliner with someone his age potentially at the controls?

Brits beat out Russians as the biggest in-flight drinkers

Here is a big surprise (or perhaps not!): British holidaymakers were voted the biggest alcohol drinkers by international cabin crew followed by Russians for second place in a survey conducted by Skyscanner of 700 cabin crew members who were polled via cabincrew.com. Apparently, just over half (54%) of Brits admitted to kicking off their holiday with a stiff drink in either the airport or onboard their flight.

Ironically, 41% of Brits surveyed said they would rather book an alcohol-free flight if such flights were offered by airlines while a quarter (24%) said their motivation for dry flights was to avoid drunken passengers ruining their holiday experience. Ironically, younger Brits surveyed were strongly in favor of banning alcohol on flights with Brits aged 18-24 being the biggest supporters of a ban while only 18% claimed to enjoy in-flight drinking.

The survey results showed that alcohol free flights would be popular as no doubt many passengers have had bad experiences sitting next to a passenger (or two) who had one too many. In fact, Russian officials have already called for an alcohol ban on all flights to prevent drunken behavior on board aircraft.

However, the surveyed also revealed that holidaymakers from the North East were the most strongly against getting rid of alcohol.

Video: The not so glamorous life of an airline pilot?

If you are thinking of becoming an airline pilot, check out this really cool video entitled “Life as an Airline Pilot (reality is a lot less glamorous),” which may or may not have you reconsidering your career options:

Its not actually clear who made the video and why, but it certainly does help to bring a dose of reality as to what being an airline pilot is all about on a day to day basis (without out even mentioning airlines going busts, strike actions, battles over pay/pensions, grueling schedules etc).

However, we want to ask our readers, especially any readers who might be airline pilots: Is being an airline pilot really as “glamorous” (as in pretty mundane at times) as portrayed in this video? Tell us what you think!

Pilotless aircraft: A great idea for Michael O’Leary (and a bad one for co-pilots)

Over the next few weeks, a twin-engined Jetstream will fly from the Warton Aerodrome in Lancashire towards Scotland but it won’t be an ordinary flight as the aircraft will be pilotless according to the Economist. That’s not entirely accurate as there will be a pilot. Its just the pilot will be flying the aircraft from a control room on the ground (but just in case things go wrong with the experiment, there will be a pilot in the cockpit to take over). The flight itself is part of a project to develop the technologies and procedures that ultimately will allow large commercial aircraft to operate pilotless.

No doubt such an idea would have airline executives like Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary salivating because after all, think of how much cost savings there would be if there were no pilots in the cockpit? Or better yet, how much more cost savings there would be if you had one guy on the ground “piloting” a couple of aircraft?

But jokes aside, we are nearly at that point already as modern aircraft are already perfectly capable of taking off, flying to a destination and landing automatically. Its just there are a couple of (very expensive) pilots in the cockpit to keep an eye on things and make sure the rules of the air are complied with.

So part of the experiment is to test how well air-traffic controllers can communicate with a pilot on the ground through the aircraft and how to make the radio and satellite links both secure and reliable. However, the engineers behind pilotless aircraft will still need to be prepared for the inevitable break in communication where the aircraft will have to figure out how to safely operate or land on its own.

The Economist also made the point that while pilotless aircraft may not be here just yet, such experiments are are improving aircraft systems while in the early days of commercial aviation:

Many early large aircraft had a crew of five: two pilots, a flight engineer, a navigator and a radio operator. First the radio operator went, then the navigator, and by the time the jet era was well under way in the 1970s flight engineers began to disappear too. Next it could be the co-pilot, replaced by the autonomous flight systems now being developed.

So if you are a co-pilot who has not made Captain yet, you better work on getting that promotion before your job goes the way of the flight engineer and the navigator!

Round the world in seven days for charity

Richard Tams, British Airways’ head of UK & Ireland sales and Management Consultant and oneworld Emerald top tier frequent flyer, Andrew Solum, are warming up for a globe-trotting week’s challenge to raise money for charity.

The tenet of their challenge is simple: make it round the world by hook or by crook (or in reality by oneworld partners) within seven days in order to raise at least £20,000 for the Comic Relief Children’s charity Flying Start.

The daring duo will set off on September 15 from the oneworld headquarters in New York. That day they will start with American Airlines from New York to Chicago then on to the Tokyo Narita international hub of Japan Airlines.

The following day they will fly with Japan Airlines from Tokyo to the Hong Kong home of Cathay Pacific and on September 17 undertake a three-flight schedule from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur with Cathay Pacific, Kuala Lumpur to Singapore with Malaysia Airlines, which is on track to join oneworld at the turn of the year. They will then travel on from Singapore to London with Qantas arriving early on September 18.

British Airways will carry them on to Amman, base of Royal Jordanian.

On September 19 they will fly from Amman to Frankfurt with Royal Jordanian, then with airberlin to Germany’s capital city.

On September 20, they will take to the air again with airberlin to Frankfurt, then off with LAN to Madrid. From its base at the Spanish capital, Iberia will then carry them to the Moscow hub of S7, landing early on September 21, before a swift transfer to S7 for a flight to St Petersburg.

The following day (September 22) they will begin the last leg of their journey heading with Finnair from St Petersburg to its own Helsinki home then on to Heathrow to connect on to their final flight, a British Airways jet from London to New York arriving at 8.55pm local time.

In total they will cover just over 30,000 miles, flying along the way on every oneworld member airline and via 11 of the alliance’s major hubs.

Tams said: “I’ve done a lot of flying in my time at British Airways, but never so many destinations in such a short period. We’ll be going through

16 airports, flying on ten different aircraft types and visiting 11 countries on 12 airlines. We won’t even have time to stop and enjoy the views!

Mr Solum said "it will be tough going on standby staff tickets with no guarantee where we’ll be seated, but at the end of the day, every penny we raise will make a difference to a child – and that is really our driving force for this challenge."

Tams added “We’re enormously grateful to our oneworld partners for supporting our challenge – it’s a great reflection of the reach the alliance has. I’d also like to thank our hotel partners in this, the Global Hotel Alliance, Starwood and Marriott.”

“The travel trade have also already been really supportive and we’ve already hit £8,000+ of our target but we really want to reach at least £20,000 so we’re asking everyone to dig deep and help us out. Anyone can pledge money at:

http://donate.ba-flyingstart.com/funraiser/roundtheoneworld.”

The money raised will all go directly to Flying Start, the global charity partnership between British Airways and Comic Relief UK. It will help to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of children living in the UK and in some of the poorest countries across the world. The aim of the charity is to help create lasting change by giving children and their families the chance to start supporting themselves.

This is a guest post from my friend Andrew Solum about his upcoming charity adventure.

Who wants to be an airline pilot?

Apparently not many according to a recent article posted on AVweb by a certain “Captain X” who reported that a substantial percentage of the newly hired airline pilots they get just aren’t excited like they used to be about their career prospects. Moreover, Captain X wrote that during the 2007 and 2008 hiring booms, people were climbing over each other to get an interview but now when they call ten people, only five bother to show up.

Worst, those who bother to show up can’t pass a written test that is straight out of the FAA commercial pilot written and can’t seem to do much else (which Captain X went into considerable detail about…) Captain X then offered the following explanations that both he and his colleagues have come up with to explain the current and increasingly dire situation:

The usual fallback explanation: The younger generation just has a sense of entitlement and don’t want to work as hard.
The airline industry has driven or frightened away the best and the brightest.
The upcoming 1500-hour / ATP minimum requirement for all airline pilots, which will go into effect in 2013, has scared everyone away.
We process information differently because we are all wired and connected to the cloud now – meaning new training procedures are needed.
Economic hard times is making it harder for instrument pilots to remain proficient on their own.
No one is getting commercial pilots’ licenses anymore as FAA data shows that the numbers have plunged over the last three years.

However, Captain X did not mention the fact that regional airlines in the USA have earned somewhat of a bad reputation for both pilot pay and the quality of life for pilots plus there has been an explosion in the growth of airlines around the world – especially in the Middle East, China and SE Asia as the middle class in these areas continues to grow and travel more. In other words, perhaps pilots are finding greener pastures further afield.

Given that Captain X has voiced his views on the situation in the US, it would be interesting to hear what any UK or European pilots, especially airline pilots, think. In other words, is the situation the same in the UK and over on the continent (where the economy is fast on the way to crashing) or is this just an American problem?