# Military flying vs. Civilian flying



## auto (21 Feb 2006)

After working with a regional airline and seeing the kind of stuff that goes on    I was amazed at how sketchy things are. 

I don't think an aircraft full of passengers dropping 4000ft in a matter of seconds (stalled in climb) is the result of professionalism, proper training and/or diligence. 

I know accidents can happen for a whole host of reasons, but this undercovers the larger idea that my story(s) is not uncommon in the civilian flying world. I've since met many military pilots who have shared many stories themselves that have convinced me that leaving the civilian world behind was the best thing I could have done. 

Any other personal experiences? Agree/disagree?


----------



## nULL (21 Feb 2006)

I dunno, bad people make bad pilots? Wearing a uniform won't make an immature person responsible, or an incompetent individual anymore proficient. 

Why don't you wait and see how you stack up?


----------



## Zoomie (22 Feb 2006)

I think what "auto" was alluding to was the relative scarcity of training hours available to the civi pilot once out of flying school.  In the CF, our pilots fly 90% of our hours towards training, up-grading, and more training - this enables us to survive the hairy $hit that happens in the last 10% of flight.


----------



## auto (22 Feb 2006)

Zoomie is on the mark here. There's a big difference in the way the civilian flying world works and the way the military works. I have a hard time believing the "bad people make bad pilots idea" I know their is many a good pilot on either side, my issue comes down to the proficiency and underlining training. 

I suppose this discussion is hard to grasp unless you've seen both sides of this flying industry. There both the same, but worlds apart. What's commonly known is that military pilots are amongst the best trained pilots in the world. The common regional airline pilot comes from a background of some flying club working his way up, through connections or luck. 

I'm not bashing civi pilots, but the two worlds mix as well as oil and water.


----------



## Good2Golf (22 Feb 2006)

I once used my civy commercial helo license to fly a short contract for a couple of weeks with a small operator flying his L-3...holy crap, the bottom line in civy operations puts stress and strain on guys that we just don't have in the military.  It was also interesting to see experience...many of the guys flying for the operator had substantially more time than me in the log book, but for most of them, it was all VFR.  Based on my military qualifications and writing some tests and doing a PPC and IFC, I gained my CHL with instrument rating.  Many of the guys were amazed at things I would refuse to fly the aircraft for, small niggly stuff that as a standards pilot, instrument check pilot and maintenance test pilot qualified aviator, I just wouldn't accept in mil flying.  Some of the things guys would fly with were, to be kind, on the edge of acceptability...still acceptable, but very close.  Regarding someone else flying, I once was on a flight from TO to Kingston on a Georgian Air Beech 1200...well, we landed but not without what I would call an interesting touchdown in very challenging IMC conditions.  I couldn't see straight out during landing, but after getting out of the plane, I seriously doubted we have the vis and ceiling conditions to make a legit landing.  Personally, I would have been heading off to my alternate, notwithstanding wanting to get home.  Get-home-itis has the potential to send you home in a pine box....to sum up, I think military flyers do have excellent training, very complete (VFR, IFR, etc...) and that they may be generally more inclined to say "piss on it" and scrub a flight or abort a sequence because we won't have an ops manager breathering down our neck or screaming at us as to why X or Y wasn't done/completed (which happened to me doing the bit of civy flying...actually had a civy pilot tell me that "you military guys talk big but you're a bunch of scaredy cats"...admittedly this guy was a jackarse and the older, more experienced guys looked at me knowingly as I shook my head and wished the rest of the guys luck with their careers...)  Not bashing, just noting that things are different...not good or bad, just different.

Cheers,
Duey


----------



## childs56 (22 Feb 2006)

The pilots whom I use to fix their airplanes would fly in almost any conditions. Love of the Job and experience.  Some would take risks that we all thought were huge, at the end of the day that is what they do and they do it every day. 
Is the military any safer in it's flying habits or even maintenance habits? Yes and no. The Military has a more controlled approached to it's level of training, allowances and maintenance practices. 
At the end of the day good experience and knowing what you, your Aircraft and your ground crew can and can't do is the number one thing to being safe.


----------



## Rad (12 Mar 2006)

I think, in at least some cases, the civie pilots take more risks because alot of times they are flying for a profit making company, and the military pilots are not.  I have head a story of a CO of a flying sqn, who was on both sides of the fence.  As a reservist, he flew for Air Canada at the same time as for the forces.  He was notorious for writing up minors on aircraft for the techs to look at, which could possibly ground the a/c if it was serious enough.  in one particular case he came to one tech with a pile of reports, when the tech saw it he asked "would you have written these if this was an Air Canada plane?"  to which he replied "Right now I'm not flying for Air Canada."   This leads me to belive that money is one reason some people use, however incorrect, for taking some risks.


----------



## Astrodog (14 Mar 2006)

Building on that; watching discovery channel's 'mayday' program, it is alarming to see how many crashes are due to mechanical errors caused by shortcuts to save money... Alaskan, Air Transat and a few others come to mind... I remember one analyst claimed the death of a few hundred people vs. the money saved is simply the cost of doing business...


----------



## Rad (14 Mar 2006)

That makes me want to throw up a little.  As a pilot I would never get behing the yoke of a machine I wasn't completley sure would bring me down safely, and that means inspecting it myself.  It's just not worth putting lives in danger for.  Sometimes you take risks, but you make damn sure thet you calculate them properly especially with someone else's life on the line.


----------

