The unidentified captain of the plane had worked for Endeavor Air, a subsidiary of Delta, for 18 years. He has flown a total of 3,570 hours across his career and is also a training instructor.
His co-pilot, who has also not been identified, had worked with Endeavor for just over a year and had flown an estimated 1,422 hours across the span of her career.
It’s worth noting that the FAA requires 1,500 hours of flying experience before getting an Airline Transport Pilot license, which is higher than the rest of the world by far. I can’t agree that these pilots were inexperienced at all.
That isn’t to say that their training was necessarily up to par, or that diversity hiring definitely wasn’t a factor, of course.
A major factor here is that the landing gear destroyed the wing spar (that is, the wing didn’t hit the ground shearing it off, the gear collapsing broke the wing off). Most aircraft are designed so that the gear shears off before this happens, but some older models (such as the MD-11 which had accidents where the plane lost the wing and flipped twice) are susceptible to this failure mode.
It is a bit odd, but it's also not unheard of for employees to go to flight school and move from a role like dispatcher (which is a more involved role in the US than in other countries - dispatchers share joint responsibility with the flight's captain) to pilot. The fact that it says "worked for" instead of "flew for" makes it rather ambiguous whether all 18 of those years were as a pilot.
Are pilots not flying for most of their work days? 3500 hours seems minuscule to me. I had 20,000+ hours in WoW when I quit after less than 15 years of playing, and at least four of that was from when I was in high school with extremely limited playtime. I have 1600 hours in Elite Dangerous, which I have only been playing since 2020, and I haven't seriously touched it in maybe 2 years.
A 40 hour work-week at 50 weeks a year (-2 for vacation at a guess) is 2000 hours. If I assume that a pilot is only flying for half of his day, 4 hours, then that's 1000 hours a year of flying, for 18 years, which should be 18,000 hours of flight time. 1/4 of his day, two hours, would be 9,000 hours of flight time. A single two-hour flight every day seems like nothing when I compare it to bus drivers or OTR truckers.
How much time are they actually spending per day flying an airplane to log flight time if it takes nearly 20 years to still get less than 4000 hours? Specifically, how long has that pilot actually been flying a plane compared to just "working for Endeavor."
It does say he was an instructor, and the FAA requires different types of flying logged as different categories. Journos are know-nothing English majors. If Delta only reports their pilots' hours flying actual commercial flights, and this guy spends most of his time flying as an instructor, it would explain the discrepancy. Guaranteed the Journo didn't even think to ask that type of question, just rewrote Deltas press release.
It’s worth noting that the FAA requires 1,500 hours of flying experience before getting an Airline Transport Pilot license, which is higher than the rest of the world by far. I can’t agree that these pilots were inexperienced at all.
That isn’t to say that their training was necessarily up to par, or that diversity hiring definitely wasn’t a factor, of course.
A major factor here is that the landing gear destroyed the wing spar (that is, the wing didn’t hit the ground shearing it off, the gear collapsing broke the wing off). Most aircraft are designed so that the gear shears off before this happens, but some older models (such as the MD-11 which had accidents where the plane lost the wing and flipped twice) are susceptible to this failure mode.
18 years and only a little bit more than double of the one year co-pilot?
It is a bit odd, but it's also not unheard of for employees to go to flight school and move from a role like dispatcher (which is a more involved role in the US than in other countries - dispatchers share joint responsibility with the flight's captain) to pilot. The fact that it says "worked for" instead of "flew for" makes it rather ambiguous whether all 18 of those years were as a pilot.
If I recall correctly, the PIC was a simulator training instructor. Thus the low hours.
One year with Endeavor, anyways. Perhaps she worked elsewhere before this.
Are pilots not flying for most of their work days? 3500 hours seems minuscule to me. I had 20,000+ hours in WoW when I quit after less than 15 years of playing, and at least four of that was from when I was in high school with extremely limited playtime. I have 1600 hours in Elite Dangerous, which I have only been playing since 2020, and I haven't seriously touched it in maybe 2 years.
A 40 hour work-week at 50 weeks a year (-2 for vacation at a guess) is 2000 hours. If I assume that a pilot is only flying for half of his day, 4 hours, then that's 1000 hours a year of flying, for 18 years, which should be 18,000 hours of flight time. 1/4 of his day, two hours, would be 9,000 hours of flight time. A single two-hour flight every day seems like nothing when I compare it to bus drivers or OTR truckers.
How much time are they actually spending per day flying an airplane to log flight time if it takes nearly 20 years to still get less than 4000 hours? Specifically, how long has that pilot actually been flying a plane compared to just "working for Endeavor."
It does say he was an instructor, and the FAA requires different types of flying logged as different categories. Journos are know-nothing English majors. If Delta only reports their pilots' hours flying actual commercial flights, and this guy spends most of his time flying as an instructor, it would explain the discrepancy. Guaranteed the Journo didn't even think to ask that type of question, just rewrote Deltas press release.
Back when designers could assume competency of pilots. Don't violate xxx sink rate or y'all die used to be sufficient