Originally Posted by parnel

Exactly my point as well. Its painstakingly obvious that you get the same safety procedures on dash 8 as you do on 340 aircraft size and type of plane not with standing. You now have planes that are very very safe just by design.
The emergency stuff they learn cannot be all that difficult if there are many more qualified pilots out there than there are jobs. After all it is repeat repeat and more repeat when in simulator and live training.
I also used to fly the jumpseat often in the 90's because I knew several pilots then and almost all they used to complain about was the fact that modern aircraft really left very little skills applications for them unlike the 707's, original DC 8's and 9's, L1011's and early on the smaller aircraft they started out flying. He also did say AC had very strict safety rules that were very easy to follow.....any light comes on you don't fly.

One even told me that if it wasn't for the time off,the very good pay and his other business developing real estate he would be bored to tears. He flew for 35 years before retiring.

We all hear about the so called heroics.....but the gimli glider is still a memory and while the pilot got the plane down he still left the ramp with less than a full fuel tank. And no it wasn't his fault per se,but......human error not pilot reaction time is the usual cause of accidents and or incidents.
While reaction time is obviously important it is also the most important part of training they get.

So are pilots glorified taxi drivers...........not really but they are certainly not the prima donnas they claim to be.

So should we feel safer flying with someone who got there because he passed the tests along the way and had the ultimate skill of being on the senority ladder......don't really think so. Not that I feel unsafe on an AC plane.