More Experienced?

[casper]

Listening and reading about some of the crashes lately and even watching 'Air Crash Investigation' one thing is always mentioned - experience. The captain has 2000 hours, the FO has 1500 hours etc. and this got be wondering about what exactly is classed, or should be classed as 'experience'?


As an example I'm going to just use some made-up figures


Pilot A: 100 hours
Pilot B: 100 hours


Now all of Pilot A's flights have been 4 hours long so he has made 25 flights. Pilot B however has made 100 1 hour flights. So can both pilots be classed as having the same experience? Or is it that flight time is just something that the media use in reporting and airlines and others will use the number of T/O's and landings when gauging experience?

[Angry Turnip]

Interesting point-as far as I am aware pilot expierence is gauged in time in the air hours for various reasons.
To achieve certain pilot license catagories,a pilot has to log a certain amount of flying hours-some can be on simulators,but most is actual flying time,and surpervised training and exams.
Flight crews are usually grouped in such a way that the aircraft commander (captain) has significantly greater expierience than the 1st officer,but the 1st officer does most of the manual flying.


I will ask my friend who is a 1st officer with Flybe,maybe he can shed a bit more light on the subject.

It does seem to be something the media latch on to in the event of an accident,but I doubt they have any clue as what it actually means-just another random bit of info to include.