Salme's case is a little different than some other cases of pilot imposters who have gotten access to the flight deck through being very skilled at social engineering - being able to smoothly "talk the talk", and taking advantage of lax security and background checks. They usually stay only a short time before either being found out, or deciding to leave before being discovered, and are usually careful to not put themselves in a position where their lack of real skills will become evident. There was one fellow who was well-known for impersonating professionals in several other fields (even medicine) who spent a few weeks passing himself off as a pilot - but only acted the part of a first officer, and avoided ever having to actually hand-fly an aircraft, as it would have quickly become obvious that he had no actual ability to do so.

 

Salme is a different case. Anyone who spends 13 years in the cockpit, and accumulates 10,000 hours, all the while going through multiple formal airline training schools, tests and check rides, IS "a real pilot". Not a legally-licensed pilot to be sure, but a real pilot none the less. I'm not trying to excuse what he did, but it seems evident that by the time he was finally discovered, he surely had every bit as much knowledge, skill and ability as any other legitimate airline pilot of comparable age and experience - lacking only that government-issued piece of paper granting him the legal authority to act as a commercial aviator.

 

Or to put it another way, I'd be willing to bet that if he had actually sat for the written and practical tests necessary to acquire a legitimate ATP license, he probably would have passed with no difficulty - lacking only the officially-sanctioned preliminary training at the beginning of his career.

Jeff Nielson interview.

Holy thread revival.

 

Al was the OP, and he hasn't been online in years. I hope all is well with him.

Answers the question if someone can learn how to pilot an airline from PMDG!

 

LOL

In a similar thread, I had posted about a rich Indian woman in India who had faked her way to the flight deck until she got caught out when landing a 737 all three bogeys down same time, i.e.no flare out, and the front undercarriage w\s damaged as a result. Investigations subsequently on such a bad landing eventually led to her getting found out. The Press and Media had a field day and flushed out several more fakes including at the national carrier,Air India.