FAA Mulls Proposals for Pilot Qualifications

[Mr Hat]

Outside of that, I hope they don't cave and keep it at 1500 hours. I realize this doesn't really do everything required for safety, but it makes is harder for the regionals to keep their pay so low and helps raise the bar for everyone else.

While I can sit here and say that the 1500 hour rule is stupid.....I also agree with you....maybe a little bit of a shortage will help bring the pay up to where it's supposed to be. Then again if CAL/UAL and AMR had it their way and did away with outsourcing of flying, that might bring the rates up too. I also realize how silly it is for me, a regional jet Captain, to be calling for an end to outsourcing. Kind of shooting myself in the foot. But the truth is the truth.

 

[Lear70]

Some of the most abysmal F/O's I ever had were the puppy mill 500 hour wunderkid "children of the magenta".

UND, Gulfstream, wherever, unless half of your 500 hours has been earned HAND FLYING in hard, actual IFR - real line flying - unless you're that 1/10th of 1% that has flying instincts like Chuck Yeager, you're going to suck at 500 hours trying to keep up with the plane while the Captain is trying to do both your job and his/hers.

We knew this was coming... the ATA was never going to let this lie, and I can only hope ALPA and other groups will take this fight to their doorstep over it, either outright killing the idea of "lower minimums through training" or making the training EXTREMELY rigorous and restrictive, such as 250 hours of ACTUAL Pilot Flying in a turbine aircraft (not just sitting SIC and throwing gear) with a FULL PIC type rating required to ATP standards administered by the FAA, not by a company APD.

We want to base it on performance? Fine. Perform to PIC ATP standards at your 500 hours total time or wash out with a pink slip on your record. You make it through? Fine. You don't? buh-bye.

(not irritated at individual pilots that think they're capable of doing this (very few of you 500 hour pilots are, regardless of how good you THINK you are), irritated at the ATA, even though we knew it was coming).

 

[Raoul Duke]

I guess I would suggest that one thing that may help would be to require a considerable amount of time (hundreds of hours) of the new pilot sitting in the jumpseat with specific training pilots who constantly explain most of their decisions so that the new pilot can see it and understand it before they are a required member of the the cockpit.

This is a terrible idea - your solution to a problem that really does not exist is to make it harder for us all to get to work!

 

[ImbracableCrunk]

I've said this before:

All prospective airlines pilots must have no more and no less than 1337 hours when they apply.

 

[bluefin]

While I can sit here and say that the 1500 hour rule is stupid.....I also agree with you....maybe a little bit of a shortage will help bring the pay up to where it's supposed to be. Then again if CAL/UAL and AMR had it their way and did away with outsourcing of flying, that might bring the rates up too. I also realize how silly it is for me, a regional jet Captain, to be calling for an end to outsourcing. Kind of shooting myself in the foot. But the truth is the truth.

There is the problem, low experience = low paid. I am not bashing anyone but that is whats going on. Why are regionals making money, cause the don't pay squat. It has to change at the root and UAL/CO Scope is the answer. If it is lost here, it's lost forever.

 

[Jetpipeovht]

Roger Cohen, RAA President feels that regional pilots are well compensated. Lying sunuvabiich.