The only thing this does is require instructors and students to devote more time teaching to meet the 1500hr min. The standards that need to be in place are 1500-2500 hr TT, 500 PIC Turbine Multi and an ATP certificate. To gain this kind of experience requires a pre-airline career beyond just instruction thus requiring airlines to raise minimum incentives (pay) to recruit higher experienced pilots. This new proposal in the bill will have means to circumnavigate and continue streamlined routes to the airlines with minimal experience. Don't look for much to change in the way of compensation.
That may be true during times of slow, below average airline industry growth but I'm not sure that's going to be the new norm *IF* this legislation passes as is. I think the regional airline industry is going to have to compete a little harder for qualified entry level guys, and that may cause some upward pressure on wages. My crystal ball is just as cloudy as anyone else's, however.
Those sentences I quoted earlier will undoubtedly create a loophole for some schools to get lower time guys in the cockpit, but after watching the House meetings on the internet, I don't think anyone is interested in putting 300 hr. guys back in the cockpit, either.
If this legislation sticks and regionals start having a more difficult time recuriting, I wonder if we're going to start seeing regional airlines try to secure their own pilot pipelines. They could establish specific relationships with certain accredited flight schools like ERAU or All ATP's or whoever, especially if funding for young people trying to get a pilot's education/training remains difficult to obtain. I realize that many of the big schools have casual relationships with some regionals now, but I wonder if we're going to see "ab-initio" type deals where you join a flight school knowing that when you get spit out at the end, you're lining up for a job at a
specific regional carrier. That ab-initio student gets a degree or already had one, goes through the (MPL?) training, gets the minimum "loophole" flight time requirements by instructing at an ab-initio school, and then plops his butt down in the right seat of a RJ with say 1000 hours of experience and some sort of employment contract in exchange for reduced training costs or similar. So maybe the pay will stay low BUT that student wouldn't have 10's of thousands of dollars of training cost debt either.
