Zapata

Put the crack pipe down and learn to read.

moonkey

And that is the true!

AlmostThere

well, that makes sense. but to get those 1500 i was starting to think military again...geeesh

bcrosier

Call me crazy, but I thought the pay for CFI'ing has always been very low. 135 might drop a bit, since under the present system you could get hired into the right seat of a 70 seat jet with 900 less hours than it took to qualify for the left seat of an Aztec.

I have to laugh at this one a bit - you haven't been around here too long have you kid? I'm not saying it's right - in fact, I actually agree it's a bad thing that CFI'ing pays so poorly that few do it as a career. For better or for worse, we have a long tradition of CFI being THE entry level job in aviation, and of CFI's splitting as soon as they found a better position.

Historically not true - we generally aren't talking $25,000 for a type rating at FSI. A few hours of dual and some ground time is more what I recall the program calling for in the types of operations I'm thinking of. Generally, if an operator pays enough to send a pilot to FSI (or the equivalent), they'll pay them enough to stick around for a while - good business.

Again, to a certain extent true. Again, as I pointed out above, if you are going to spend the money for type ratings it's in your financial best interest to offer terms and conditions conducive to employee retention. The real problem is the airlines (and many other industries as well) have been overrun by Gordon Gekko wannabees who were successful at cooking books and manipulating companies for high short term gains. Unfortunately, they have ZERO ability to actually run a company nor to plan for long term growth. If there is any justice at all, these morons will be brought to their knees by these regulations (and hopefully many will find their rightful place on the street begging for change and being raped at night - but I digress).

One of the key aspects of this is it greatly reduces the ability of the regional airlines to "maximize low pay employees." Yes, 135 pay might take a bit of a hit, but that would put things back into line with where they've historically been. The bottom line is the average moron who gets on an airliner expects that they are getting an experienced crew. This legislation forces new hires to have acquired six times as much flight time (and with that, hopefully some real quality experience) as they are required to have today. The right seat of a .80M jet carrying 70 unsuspecting boobs is not the appropriate place to be getting your first real world experience - it's not what the traveling public thinks they paying for and it's not what they should be receiving.

Note - I don't have an issue with low-time pilots in the right seat of a jet. It can be a tremendous learning experience given an appropriate mentor in the left seat, and passengers who understand what they are getting (i.e; the captain may elect to divert rather than fly an approach to minimums in demanding weather and airspace due to the limitations of the FO). That is managerial decision appropriate to the flight department in question. It is not an appropriate cost saving measure foisted on an unsuspecting populace by carriers operating under FAR Part 121.

dragon

What in the world are you trying to say? My initial reading of your post tells me you hold the military accountable for the actions of the folks that control it. I hope I'm wrong.

Service of any type to the country is noble. Teachers, Doctors, Nurses, Fire/Police and the military to include reserve, Guard and Coasties all serve. Coaches and mentors serve and we should applaud them all. If you question the direction we're forced to take, please take that discussion away from APC as it violates the TOS.

mrmak2

What airline do you work for? This is the same rhetoric that the average brain-dead passenger and equally brain-dead representative believes the new 1500 hr minimim will avoid. Both pilots of the Colgan crash had ATP minimums. Maybe your airline does not hire qualified pilots, but that has nothing to do with hours in some logbook that may or may not have been pencil-whipped. Pure smoke and mirrors is what's going on here. Until someone addresses what the core problem is here, this is all just a watse of time.

P.S. how is the overall accident record at regional airlines over the past 5 years with so many "wet commercial" FOs trying to kill everyone? Our government is great at responding to the last percieved risk after it has happened. That's exactly what we have now. This proposal will do nothing for safety, and ultimately will accelerate the demise of this profession.

JungleBus

They both at ATP minimums when they were hired? Because that's what we're talking about here. I believe M Renslow had around 600 hours then, considerably less when "hired" at his first airline "job" at Gulfstream. Given the way things went down, about 1000 hours of watching students screw up stalls from the right seat of a Cessna might've not been such a waste of time, after all.

aafurloughee

not to harsh on you but honestly,


Is a 1500 hour flight time gonna make a better pilot than an 800 hour guy???? Yes u learn as you go, and yea the curve is steep initially and then mellows out, but when it comes to whose a screw up and who ain't, it gets established pretty much right away. I mean the cowboys will always be cowboys, cocky will always be cocky and the true good head on the shoulders driver will be that. it is what it is. adding a few hundred hours to a min won't make the diff. Ya need to draw the line at IOE or PC day. That's it.

forgot to bid

Alright, I started flying in the airlines at 22 with 1600 hours, all civilian and most all of that as a CFI, keep that in mind in case you think I'm just defending the 190 hour wonderpilot.

A lot of people like to jab at the regional pilot and say they're all 500 hour wonder pilots, or 250 hour wonder pilots, whatever number they wish. I heard 150 once which was awesome to hear. Anyways, how many accidents have we had with commercial only pilots flying Part 121 airliners? 0. None. Nada. They all had someone with an ATP in the cockpit.

But I get your point, you should be more experienced having gone the former route rather than the latter. At least they should, but ATPs shouldn't be crashing planes either and I don't really care who is sitting next to you. If your PIC, you should be able to fly that plane with 0 help for at least 1 leg + 1 call to the CPO.

Your last sentence is 100% the issue.

I think you'll see a bunch of rich kids applying for Part 121 jobs and not necessarily the best pilots. As someone said, $150K for an $18K job, what smart kid is going to do that?

You can also buy a Piper Apache for $50K, fly it till the engines need overhaul and then sell it with new engines for $60K. Your cash out cost according to planequest will probably be around $100 for fuel, mx and engines, $50 if you split it as "safety pilot time", and thus $60-$120K at the most to get to 1500 hours. And you never had to teach someone to fly an ILS. Which means you can fly an ILS great, but you don't know ILS's as well as the guy who taught 100 people how to do it and every other pvt-inst-comm maneuver.

I agree completely except I don't want reregulation. I don't want this government picking winners and losers as they are attempting to do by tossing out the Delta/USAir/AirTran/Spirit/WestJet/Jetblue slot swap because SWA was not included.

Pay, at least for a vast majority of airlines, is contractual and does not ebb and flow with supply and demand. Until a pilot union raises pay in their contract there will not be an increase in pay to attract pilots and if there was they'd be whipsawed anyways.

Remember pay is not the goal of most airline pilots, its PIC time to get to a job where the pay is high. Its all about CASM, well, RASM-CASM actually which is why this is trickier than it appears.

Super, I agree with what you're saying but I'll add this for whatever its worth, in 2002 when no airline was really hiring I had a friend at All ATP and what he was telling me was that when their CFIs hit 1000 hours they were terminated to make room for the others waiting as ALL ATP needed to make sure their pipeline was moving. I think the puppy mills will continue to exist but they won't be able to advetise 0 to airline, which was ridiculous and laughable.

The reason you had to have 2500 hours in the 90s, or less, was that there weren't as many regional jobs. I started flying in the 90s and I remember guys going off to some crap unsat jobs because there were no jobs to be had. And as someone else mentioned, it was PFT (up until 2000) and the pay was horrific by todays regional pilot standards. In the early to mid 1990s there weren't jobs to be had in mass.

Now, again, pay is on contract and does not ebb and flow with pilot supply but this also misses the point of whats coming. The number of 50 seaters being cut out of the system is a growing trend and the structure of contracts to come says that the regionals will have greater risk sharing which lends to the belief that 50 seat jets will be substantially cut out of the system by mutual agreement. This new FAA bill will also increase regional CASM, further putting small jet fleets and RJ jobs at risk. So there will be less jobs, not the same.

Hence the question over on Latest and Greatest about Delta in that will we allow regionals to fly the bigger jets that the regional carriers (not pilots) need and want to fly? It is a quesiton that will not and cannot be answered by regional pilots, it is a mainline pilot issue and everyone who is not mainline, imho, should pray that pilots say hell no- and at least at Delta it looks like that will be the case... I hope. Remember the problem is not that regionals decided to fly 50 seat RJs a decade and a half ago, its that the mainline pilots let them.

If I was at a regional I'd be praying they switch from CRJs and ERJs to Dash 8-300s and ATR 42s.

I agree with 2-6, which I think if all of that happens then 1 won't happen and even if 7 happened then 1 won't for a long long while.

Yes but the problem is ticket prices aren't based on equipment or distance. ROA-ATL, for instance, are sometimes $1000+ for a CRJ200 but $500 for ROA-connection-LAX over the same dates.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think this bill requires you to acknowledge that you are booking a ticket that will include segments on an airline that is not the mainline carrier. That will get the attention of the non-RJ folks.

Buzz rocks. And I forgot to quote the person who said you need to read but my guess is you read plenty. And write plenty. And know plenty.
---

I think there still needs to be an airline certification board, whether totally private or government endorsed.

At this point I don't care if the ATP becomes the Part 121 minimum, what I do care about is who will be around when hiring picks up and I personally find a 2-day crash course ATP ride in a Seminole to be worthless. You should've been able to fly a Seminole to ATP standards when you got your mutli or your training and checkride were substandard. And I think you should be able to, and I don't know if the bill reads this way, to get your ATP on your initial ride at a 121 carrier because you're on a checkride that is at ATP standards.

To date, after getting a E145 PIC type, multiple recurrents, multiple line checks, 756 PIC type, MD88 SIC type and so forth nothing, nothing, nothing compares to how difficult they made my check out on the E120 as a new hire Coex pilot. Its all on how the training is done and that is the responsibility of the FAA. It should be far more standard then it is.

guzzilapd

Private at 18, A/P at 20..I cant read. Fell asleep on your post. Age 50....25 yrs major airline.

1500 min. great idea.

Guzz