Molon Labe

I am glad I don t have to fly with iahflyer..

He needs to see the puppy mill guys in action...a lot of those from that path missed skills and never got them later....I think that is the real point of the colgan discussion and the 1500 hour rule.

CBreezy

I think the "both the Colgan pilots had more hours than the rule required at the time of the crash" is a ridiculous argument. The captain of that flight finished his commercial they went to a pay to play to sling gear before getting hired at a regional. How may full stalls do you think he encountered? Based on his reaction to the shaker and pusher in the Q, I'd say not many outside of a supervised environment. How many do you think a CFI sees? How many of those do you think turn into incipient spins? I know I let a few students push the airplane too far but I LEARNED from those experiences. That's something that pilots who go from commercial check ride to the right seat aren't getting.

sweetholyjesus

Apples and oranges. Mainline pilots selling pilots short by bargaining scope away was inexcusable, yes. But the only motive for that was selfish financial benefit. Coupled with their lack of foresight, it has severely damaged this profession.

That's different than requiring more experience before allowing people to fly large jets for the flying public... The motive for increasing experience requirements is safety, not greed. The byproduct however is a (potential) decrease in supply of pilots, meaning more demand and pay for pilots for retention and recruiting purposes. But that was not the motive.. So to say it is generally selfish to want to keep the higher hour requirements just because a few pilots like the byproduct is a bit... incomplete, IMHO.

And if you profess that those extra ~1250 hours of experience flying/teaching/learning are useless and does not provide the flying public with a safer pilot, I would expect you to be able to provide a study/proof showing how that is the case. You are simply working against the math. If a pilot flies 6x as many airplanes, 6x as many missions, 6x more exposure to weather, ATC etc., the flying public might assume he/she would be the more well-rounded and, well, experienced pilot.. But if you can show me/them that's not the case more-often-than-so, I'm all ears.

I can tell you personally I was not the same pilot at 250 hours that I grew into at 1000+. If you were wrong about my case, how many more could you be wrong about? Do you want to be wrong when your loved ones are in the back and the dummies up front don't know how to prevent a stall?

Molon Labe

You wrote exactly what I meant to say.

CBreezy

I was piling on, not trying to steal thunder.

runinonfumes

Also don't forget, it wasn't just the Cologan passengers that suffered the consequences of a pilot who's narrow professional background prevented an appropriate control response to a "not in the sim profile" event. Air France...the most exposure to flying an aircraft w/o an autopilot happens in the first 1500 hours. After that the opportunitys to kick it off go down drastically.

Flying an aircraft is worlds different then managing a mostly automated system.

MikeB525

I realized that I didn't even feel comfortable with the idea of flying big jets with passengers until I was about the 1000 or 1100 hour mark. It was an arduous drag pounding out 1500 hours, but by the time I got to an airline I felt more comfortable as a pilot. I got to experience a lot. Flying a plane became almost as natural as driving a car, and it made learning the jet easier.

Molon Labe

But credit where it is due! You said it better! I am glad you did.

bozobigtop

I say press on since the powers that be could care less about the opinion you're not suppose to have. I leave that to mr and ms money bags in which many of us are far below their income levels, and their pet income levels for that matter.

full of luv

Actually this is benefit to all the rotor heads in the military (over half of naval aviation) who didn't find a productive fixed wing orders option. Suspect more than most realize. They used to be able to Rj it for a bit and move along. Now that option is closed to them until they can get an Atp.