Originally Posted by F9 A319

Lets see.

Flight School (College) through Commercial and CFI and maybe CFII, I don’t recall.

Ultra Lights for 3 months at 8,200’ MSL.

Border town in Texas, Flight Instructing, Night Freight into Mexico – single engine.

One day, $395, Multi Engine rating with L. E. Clark in Ponder, TX, PA-23, Apache.

Lots of PA-31 Navajo time in Mexico – Thank God nothing went seriously awry for a couple of hundred hours.

Pilot Services – single & multi.

Night Freight into the US – single and multi – single pilot.

Left in a hurry.

Night Freight (the politically correct kind with boxes) in a PA-31 (part 135) – single pilot.

King-Air Air -90 A, B and E, -200, Cheyenne II, Air Ambulance and Charter (part 135) – single pilot.

Lear 24 & 25 Air Ambulance and Charter (part 135) – Co-Pilot.

Lear 35 & G-100 world wide Charter (part 135) – Captain (DO and Chief Pilot).

Citation I, II, Hawker 400 fan, Westwind I (part 135) – Captain (Chief Pilot, Director of Training, Check Airman).

Part 121 job (737) at age 33 with 5 type ratings – First Officer for 5 months.

Upgrade to Captain.

Line and Sim Check Airman 3 months later (I did Captain OE for the guy one number junior to me) for 8 years.

Flight Training Manager for a year.

Back to Line Check Airman, for a year and a half I didn't fly with anyone that had more than 40 hours in their seat.

Based on the above, I feel I’m qualified in making the statement, A 400 hour pilot doesn’t remotely compare to a 3,000 to 5,000 hour pilot.

I must agree that the quality of flight time is very important. I rode support for a re-check of a 12,000 hour pilot that stalled the airplane on a V1 cut. When we hit the ground, the pilot turned to me and asked, "Why was it going down, I was pulling back?" That pilot had 95% of their time in a two pilot, turbine twin but the majority of that time was day VMC.

I was a 400 hour pilot and I remember how little I knew, my one advantage was that I didn’t believe I could be killed. I was a 1,000 pilot, still didn’t know a lot.

Now at 15,000+, I’m still learning and many of those lessons come from pilots with less time than I have.

A single pilot, hard ball, piston twin pilot with less than 1,500 hours has no business in an 121 jet operation. I’m sure that will be an unpopular statement, but, what the heck, it’s just my opinion….