Originally Posted by gloopy

I still don't see why anyone would lobby for relief from the 1500 hours on the civilian side. That won't help meet demand at all and in fact will actually serve to hurt demand. Even 1000 means the vast majority will have to instruct for a while (750ish hours), likely at the university level. But it creates self imposed brain drain at an earlier point at the very programs that are being used to justify the lower mins.

If they kept it 1500 for civie FO candidates, it would guarantee that not only the university programs but also the other 141 and 61 schools would be able to get more instructing out of pilots before they lose them. The problem is getting qualified pilots into and through the pipeline, not getting them hired soon enough. Cannibalizing the CFI's sooner just to appease the RAA spastic "by any means necessary" mentality for covering flights means fewer instructors with less experience to train an increasing demand for new pilots. That was some of the dumbest airline lobbying I think I've ever seen.

That extra 500 hours is nothing and will happen in a matter of a few months yet would allow each CFI to train more future pilots, which will be necessary to cover not only "normal" attrition/wash out rates the profession at that stage has always seen, but poor return on investment generated attrition if the career doesn't start to improve.

Some of the colleges probably lobbied for it on the assumption that it will be a huge selling point to new pilots. But being able to skip 500 hours that someone else is paying you to get and that you will build in a few months is a very small carrot that probably isn't going to justify the enormously higher costs commonly associated with those types of schools in the first place.