When I was doing IOE, it was very apparent that the overall experience level had gone down because IOE took WAY longer to finish for the majority of men and women than it had in the past. New hire IOE used to take the minimum 25 hours or so, with the previous experience levels. Not any more. Every once in a while I'd get some low time new guy who was just a born natural for the job and picked it all up very quickly. Most started out slowly, took longer to finish. Just about all of them went on to become very good at this job.

One thing that does bother me though, is that sooo many of the pilots I fly with flip on the autopilot as soon as they enter any weather. The feeling I get is that maybe they don't quite have the confidence in their own scans. Not sure. What better way to gain confidence though, then by hand flying the plane in weather during the climb through maybe 12,000 to 15,000 feet, and hand flying the descent and approach - at least once in a while?