Originally Posted by
lolwut
What?? Why?
Ugh, this is ridiculous. The FAA finally makes a law to up the requirements for pilots, which will make this a safer industry and probably also serve to increase our wages.... and then another loophole everyday is opened up to water it back down to allow the same group of people into seats that would've been in there before.
All these requirements... PIC time, approved upgrade training course to get a PIC type rating, etc... were all put there for a reason. But now that its "too hard" to get those, lets just give out waivers and approvals saying that even though you don't have it, you're still good enough anyways.
This is totally defeating the whole purpose. You're required to have an ATP which means you should be required to have the experience, training, and qualifications of an ATP. It doesn't mean we should water down what it takes to get an ATP in order to be able to hand them out to everyone.
Not surprising during the "transition period".
Actually the ability to use right seat time to count in lieu of some of the ATP PIC requirements is nothing new...it's been in the FARs all along and some regionals who hire wet-commercials (notably mesa) have taken advantage of that before.