In my opinion, and this is soley my opinion based on many years of observation and a firm believing in experiential learning is that it's not about the ticket or how many hours you have when you are capable of catastrophic damage. It's about the experience you obtained prior to ever being able to become capable of adversely effecting the lives of paying passengers.
In other words, I believe that if this rule had existed many years prior to the Colgan crash, there is a good chance it would not have ended up the way that it did.
Sure they still would have been fatigued, underpaid, and unprofessional. However, following initial warning of an impending stall both pilots would have responded (not reacted) to the condition and reversed it's severity thus resulting in some paperwork, carpet dancing and maybe the loss of their jobs rather than the ultimate in unfavorable results. A smoking hole.
The reason that I feel that this new law could have possibly prevented the seriousness of the events is because the captain that had his ATP would have otherwise never earned his ATP if he wasn't forced to the way he was. The airlines kept ignoring the signs that he hadn't experienced enough nor was he competent enough to serve as a captain.
The mistakes made by the flight crew were very basic and happen often in the world of general aviation and other forgiving forms of flying. Something he was never able to experience. I feel as if he were to experience this same exact scenario in a more forgiving environment, one of two things would have occurred. Either he would learn from his mistake and apply that to his experience when he becomes a captain or he would quit flying all together because he scared the crap out of himself and realized it's just not the thing for him. It doesn't matter what the FO did. She just made the situation worse. But if he had never gotten them into the situation in the first place she could have done what ever she did and everyone would have been fine.
Some people were never meant to become pilots. Under our current culture and set of rules, this will never be caught. Until it's too late.
This guy was never supposed to become a pilot.
Last edited by afterburn81; 08-11-2012 at 01:46 PM.
Reason: spelling