Quote: "If you've got 400 hours or so of experience and 11,000 hours of FE time, you're a 400 hour pilot, and shouldn't express frustration at an inability to progress in that position."

While true, it's just rediculous the way that sounds. No credit, even partial, toward flight time while pilots all over the world are logging block time while sleeping in the back, performing bodily functions and chatting with passengers and cabin crew.

When a certain 727 for a major airline was lined up for the wrong airport, it was the FE who pointed it out to the captain. Unfortunately for that FE, and many like him, that flight experience and a multitude of others like it, never happened.