IMHO, the time a person has means nothing. It's the quality of the time. Was that person trained by a new CFI or one of the old gray heads. Winter weather in my part of the country meant inversions. The temp would always be just above freezing at the surface, decrease to about 28 or 30 on the way up, then it would jump to 40+. It was always like that. You ALWAYS picked up a pretty good amount of rime ice. I routinely did VFR ops on top or received IFR block altitudes and VOR radials to operate between. I was doing that at 600 hours.

Fast forward to spins. I was scared of them. Very scared. I found one of the gray heads at the airport that had been flying longer than I was was old. He took me up for spins, and while I had not cured my fear, I felt better about them. Eventually, I taught my students spins IF they asked to see them. Was I a better pilot over 1000 hours. No. I was not. Was I a more experienced pilot over 1000 hours? Absolutely.

With that being said, I've seen a lot of people die ... low time and high time. Civilian trained and military trained. I'm not going to sit here and question their abilities. I do question their mistakes so I don't make the same ones.

For the record, I have been that scared 600 hour pilot. I don't remember what it was that scared me, but I was scared. I do recall that it wasn't clouds, but what the customer asked me to do made me uncomfortable at that experience level in my career AND he found it funny as evidenced by the smirk on his face. I tried to play it off that I wasn't scared, but he wasn't buying it ... especially when my voice cracked.

I once jump seated on a fedex airbus. We literally flew into the remnants of a huricane. The only two people that made it in that day were fedex and Aer Lingus. The winds were 15 degrees off the nose at 60 KNOTS gusting to whatever. I aint making this up. The captain's voice cracked when he decided to do the approach. From the jumpseat, the instruments were shaking so bad I couldn't see them well enough to read them. The F/0 backed him up. I had NEVER witnessed such professionalism and CRM among any flight crew and I told them so when I got down and asked if I could shake their hand. The fact is, the captain's voice cracked 'cause he was nervous. We all were nervous but he did a great job. We all have our breaking point. PERIOD.

I still feel instructing makes you a better person. If a person can get a job at a regional at 250, more power to him. It will make the work load of the captain a lot greater and causes you to depend on the automation more. It took me one year on my second airplane to feel comfortable enough to SMOOTHLY fly it to cruise and back down to the landing. I always turned the A/P on at cruise because of the F/A and the beverage cart moving always caused a change. It took a while to feel comfortable.

It is much easier, IMO, for a 250 hour pilot to be a regional pilot than to be an instructor. The transition to 121 pilot really is not that challenging as compared to learning how to teach a ham fisted civilian to fly. I'm sorry. Just my opinion.

Tom