Originally Posted by RJ4LIFE

I understand their definition of a "heavy RJ", it's the rationale behind it that I don't understand. To assume that an E-170 pilot is somehow better prepared to fly a 777 or an A330 than an E-145 pilot is like assuming that someone that flew a Baron is better prepared to fly an RJ than someone who flew a Seminole. When you're making that big of a jump in terms of size, whether it be 5,000lbs to 50,000lbs or 50,000lbs to 500,000lbs, you're really splitting hairs when talking about coming from essentially the same class of aircraft to something so much larger.

Ultimately what I have seen is that when a person comes to a regional airline with nothing but twin-engine piston time, it doesn't really matter what type of piston it was, only how much time they have in it and what type of flying they did. Even people coming from larger piston aircraft like C-402s don't seem to have any more of an edge than those who only flew Seminoles and Senecas - either way it's a huge jump to a much larger and faster RJ. I would imagine that RJ to wide body is much the same type of gap in that that twenty thousand pounds or so between a 145 and a 170 don't really mean much.