Originally Posted by
conquestdz
It was never about landing with one pilot. Little old ladies with zero flight time have done that. It is about having enough combined experience in the cockpit to make good decisions, back each other up when it gets challenging, and to recognize and challenge each other's mistakes.
You're only adding to my argument a split ticket is not safe. But it is indeed one of the duties of a qualified first officer to be able to take over the aircraft in the event of PIC incapacitation. It happens rarely, perhaps once every few of years, but there have even been fatal crashes stemming from SIC inability to perform single pilot IFR in an airliner when things were dicey up front.
All that is fine, but I actually was just pondering what the argument by Great Lakes made to the FAA for this particular scenario. You have a (121) non-qualified first officer working with a 121-qualified captain. This implies the ship reverts to Part 135 standards exactly when things are going south on the flight deck. It's a bad idea on its face, and why so much has been done in the past to prevent mix-and-match from happening.
Perhaps the way to see this split ticket idea is not as a genuine split ticket, but as a full reversion to Part 135 rules for both seats on some flights with a 121 captain thrown in. That would make sense, and it can't hurt to have a 121 captain even if the flight is conducted by 135 rules. I still doubt that Lakes has this alleged split ticket though, it doesn't sound safe by 121 standards.
To the comment that anyone can anyone can handle a Beech 1900 on a bad day, that's silly. Lakes has had a high washout rate, some say as much as 50% for years, with an equally high washout rate for upgrade training. That's not a great success rate even during good times. They also use primitive flight decks with heavy dependence on situational awareness by the pilots.