I've heard A4A and individual airlines (at all levels) are lobbying hard for massively reduced minimums. Their argument heavily relies on popping chaff with the military as a completely out of context example.

They are lobbying right now for vastly reduced minimums this way. They claim that because the military safely trains competent aviators at the 300ish hour mark, they can do the same. Ovbiously they have no intention of spending millions of dollars per pilot like the military does, nor will they tolerate anywhere near the washout rate the military has. They have no intention of giving every hour of training in 5 million dollar glass turboprops, etc. They want the hour mark reduced, that's it.

They intend to try and fool the regulators with "advanced simulator time" and possibly semi-British style irrelevant academic busy work in lieu of actual experience.

The funny thing is that even a non motion sim like some of the flight academies already use is fairly expensive and really only good for shorter term transition courses. And nevermind that the entire industry ran fine and got whatever pilots it wanted during periods of record hiring with widespread "12 and 2" competitive minimums (which meant the vast majority had well over the 1500 mins of today).

The problem is insufficient numbers of prospective pilots getting into the pipeline. Part of it is cost and part of it is the lack of recruitment. Flight training has gotten way out of hand not even including the recently falling fuel surcharges. The flight school infrastructure has been neglected for too long. What remains to the average prospective student are insanely expensive college or academy programs or go it alone with indy FBO's while trying to pay off their 6 figure degree in nothing thanks to the bubble.

A lot needs to be done. We need a new and improved General Aviation Revitalization Act with strong tort protections for flight schools, manufacturers and parts providers and insurance companies. We need better recruitment efforts. We need significantly cheaper college degrees paired with significantly cheaper flight training. And we need to build a supply of CFI's again that actually stay and teach for *gasp!* a year or two instead of punching out at some fantasy out of context paramilitary minimum number of hours. Thinking this will be solved by lowering the mins is just stupid.