Originally Posted by
flapshalfspeed
I was hired at Pinnacle with 260.4 hours--I was fine...as an FO.
But I'll argue til I'm blue in the face that no one has any business even trying to upgrade with only 1,000 hours 121 SIC and no other relevant turbine experience--you just have no idea how little you actually know and how fast you can get yourself in a bad situation at that point--you have no business touching a left seat at that level of experience...you're just going to get yourself violated/failed.
I feel very sorry for anyone upgrading at Mesa with 1-1.5 years on the line here and zero other experience flying a jet in the conditions we're expected to operate in safely--you can and will be putting your long-term career at risk if you aren't ready for what that seat entails.
You speak words of wisdom, and have valid points on the matter. I however can only think about WW2 when kids who barely learned to fly at the private pilot level were thrown into B17's to fly in combat. Obviously different circumstances, but not all doom and gloom as you fear.
Many of the Mesa captains we fly with today upgraded much quicker than 18 months, some almost immediately on the 1900's, was it doom and gloom back then? Before my time, I wouldn't know.