Originally Posted by
USMCFLYR
You point to the Colgan crew (the captain specifically) and state that he had well over 1500 hrs. He did - but a point to be made is where did he get his hours? Wasn't he one of these early to an airline cockpit guys (and wasn't the FO too?) Maybe one of many things that might have made a difference would have been would have been some real world experiences PRIOR to becoming an airline pilot.
This.
Originally Posted by
rickair7777
I actually subscribe to this theory. People who were trained in a canned curriculum (some of which do not allow students or instructors to ever enter IMC) and then went directly to the right seat of an airliner never had the opportunity to kill or scare themselves in general (or military) aviation. They had essentially never had the opportunity to be fully responsible for a flight until they were released from IOE after upgrade...all or almost all of their previous flights were as SIC, dual received, or under the supervision of a CFI (even when doing student solos).
1500 hours means there's a high probability that airline new-hires will already have significant PIC experience.
And this.
Originally Posted by
80ktsClamp
Bingo.
As a side note, he did the exact program that at least one pilot in the cockpit of each regional accident from 2004-2008 did (Gulfstream).
Wait, is that accurate? If so, that's amazing. I'll have to go do some reading.
In any case, if you go through your flight training as quickly as possible, you'll arrive at about 250 hours with only a handful of solo cross-countries as actual time spent in command of the aircraft. If there's someone next to you to bail you out, you don't actually have to live with the decisions you make.
If you go straight to the right seat of a B1900, there's going to be a Captain to bail you out if you screw up too badly. Again, you still don't have to live with your own decisions.
If you quit and go work for Colgan and fly a Q400 from the right seat, you're in the same situation. And then you upgrade. You now have several thousand hours, none of it spent actually being in command of an airplane. You're the final authority, and you have no experience actually doing that.
If we force people to do CFI work, or banner towing, or aerial survey, or pipeline patrol, or whatever else for that time gap between 250 and 1500 hours... the experience they'll gain will be important. It's time spent having to fix your own problems and errors, or perhaps fixing both yours and your students errors.