There is an excellent article in the May 2015 issue of Flying Magazine r.e. having some experience before flying for the airlines. The author points out how inexperience at date of hire has led to some of the recent accidents.
Now...what's the cure?
How does one get 'experience'? It's the age old dilemma, You can't get a flying job without experience, but you can't get flying experience without a job.
With so few students entering the pipeline, there just aren't that many instructing jobs, and cancelled check flying has been replaced by online banking. Even the military won't be pumping out as many pilots, as the Drones start taking over the fighter/bomber missions.
He makes an excellent point that the new 1500 hour ATP rule only applies to the US Airlines, now take a look at the MPL for foreign carriers.
60 hours and in the right seat of an airliner??
Another good point he made is, even if you had a lot of experience when you were hired, in normal day to day airline ops, we are in the center of the envelope, not at the edges, and we rarely have to use our finely honed skills...so they atrophy.
I know when I had a Cub, my 'excuse' for paying for it was to keep my stick and rudder skills up to snuff. Then my company cut my pay 42% and I couldn't afford it any more, oh, and gas went to $5/gallon.
So...anyone want to go fractional on a Pitts S2B?
