Originally Posted by
iahflyr
As someone who got on with a regional airline with far fewer than 1500 hours, I support the lowering the minimums to become a 121 first officer to a more reasonable level.
{shortened}
As someone who mentors a lot of young pilots, I cannot look them in the eye and say "Sorry, I want you to spend an extra year or two making true poverty wages and gaining practically zero relevant experience (single engine, VFR, slow, not even flying the airplane) because I'm selfish and I want a slight benefit at your expense." That sounds a lot like the major airline pilots who sold out on scope because it didn't effect them! I refuse to be in that same category.
Apples and oranges. Mainline pilots selling pilots short by bargaining scope away was inexcusable, yes. But the only motive for that was selfish financial benefit. Coupled with their lack of foresight, it has severely damaged this profession.
That's different than requiring more experience before allowing people to fly large jets for the flying public... The motive for increasing experience requirements is safety, not greed. The
byproduct however is a (potential) decrease in supply of pilots, meaning more demand and pay for pilots for retention and recruiting purposes. But that was not the motive.. So to say it is generally selfish to want to keep the higher hour requirements just because a few pilots like the byproduct is a bit... incomplete, IMHO.
And if you profess that those extra ~1250 hours of experience flying/teaching/
learning are useless and does not provide the flying public with a safer pilot, I would expect you to be able to provide a study/proof showing how that is the case. You are simply working against the math. If a pilot flies 6x as many airplanes, 6x as many missions, 6x more exposure to weather, ATC etc., the flying public might assume he/she would be the more well-rounded and, well, experienced pilot.. But if you can show me/them that's not the case more-often-than-so, I'm all ears.
I can tell you personally I was not the same pilot at 250 hours that I grew into at 1000+. If you were wrong about my case, how many more could you be wrong about? Do you want to be wrong when your loved ones are in the back and the dummies up front don't know how to prevent a stall?