Originally Posted by
CBreezy
Red herring argument. You should have a full compliment of skills and experience when you get to your first airline. The experience you gain at an airline is how to manage systems, flight crews and the operation. Watching the Captain manage the autopilot during mostly CAVOK days does not help gain experience recovering from stalls or other low energy states. You do not and should not have any doubt how to do steep turns, slow flight or stall recoveries. That EXPERIENCE to hardcode those basic airmanship skills is gained in the 1250 hours after the commercial and before you get hired at an airline.
There's no magic to your experience argument as far as the Colgan crash went. The issue comes down to training and minimum required training.
A pilot can have one hour of flight 1500 times and still have crashed the airplane. The only thing higher time does is allow a greater filtering (or vetting) of the individual prior to being hired by the airline. Now you might call that experience or the school of hard knocks. What I call it is desire to get the job.
I have flown with new hires who came from the military with less than 1500 hours and they were more than satisfactory. Many even had never flown in severe weather days do to the mission of their airplane.
Another issue with the crash was fatigue and commuting, but you all seem to have forgotten that.
BTW I am in favor of keeping the current minimum requirements or requiring more training. But, anything that would increase the cost of pilot training will also fail.