Originally Posted by
Das Auto
Out of respect for the people that lost their lives I'm not going to further comment on the pilots that made those critical decisions that day.
However, you can study the art of riding a bicycle for months, but you'll still fall off the first time you get on.
Of course training is important but there's no substitute for experience.
There's also a difference between quantity and quality of flight hours. Give me an ex freight dog with 1,000 hours avoiding mountains and thunderstorms at night with no autopilot over someone with 2,000 hours bashing the pattern in Southern California.
I didn't mean to imply any of that, I just said there's no evidence she was a "weak" pilot. Plenty of regional pilots have gone through non-freight dog lifestyles with just 1,000 hrs in the pattern and flew so safely. After about 500 hrs in your first 121 gig, it's usually enough to learn the ropes. That should be beyond the 'reading the the art of bicycle riding' by that point. Of course everyone is different. But one can't really call her 'weak' and I think the NTSB conclusion on her was fairly accurate.