Originally Posted by
dera
That's counterproductive though - Most 135 flying is much more demanding than 121. What you really DO NOT want is pilots flying single pilot 135 IFR with less experience than what's required now.
Ding ding ding. You guys are advocating to put a 250 hour wonder in single-pilot IMC night icing thunderstorm windshear engine-failure crud when you could be putting them with a mentor in a reliable aircraft in a much more controlled environment. Which way is more likely to result in fatalities? I'm not ignoring the fact that the airliner has a lot more souls on board than the cargo Caravan. But our goal should be to avoid all accidents rather than culling out the weak in the 135 environment.
As to the experience reduction: there are strong 500 hour pilots and there are weak 5000 hour pilots. The hours don't correlate to skill. They only roughly correlate to how many different scenarios and how mature a pilot's decision-making skills may be. This is primarily derived from aptitude and from the quality of training received. All self-interest aside, if the outcome really is to lower the total time requirement for an ATP it also needs to include real changes to the training requirements. The ATP-CTP is a step forward, but may not be enough to cover the lack of real-world experience in a low-time pilot's background. There will need to be a requirement for increased hours in initial 121 training to make up the deficiency.