Originally Posted by
dera
Much better way to lower the 1500 hour requirements would be to allow restricted ATP to people with 135 experience. For example, 1000 hours, with 500 hours of 135 operation, or some other number like that. The lowered hours for 141 school grads makes no sense at all - it's obviously lobbied by the Riddle people.
I agree that there is definitely a difference in the way you build hours. And hour flying X isn't necessarily equal to an hour flying Y. I think that discussion I saw posted on here by ER concluded that pilots that just drill holes in the sky to build hours tend to underperform to pilots that attend regimented training programs or instruct as an example. This makes sense to me. I could tear it up in a cheap 150, but if I'm alone and flying just for the sake of flying, my skills will probably not improve as well as if I was teaching updated standards to a new student. Yadda, yadda, yadda.