The one thing I can disagree with is that in order to appease the affected families, the lawmakers publicly announced this as a legislation that aims to increase the required time to obtain an ATP. The families were told this was caused solely due to lack of pilot experience.
What does this sound like to the general non-pilot public? That the airlines are putting passengers lives in the hands of “unqualified” people. Maybe it would have been more accurate to expose the realities of life as a regional pilot to the public?
Most passengers still have no clue that most of their domestic flying isn’t done on AA, DL or UA. What if they also found out at the time that the guy upfront was making just enough money to not qualify for food stamps? If this was public, would we see a decrease of RP’s? Possibly leading to a change in industry as well?