Originally Posted by
TheWeatherman
So what do you think the minimums should be? Wet commercial to serve SIC? Leave it up to the Airlines themselves? So the next time they have trouble filling classes, instead of raising wages like they should they just keep lowering the hiring standards until they can?
As another poster already mentioned, the copilot got hired at around 700 hours. Perhaps if she had 1500 hours of experience stalling a 172 20 times a day with students before falling into the automation and routine of the Part 121 world, her first reaction wouldn't have been to retract the flaps when the shaker went off.
If anything, the 1500 rule prevents the Regionals from lowering their hiring standards to dangerous levels just so they can keep paying peanuts to their pilots. That's a very good thing.
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the legislation solely due to the fact that it forced the regionals to upgrade the QOL offered as a result market forces.
What I think is wrong is that the crash that triggered these reforms was mainly blamed on lack of experience. The general public seen it this way. Facts as in logbook hours refute this claim. Nobody will ever know, but I would contest the actions they took were caused by far more negative variables due to what the industry forced on them and lack of experience was not one. But, non-pilots or people with no 121 won’t see this side of things.
At that time I was just a CFI and didn’t really know much about the airline industry. But now as I’m part of it, maybe the more ethical reform (because lawmakers care about ethics.....) I would have been looking for is a law that protects passengers and employees from airlines being able to outsource any type of work. That would be more just.