What do you suggest an alternative? I agree that there just aren't check haulers anymore. But back in the day that was how we built time, and the experience we gained flying IFR, at night, in marginal equipment, in winter ice and summer thunderstorms undoubtedly made us better pilots. It taught us to know when it was time to tell the boss "No". We learned from good decisions and bad. We had some close calls and some scares and expanded the envelope in which we were comfortable operating. So when we finally had the 1500TT and 500ME that were typical minimums for the regionals in the mid 1990s, we started the job - still as newbies - but as pilots who had seen a thing or two. So the step from that Baron or Cessna 402 to a Jetstream or Beech 1900 wasn't that big of a leap.

Today the expectation is to go from piston single to high performance 100 passenger jetliner. Training in and of itself isn't built to do that. Training is supposed to be a bridge between expected performance and actual performance. Even the best training the world can't train experience. There has to be some period of time between 250 hours and (?) during which pilots take sole responsibility for the operation. Time for them to see some bad weather, some wet runways, some ice, some mechanical failures. Time for them to make some tough choices because there's nobody else to make those choices for them.

I agree that 1500 hours is a random number plucked out of thin air. So maybe that's not the right metric. But I firmly believe that there should be SOME metric, if not flight time.