In all reality the push to reduce the 1500 hours has nothing to do with the idea of the quality of pilots coming into the industry. Look back at what the starting pay was for pilots who could sit right seat with a wet commercial certificate versus now. Again it’s not a pilot shortage, it’s a shortage of pay and QOL. There are copious amounts of 135/61 pilots out there who could make the jump to 121. They don’t want to because they don’t want to take a pay cut, or they don’t want to get slapped around by crew scheduling for 4-5 days and have to try and commute on oversold flights to a $300+ crash pad in ORD/NYC/DCA.

I guarantee if the 1500 rule was reduced there would be such an influx of bright eyed shiny jet syndrome kids that companies wouldn’t feel the pressure to improve contracts and make themselves more desirable.