Originally Posted by
Excargodog
Will that provide the same margin of safety as having someone in the right seat that has 2500 hours of flying, 1500 of that in the regionals?
or perhaps more accurately, HOW do we assure that it does?
In addition to lower costs there are some tangible benefits (for the majors) to having folks do an internship at the regionals...
1) Allows for an "observation" period to see who screws up, how badly and how often. This is particularly relevant in our industry where there are few opportunities to objectively measure pilot quality/skill.
2) Allows for an observation period for "whole person" factors, inter-personal behavior, reliability, etc. IMO especially important for young folks.
1&2 are important because once you hire someone into a union system, it's really hard to get rid of them unless they screw up in the first year.
3) The actuaries will always prefer that the more experienced pilots fly the larger liability equipment. Can they insure 250 hour pilots on 777's? Sure, the rest of the world does it. But they'd rather not given a choice.
4) Mil pilot recruiting... if they have to start on low paid RJ's with crap schedules, a lot of them won't bother. You'd still get 32 y/o O-3's's willing to pay dues for the long-term payoff, but retirees will probably get jobs in other sectors (which they can do easily).
If they needed to, they could adapt to wet R-ATPs at the majors/legacies. I'm pretty sure we'll see that at the US LCC's (in fact I already met one from SY... CFI to 737). The legacies could provide a more in-depth training program... the way I'd do it would involve longer/more detailed training followed by a HIGHER than FAA standard checking for new-hires. They'd have to bake some additional selectivity into new-hire/probation screening to account for the loss of the regional filter. That could be tailored to prior experience... pilots with professional turbine experience wouldn't have as many hurdles as a piston R-ATP.