Originally Posted by Cleared4appch

Here we go again. Since the implementation of the 1500 hour rule, pilots have been soooo much better off from a pure money standpoint. Do you know how much pilots at regionals, as well as in other stepping stone sectors of the industry were making, prior to the 1500 hour rule?? I kid you not, but some regionals were paying first year FO’s less than McDonald’s level wages. It was truly awful. I really do not know how people used to make this career work prior to the 1500 hour rule and the resulting wage increases in the years following. This career used to really, really suck for newbie’s entering into it before the rule came into existence. Almost immediately after it went into effect, regionals started increasing pay rates and offering bonuses. It wasn’t much at first, but it was a start in the right direction and it eventually lead to the kinds of pay rates and bonuses we’re seeing now. Although, in reality the current rates exist because the majors are hiring so many pilots from the regionals that the regionals are starting to shrink, with some potentially collapsing in the future.

There are some big differences between aviation in the U.S. and in other countries. In the U.S. airlines typically value experience more, but to a certain degree. You don’t have to have 9,000 hours to get hired at major anymore due to supply and demand now, but 15 years ago you pretty much needed 9,000 hours, 4 type ratings, 6 shuttle landings, and letters of recommendation to even get looked at. In many other countries, yea, sure you can get hired on at bare minimum hours. But they also have more accidents more in other countries and the training isn’t as high quality as it is here. Many foreign airlines will be mentoring that new first officer for a long time due to their lack of experience. So the captain is pretty much acting as an instructor for much longer in order to teach them everything. In the U.S. they expect you to come in with a good baseline of experience under your belt, and to pretty much know your shxx. Most pilots in the U.S. in the civilian pipeline come from instructor backgrounds. This helps to build up good CRM and learning how to work with others in the cockpit, and it also really helps said instructor to teach themselves the material that they will be getting once they enter an airline training program. Many other pilots might choose to move on from instructing jobs and get into passenger charters, freight, medevac, etc flying more advanced equipment with turbine engines and getting used to flying a faster airplane. At the same time, they also get a very good amount of experience learning how to talk to ATC and deal with deviations around weather/thunderstorms, handle icing conditions, etc. When they finally choose to move onto an airline job, they have typically already accrued a good wealth of knowledge and experience as a baseline. They can fly an ILS down to minimums, in the weather, competently and confidently, and some have dealt with abnormalities and emergencies. Probably the most important thing here is the decision making experience that they get. Flying an airliner involves a ton of decisions on each and every flight. Without this baseline of experience coming into an airline training footprint, the learning curve is incredibly steep with just a wet commercial ticket. Coming into an airline training program here in the U.S., really the only thing that’s important is for the student to focus on learning on how to fly the airplane they way they want you to fly it. The instructors will test you in the sims and will throw a few curveballs your way but it’s much easier dealing with those curveballs having prior experience as a pilot with many things mentioned above.

This subject comes up every few months on here and it usually comes from young ones that might have a sense of entitlement and don’t want to put in the work to accomplish something. Instead they look for the easy route. In my opinion there really is no easy route in aviation. It’s all difficult, but well worth it in the end. But there’s always people that want it easy. As a prior instructor, I’ve had many students who quit because the training was overwhelming. They also were the ones who insisted that the 1500 rule should be dropped. It’s probably a good thing that they quit. Nothing personal against them but they were better off staying where they were vs flying airplanes.

For some people in this industry they don’t have to go all the way to 1500 hours. They could get a restricted ATP at 1250 hours for a 2 year aviation degree, 1,000 hours with a 4 year aviation degree, or 750 if they were coming out of the military. So there’s that, but still many will complain about that.

The rule has done a lot of good and I would say, yes, it has improved safety. There were more fatal accidents prior to the rule. I would say with more experience of people coming into the training pipeline, that that can only be beneficial. I don’t know what European airlines pay their pilots but the rule has only helped pilot pay in the U.S.