Originally Posted by
Whacker77
An ATP is great to have if someone wants to fly for a 121 carrier, but I think the real concern should be how the 1500 hours were obtained. For instance, if someone has a good mix of CFI, personal flying, and some combo of 135 or 91 flying, that's wonderful.
Having said that, 1200 hours of CFI time may not be the greatest thing either. Most instructing is done with student pilots. Certainly, that improves a CFI's desire to keep himself or herself from dying, but skills can evaporate while sitting in the right seat. Do several hundred hours of pattern work make a person that much more ready for and ATP?
I think we can all agree that a 300 hour pilot is not the most desirable situation for an airline. A 750 hour pilot probably isn't either. A 1000 hours looks a lot better and 1500 looks great, but hard numbers like that don't take into account the quality and mix of flying.
From a business perspective, I wouldn't like the mandatory time requirement as, in certain circumstamces, it cause an artificial shortage of pilots. Still, more hours are always better.
My skills GOT MUCH better sitting in the right seat as a CFI because I was able to sit back and watch MINUTE DETAILS on why they were about to screw up, why there were screwing up, and why they had just screwed up. But I was dedicated to being the BEST CFI I could be.
I think on top of 1500 hours TT they should require 1000 hours PIC. This will keep guys from SIC timebuilding.
Remember this...at 300 hours I had maybe 1 critical decision where I had to think quick, outside the box, and if I failed it would be a crashed plane, or damaged plane, or an FAA violation...at 800 I had maybe 2 critical decisions, and by 1500 hours I had about 4-5 critical decisions.
The more you fly the more you will encounter mechanical irregularities, ice, thunderstorms, odd ATC clearances/mistakes, and other emergenices. So time is the quantitative unit of the likelyhood of how much one has been tested and proven successful. 1500 hours is a huge difference between 300 hours for EVERYONE on an INDIVIDUAL level.