Originally Posted by
rickair7777
???? makes no sense at all.
If we go to a frozen ATP, we would be right back where we started...250-hour airline pilots, which almost everyone (even the public and congress) can see is a bad thing.
The Europeans get away with it because they really have no other means of acquiring flight time and because their standards are much higher.
If we included european-style ground school and testing for the frozen ATP that would not be so bad at all. It would require real effort and dedication to complete the training...that would scare off many of our entry-level types today. And the airlines would have to pay well enough to attract the type of individual who can excel in school...ie people with other options.
Not sure why you would need to be rich though? But here's a fact of life: money makes almost anything easier. You can enjoy comforts above and beyond your current payscale and you don't have to stress so much over the economic consequences of failure.
We'll see then, won't we? I predict that this rule will not last longer than 10 years without at least some sort of modification for the reasons that I outlined in my earlier post.
You mentioned that the EASA/JAA pilots don't have the means of acquiring flight time....have you ever stopped to consider that the very same thing has started to occur in the good ole' US of A?
Also, standards for EU pilots entry into integrated programs are falling...and falling fast. I work for a very large European FTO, and I'm scared at some of the morons that make it through our program. There are a myriad of reasons for this, and I won't go into them here because, well, it's already past my bedtime, but you can rest assured that if I ever visit the EU, I'll only ride on the likes of BA, Lufthansa, Transavia, or Air France. The second rate outfits will not be considered.
About the rich being the only ones allowed to play....an integrated program (that's the zero-to-hero type) costs around 72,000 pounds sterling.....that's right around $100K with today's exchange rate....that's what I meant.
The 1500-hour requirement will do nothing to drive wages upward. Anyone who thinks that the regionals or other competing operators will just say to themselves "well, we need to start paying more" needs to be very careful the next time they set foot in a car dealership.