Originally Posted by
yamahas3
European airlines have extremely thorough and difficult selection processes and training. They pick the cream of the crop and then train and test them to standards vastly beyond those here. In the US, anyone with a big enough bank account can, with the right timing, become an RJ FO. Its not the same.
Bring the European way to the US and 300TT might be more ok, but as it stands now, its completely unsafe.
I agree completely. (Nice rebuttal, BTW. I hate when this place goes all "flightinfo"
)
Except for the "completely unsafe" part. It's demonstrably untrue, as the incredibly high safety rates of US carriers (even regionals) proves beyond a reasonable doubt.
I'm not saying that ALL 300TT hour pilots in the US are qualified. I think there's are real argument to be said that many 1500TT pilots in the US are severely under qualified as well. Training quality and individual judgment/character skills will always trump a simple logbook number.
I'd also say that the instances of 300TT pilots in the US were always very, very small. Now they're soon to be gone forever with the new legislation working it's way through Congress.
Look, there's a definitive, objective answer to this: Commission a study of all incidents/accidents by US carriers over the past two decades and determine the amount of hours each pilot had when the incident/accident occurred. You could further refine this to show incident/accident rates based on type of training (military or civilian), previous aircraft exposure (jet, turboprop, single/multi, etc.) and so on and so forth. You could find the crew that is statistically most likely to be "dangerous".
Statistics wouldn't lie.
The fact that this HASN'T happened suggests that the NTSB (who is tasked to do just this sort of thing) doesn't see it as a relevant or useful line of inquiry.