It's not a matter of being a better pilot, Melvin had an ATP. There should be some training behind it. There was a light school offering shared time in a 152 to build ATP hours. Would rather have that guy or someone who sat through 1000 hours of stall recoveries, slow flight, and teaching ground schools to build an actual knowledge base.

I still say the bill falls short. It needs to require companies to supply the type and atp at the time of hire or the on the next pc if you are grandfathered. It also needs to not allow 121 or 135 carriers to sell a pilot seat for the purposes of building experience. This is going to be a hugh mess for anyone trying to build competitive time. It's also going to drive the cost of getting an ATP through the roof. ATP the school charges $2800 for a 4 day course in a seminole. Watch that escalate 3 years from now once it is required that all of the FO's in the industry have to go get an ATP on thier own. the only hope we have is that we build it into our contracts.

I do agree with the bill. I also think it is crap that companies just don't type you from day one. They don't because the know what a crappy job they are giving you and they don't want you to jump ship at the first opportunity. Unfortunatley it is not going to restore anything. The only thing that will restore the career is to go back 20 years and get mainline pilots to not give up scope and to swallow their pride for a moment and fly a 50 passeenger jet at a reasonable pay scale. Mainliners like to think we did this too them. I didn't want to work at regional airline, certainly not for a career. I'd have been quite happy going from a beech 1900 to a 73.