There are about 600,000 active pilots in the United States, or something less than 0.2% of the population. Read into that that more than 99.8% of the American population know NOTHING about aviation.

This move to increase the number of hours for an airline co-pilot is a political statement, not a functional idea. Captain Renslow on Colgan 3407 had 3,400 with 261 hours in type and First Officer Shaw had 2,200 hrs with 772 hours in type. Rebecca Shaw was also a Certified Flight Instructor, Marvin Renslow was not. Increasing hours to 800 would have had no impact on Colgan 3407, and nothing shows it will prevent tomorrow's accident.

What the real impact of this will be is a shortage of pilots, and thus less capability to select the cream of the crop. Becoming a Commercial pilot now costs about $40,000. Increasing the requirements by 3 increases that cost to $120,000 for a job that was paying Rebecca Shaw $19/hr. Fewer and fewer people will be investing in that future.

The real shame here is that it is just too easy to blame a dead flight crew, and the FAA and the Airline both have a vested interest in self defense. Colgan Airlines did not adequately teach Captain Renslow the different sensation on imminent stall vs. Tail-plane stall in the Dash-8, leaving him to use his greater experience in the SAAB 340s he had been flying. The simulator used by Colgan did not properly simulate stalls, or demonstrate the Dash-8s stick=shaker and stick-pusher; the two things that made Captain Renslow believe (wrongly) that he had a tail-plane stall. Unfortunately, he did act appropriately to a tail-plane stall. The technology exists for higher fidelity simulators (Ive built them for the military since 1970), but instead, we get fewer pilots with simply more hours