Originally Posted by
Flaps50
This 800 hour thing is just putting lipstick on a pig IMO. The regional airlines will just hire 800 hour pilots and add a couple sims to the beginning of the training process that fulfill the multicrew/Icing requirement on the books then enter the candidate into the normal training process a week later. No change and business as usual, just an 800 hour wonder instead of a 300 hour wonder.
It isn't a perfect solution, but it isn't as useless as you make it out to be. Almost tripling the number of hours of a pilot is very helpful even if it still leaves much to be desired.
A 300 hour wonder has little, if any, flying experience outside of an instructional environment. They will have to fly for about a year somewhere to gain that experience and this will improve them as pilots.
Originally Posted by
Flaps50
Remember back in the 90's you still needed 1500+- to even be looked at so we are still well below what it used to be.
If you believe this was done because airline management was concerned about safety over profit rather than because flight times were used as a means to cut down the number of applications, then you've misunderstood the history of the situation.