Originally Posted by
Whacker77
So you're saying airlines may be forced to furlough pilots who don't meet the 1500 hour rule immediately? I'm not saying you're wrong at all, but I understood the rule to say something else. I thought there was going to be a three year grace period. If what you were told is right, I think that's a bit draconian to turf employed pilots until they meet ATP mins.
Well, he said that this is one of the main issues they are having problems with. A 3 year grace period does pretty much nothing. I pilot can literally build over 3000 hour of flight time in 3 years. So I think they are trying to get to a point where if a guy only needs a few hundred hours and he has flown with them already for a few hundred in the 121 environment, then they will give that guy a grace period to get up to the new standard. However, if a guy got hired with 300 hours TT and got up to 500 hours TT before he was furloughed, then that guy would have to go get the experience elsewhere and then come back with preferential hiring and obviously a re-evaluation of his/her skills. He is 1000 hours away from meeting the standard.
It sounds like they don't want the public to view this "grace period" as a period of time that an inexperienced pilot can learn and gain experience. They want the public to be assured that the pilots are well qualified for their jobs.
Think about this for a moment. If part 135 has always required at Min. 1200 TT for VFR and 1500 for IFR, then why has the FAA been allowing pilots with as little as 300 TT behind the controls of Turboprop or Jet. Granted there isn't any part 121 Single pilot ops, but even part 121 at some place like Colgan you could be a PIC of a commercial airliner with 1000TT.