Originally Posted by Bucking Bar

ALPA does speak for me. I do not speak for ALPA, but in my opinion ALPA's right based on objective reasoning.

Captain Renslow had 3,379 hours and First Officer Shaw had 2,244 hours. Lets just get it out of the way up front that the proposed House Rule 5900 would have had no impact on preventing the crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407.

If we were to adopt a 1,500 hour rule, we already know there would be exceptions for a very few schools' students. Captain Reslow got his time at Gulfstream, a pay for training outfit we all know well.

If a 1,500 hour requirement is imposed, who then staffs the airplanes? Where does a pilot get 1,500 hours? The story ends up back at aviation schools that most do not teach deep stall and spin recoveries for liability reasons, or who do most of their training in a box bolted to the ground. Since they will have a monopoly on the exception to the rule, they will charge their students a fortune.

General Aviation? Check Flying? Night Cargo? Most of these sources of time building have gone the way of $5.50 AvGas, $350,000 training aircraft and a non existent insurance market for complex aircraft used in training.

The market's answer to a 1,500 hour rule is likely to come in the form of cabotage and foreign nationals who can make an end run around our system. Our logbooks are still mostly on the honor system and several friends from Europe who are flying at 121 carriers today have confided in me they just made up their flight time when they immigrated. (they were senior to me by the way ... they hired in while I was still logging time)

The primary factor that contributed to the accident is the assumption regional airlines make that "safety is a given." Colgan's management blamed the Captain and the First Officer for showing to work fatigued and completely blew off the notion that a girl can't exactly live in the New York area for $16,000 a year.

The other factor is that somebody should have pulled the plug on Renslow with a 50% checkride passage rate. However, the airline had no motivation to do so. They needed cheap pilots and they got what they paid for.

I understand your concern and we all feel reducing the pilot supply might help us restore our profession. However the 1,500 hour requirement will not have that effect. Making an impossible requirement for entry will only result in some opportunistic folks working their way around the rule.

The FAA already has the authority to shut Colgan down. The FAA POI wrote Colgan was a reactive organization ... simply punitive when something went wrong ... (not) proactive. The place to start is effective regulation by the Administrator.