TiredSoul

Knowing about seasonal monsoon rains in India has never helped anybody flying ‘domestic’ Europe and the whole 14 “ATPL” exams are a joke that are mostly just memorized with question banks no matter how hard they try.

The “US” system has always been based more on practical experience then theoretical knowledge.

My point is that as far as I know there has been no meaningful statistical improvement in safety figures since we went from “250” to “1500” knowing that the 250 was rare to begin with.

If the minimum is 250 but the average hire is 1500 then changing the minimum to 1500 doesn’t make a lick of difference.
It’s juts virtue signaling.

Arturito

Finding a suitable candidate who can study a psychotechnic test book in a couple weeks where you have to find the logical next symbol after a red triangle - blue circle - willy wonka factory - pisa tower - juvenile sea lion - ... ?

After you've been 'carefully selected' by these kind of tests, you enter the world of aces where you can write a 100k euros check for the airlines topgun school like L3, jerez aviation, Oxford aviation etc.

Who are they selecting except well-off 19yo boys ? (and a couple poor guys whose parents had to mortgage their house)

Is that the system you want in the US ?

Now dont tell me about LH/AF/LX in-house cadet training because they only train a couple dozen pilots a year. The vast majority come from the system I described above.

The third route is the guy who grinded his way up, banner-towing, king air, Q400 etc. That guy (or girl) will receive a ton of TBNT from a320/737 operators because they somehow prefer a frozen ATPL baby instead of a pilot with some real world experience.

FXLAX

I never read from those who advocate against the 1500 hour rule citing quality over quantity, also advocate for abolishing all hour requirements in all pilot training regulations. Fifteen hundred hours is just as arbitrary as 250.

Before the 1500 hour rule, you had pilots getting hired with a new commercial pilot certificate with about 250 hours. They went into the right seat of a regional jet and in a couple of years they would upgrade. The first time they were a captain after initial operating experience was the first real time they were PIC while being unsupervised and have the souls of 50+ people at under his command. The ATP rule prevents that from happening again. And I believe that is a good thing. Because even flying 1000 hours in the pattern or what not, will provide many opportunities to learn from mistakes and threats thrown at you BEFORE you are flying passengers for an airline.

3EngineTaxi

If getting an airline job at 250 hours was relatively rare in the past, what’s so bad about requiring an ATP certificate today? I don’t see anything wrong with tightening the requirements.

Also, maybe someone can answer this question for me: Is the 1,000 hour 121 time requirement a newer requirement that coincided with the ATP rule, or has 1000 hours 121 time to upgrade always been required? Was it possible in the past to be a 121 captain with an ATP and zero 121 experience?

full of luv

It’s the way a lot of polic happens in the USA.... reactionary. That colgan crash gave the leverage to make atp mins for both fo and pic. They also caused training failures to be easier to track.
Based on those pilots lax commuting rest practices were lucky the faa didn’t start counting commuting as duty periods.

Like when the Mesa (dba go airlines) fell asleep and was flying out to sea instead of landing at hilo. Cappy blames it on sleep apnea (despite commuting from like ore without a crash pad rest) and the faa tried to test all plump pilots for apnea.

dera

You can still be a 121 CA with zero 121 experience.
You can go from flying a Cessna 402 VFR from San Juan to STT for 1000 hours, to 121 CA in a jet.

Sunrig

Are you sure about that? How so? When I moved from Europe not even the Regionals would let me fly as a captain though I have almost 15 K foreign 121 time.

Xjrstreetcar

"3) If serving as pilot in command in part 121 operations, has 1,000 hours as second in command in operations under this part, pilot in command in operations under § 91.1053(a)(2)(i) of this chapter, pilot in command in operations under § 135.243(a)(1) of this chapter, or any combination thereof. For those pilots who are employed as pilot in command in part 121 operations on July 31, 2013, compliance with the requirements of this paragraph (a)(3) is not required."

Many 121 CBAs require 1000 121 though..

captjns

Foreign 121 time? Explain please. One needs to meet The requirements of CFR 121.436 to to act as PIC under CFR 121 operations. There are expats with well over 10,000 PIC, returning to the US, but with less than 1,000 as SIC having to apply for a waiver from the FAA. There was a NPRM a couple of years ago to amend this particular FUBAR from the existing Reg.

rickair7777

Some very small niche airlines operate under 121 or 135, so pilots from those airlines can meet the 1000 hour requirement to upgrade.