In other news....
AllATPs lobbies Congress/FAA to change the ATP hourly requirement to 350 hours.

 

71 do I hear 71? 72 do I hear 72?............

 

72? Why are you going to stop me there? How am I going to pay for my 3 ex wives that I hate, my boat, and my vacation home? I fully plan on waiting till I croak in the left seat.

 

I was trying to do my best auctioneer speech, apologies for my bad form. LOL

73, 74, 75, 76...................80, 81, 82?

Good luck with the wives, boats and homes.

Have you heard of the reverse mortgage plan?

BTW, love your avatar.

 

That can be arranged.

At some point, you're simply too old to fight the F/O('s) that will (undoubtedly) try to smother you in your (frequent bouts of unplanned) sleep. And on an augmented crew, there is someone there that's ready and willing to help get the dead bastard out of the senior F/O's seat.

I'm type-rated, and I'm not affraid of the tiller...

 

Or it may give rise to more airport rats. Yeah that's it, actually start by cleaning aircraft, working at a FBO or finally putting that CFI to good use.

I respectfully disagree with how it 'used to be'. There were quite a bit of us with over 1500 hours, with turbo prop and jet time, when starting at a regional and then moved up to the majors.

 

Unlike many of us who either went into the military or did the ramp rat, fueling airplanes while not instructing, part 135 single pilot freight job these kids honestly believe that because some hustler sold them on the idea that spending over $50,000 for 8 weeks in a simulator qualifies you for a job flying a CRJ and makes you an airline pilot. Not all but some of the guys on the regional thread honestly believe that the company and society owes this to them because of their sacrifices.

I think that this is a prime example of what "Sully" has mentioned on several talk shows the last few days promoting his book that there unfortunately appears to be, for the most part, a direct relationship between the level of professionalism of the flight crews today and their level of experience in this field.

Depending on the results of the joint bill and how it is worded, I think that over the next few years things may become very fluid and dynamic within our industry. Not only for the regionals but also legacy/major carriers which use regional airlines to provide them feed.

The series of unfortunate accidents over the past few years by their respective regional partners has exposed the mainline companies to what some are quietly stipulating as too much financial culpability for the amount of services they are contracted to perform. With no disrespect to the victims of Colgan intended, Delta, Continental, and the rest of the members of Sky Team have taken a huge hit it in the shorts concerning their financial liability and responsibility (paying of both explicit and nonexplicit damages) over this accident.

 

Good post Selcall. I gave new hire rides and did IOE to some of those who came in with minimal time. For the most part I would say that these folks were enthusiastic and felt fortunate. However there were a select few who felt that they were better than their class mates, and even acted similarly to the instructors. They were promptly put in their place and for lack of a better word couldn't sit down for a while after they had their butts chewed on for a bit.

Overall they performed to standards on the sim rides and on IOE, but their scope of experience was very very limited and it showed in some scenarios.

I will say that those who got on at PCL, with low time, who started as interns were the best group of folks that I have ever had the pleasure to work with.

But I'l play devils advocate on this one. If you could get your hands on a CRJ with 300 hours wouldn't you go for it.

 

In my experience I'm going to agree with Jethro. Like Jethro says there is always a "few" out there who think they're better than everyone else but thanks be to Top Gun and Embry Riddle (for honestly only a small few) for instilling that into the PTS requirements.

As to ALL ATPs, they might see an uptick in business for people coming in for the worthless ATP crash course in a seminole, worthless. In my experience there were a lot of examiners, especially around the University I taught, that just held everyone to ATP standards even with 125 hours on their instrument stage checks. Oh well, screw the building blocks just get guys to the level necessary to pass their instrument about half way through the instrument syllabus.

But then again, ALL ATP relies on movement, they need to sell you on a $70,000 program that will get your ratings in 3-4 months, get you a job as an MEI with them (if you qualify, not all are hired) and then you're hired Part 121 in a year after that. They cannot afford to have stagnation. In fact after 2001 when pilots started hitting 1000 total time there they let them go to make room for the others who were waiting and answering phones in Jacksonville to instruct. But to their advantage these guys typically had like 1000 TT and 800+ ME. Not bad, you can go find another job and build to the new 1500 min.

 

No grandfathering, which is to be expected.... they did however, give an extended grace period for folks without the license to get it.