well said!!

+1. My opinion as well. Stick and rudder skills are important but nothing replaces repetition, study and diversity of experiences.

Heyas F4H,

I believe it was inserted after the committee vote by John Mica (FLA 7th district), the rep who has ERAU in his district. Apparently he's the ranking member of the house transportation and infrastructure committee, or some such, and this is procedurally permitted.

It remains to be seen if it survives the Senate/conference process....

Nu

Don't you need a minimum of 1500 hours to get an ATP anyways? So if you go to ERAU and have 750 hours you meet the hour requirements to get hired but not the ATP requirement.

Sorry, double post

Leinlodge and FlyByNuts, I could not agree more.

I hate to say "I told you so" but I told you so. About two years ago two individuals I know, very competent individuals who with approximately 600 hrs TT each were hired by Regional operators. My worry at the time, due to the hiring frenzy and so called pilot shortage was that as soon as people of this ilk reach 1500 hours they are given command of a 450 knot jet flying into some of the busiest airspace (and groundspace) in the world. They are doing that in bad weather, having to worry about pax issues, mx issues, ATC issues, everything involved in a command position.
Even if you are O.K. with that, consider that now their newly vacated right seat will be filled with, you guessed it, another wet behind the ears 600 hour pilot. That, in my opinion, was and is a disaster looking for a place to happen, my fears tragically manifested themselves in Buffalo.
One of the individuals I mentioned earlier was furloughed after about a year with about 1300 hours TT so then had ~700 in the right seat of an RJ. He is a very, very competent pilot, studies hard and demands a full understanding of the aircraft he flies and the environment in which he operates. He has been fortunate enough to get a position flying as a captain on a King Air, notwithstanding in depth FlightSafety training he still has faced many and varied challenges in his new role due to inexperience. (J. if you read this you may want to comment).
The bottom line is there is NO substitute for time in the seat. It is like anything else, golf, skiing, shooting you just gotta do the miles, Embry Riddle or not you just gotta do the miles.
The airlines are going to have to pay, sorry that is the way it has to be. The young lady in BUF wanted to call in sick but flew so she didn't have to buy a $55 hotel room! She had to commute to work because her $16,000 q year job couldn't support the cost of living at her assigned base (EWR I think.) What other profession in the world would tolerate this kind of abuse?
Of course the additional cost of crew salaries will have to be passed on to the consumer. Were that an easy thing to do I thing all the ailing carriers would be jacking up their fares. Apparently seat sales are very price sensitive and even an extra Dollar would be enough to make people go by alternative means or not at all, so we are told where I work. Then of course the media would be all over the fare hikes.
The flying public want experienced crews, they want no delays, they don't want to pay for it. They want the fly LGA to ??? at peak times but get pi$$ed off when when they are stuck on the airplane waiting to take off for an hour due to traffic saturation or just weather.
Just to put thing into perspective, the first time I came to the USA was in 1980, thirty years ago,my round trip fare was $1600 (1980 $s) on AA London Gatwick to DFW round trip, I can do it today for less than a quarter of that in 2009 $s, technology hasn't changed costs that much.

Just my $0.02

Sorry I have kind of digressed

This bill is being tied to the situation at big purple losing the airline status and opening up the doors for unionizing the motor fleet. Unless big purple's status is changed, the senator intends to shoot this bill on arrival. I guess it is no fun, when the rabbit has the gun.

Hi!

JAA formed an "Age 70" committee about 2 years ago.

cliff
NBO

Are there any professional websites that have an easy to use medium to write your Senators about this bill?

I was on a site that was set up for the House bill, but it didn't have the Senate.

Any ideas?

I think that I am the person being spoken about here. Thank you for the compliments ;)

I feel very fortunate to have had the experiences that I have had on the (short) road to where I am now. I have had varied but limited experience in both the corporate and pt 121 arenas and feel that both have helped me immeasurably as a pilot. I do however, still have a lot to learn. As I said before, I am very fortunate to have been given many great opportunities.

Up until now I have relied on hard studies and attention to detail to get me where I have wanted to go. Unfortunately, I have found, in this industry that knowledge cannot be substituted for experience.

My recent command of a King Air has indeed come as a challenge. I have proved the above to myself. It is extremely easy to read a book about icing until you are told to take off into sh**ty weather with, in my case, 5 passengers depending on my knowledge, ability and EXPERIENCE alone. At that point I realized that I could know all the theory in the world but how many times have I put it into practice with people counting on ME? The answer was, not enough.
At that point I used all of my available resources and formulated a plan of action and the flight was conducted successfully without issue.

What did I learn from this? Well, building experience flying smaller aircraft commensurate with an experience level is necessary. Of course, to build experience, you have to actually do it somewhere. This somewhere should be a progression, not a jump straight into a RJ with a fresh commercial.

Conversely, I was at a regional and gained some absolutely invaluable experience there, with low time. That pt 121 time made me realize and see a huge number of things that I would have never considered or been able to see as a CFI or pt 135 freight dog. But again, should I really be seeing those things at the controls of a passenger jet? I think the obvious answer is no.

As I mentioned above, every flight I do now, still within my first 100hrs of turbine PIC is invaluable... Everyone should try it!

(I think much credit should be given to my initial instructor for any success I have had or may continue to have. Thank you Mr Jarse)