The 1500 hour rule has greater effects than just hiring minimums at the regionals like how are these new pilots supposed to get the time? In years past students outnumbered instructors by a great deal. Those days are gone now. Student starts and hobby pilot numbers are approaching a quarter of what they were in the 1970's while the number of CFI's has tripped to nearly 100,000.

By my guess it takes 20 or more students to produce 1000 hours of instruction given time in the log book. Those 20 students are then supposed to get a CFI to train 20 more? The numbers just don't work out. In the past a low time pilot had other options like pipeline patrol, flying skydivers, right seat in a check hauling operation, but those things are fading away as well.

Just how are new pilots supposed to get 1500 total time plus 50 hours of multi-engine PIC? Buy the time? Lie? My guess is that most of the 20 students who complete the commercial CFI hit and job market and quickly quit or get a job in a warehouse to pay the bills. Story over before it even gets started.

Skyhigh

 

Doesn't really matter since GA is getting too expensive, and most commercial aircraft will soon be UAV, anyhow.

 

I do agree 100% that new start (U.S) students are a lot lower than they have been in the past several years. One thing to consider though is the massive amount of students coming from overseas to train in the US where its many thousands cheaper than their home country. I feel it may be a little harder for low time pilots for a few years but it will work its way out. Passenger travel will only grow not shrink. There will be lulls (like the last 10+ years) but you can bet it will start climbing again. Oil is sitting at $78 right now and the airlines are going to be hedging heavily at these prices. Most of them have seen the light and making changes to support business in a $100+ oil market.

 

pen meet logbook. Just pen it in and hope you make it through training. Airline's don't care and they are not going to go line for line and verify every flight and minute in your logbook. In fact they aren't going to verify a single minute. They don't care and they wouldn't spend a dime or waste a minute sending someone to find invoices or receipts or matching flight time in aircraft logbooks to your logbook. The only thing going through the mind of a regional airline interviewer is "can this person pass our checkride........... at least the second time around."

 

Was that serious or sarcastic?

 

Maybe not at the Regionals but my last job interview (last month) for a major corporate flight department did exactly that. I've got 9,200 hours, with about half of that PIC, and the Director of Aviation randomly pulled logbook 2 of 4 for some very specific questions. If you had not actually been to that field, you would have flubbed it.

Years ago, the FAA came out to investigate a case of a student pilot on a solo at a class D airport getting all flubbed up and causing SWA to have to go around. The feds compared the student logbook to the instructor and for some reason the times were greater in the instructor log for the same dual flights. The feds pulled all the student logbooks of that instructor. Same issue. About 800 hours padded. I worked at the school and watched it go down.

 

What is with everyone trying to fudge times these days. I don't see what is so bad about loving to fly for 1200 more hours after your ratings?? If you don't like it, get out. Or you will be weeded out.

 

My point is that there are fewer opportunities to build time for new guys. The CFI well is drying up and so are other things we use to do.

Skyhigh

 

Perfect. Stay out. Flip burgers, be a garbage man, no one cares. If aviation was your dream, well, too bad, life is unfair. Wake up and get another idea.

The fewer new guys the better.

 

I definitely think instruction isn't exactly paying the bills like it used to... Certain schools seem to be doing well but the other 90% are struggling. It has taken twice as long for the current instructors sitting north of 1,000 hours to get to that point than it did the generation before them. I suspect it will triple and quadruple for those of us just now getting our CFI's... Unless you are one of the lucky persons that scores a survey, traffic watch, or skydiver job. Those aren't even usually advertised and are all word of mouth.