I completely disagree. The federal taxpayers should absolutely not be subsidizing and guaranteeing pilot training loans. The responsibility should fall on the employers (airlines) to improve pilot compensation and working conditions.

The airlines want the taxpayers to pay for artificially increasing labor supply. The taxpayers should not bail out the airlines.

 

A copy/paste of someone else's input will not be very helpful. It will most likely be seen as just that and deleted without being given a thought.

Be original, tell why & what things should change. Keep it short, your email will be one of thousands or hundreds of thousands, if it even makes it to human eyes.

Good luck!

 

Exactly! Hopefully the regionals all go out of business.

 

"Some" regionals are acting no differently than before. Ignoring fatigue protocols, taking pilots who have washed out of prior training, low pay, pilots are commuting because of base reductions or closures, and reducing systems training to nothing more than power point presentations.

Not all regionals were like Colgan back then. But, all regionals received the same regulations. Like then, it only takes one "bad" regional to sink everyone.

 

Ignoring fatigue protocols, or punishing pilots for using them, yeah, that's a bad thing.

But taking on a pilot who has a bad day, or a series of bad days, fails one training program, and moves to another who is willing to train them? That's not a bad thing. That's called a second chance. And many people deserve that.

Systems training via PPT... that's how the military has been doing it for years. It's up to the individual to pay attention, study, and comprehend. Nothing wrong with the delivery method.

 

Medicine. Interns vs. Board certified docs.

Regionals are generally considered entry level and/or apprentice jobs, where guys go to gain experience.

 

I worked in an abinitio program where we trained 250 hour pilots to get a Dc-9 type rating. These pilots came out with a good understanding of how to fly in airline environment by teaching them dispatch rules, decision making and how to interpret and follow the rules in an FOM. It does not take 1500 hundred hours to be proficient in operating an aircraft in the airline environment. It does take money to train these pilots and a job that will justify taking on the debt to enroll in this type of training. Until the regionals pony up for pay, no one in their right mind will sign up for it. There were people who signed up for this training without a clue to how much they were going to get paid the first few years and most of them had their parents bankrolling them. There has to be sufficient reward for anyone taking on any type of risk. It comes down to our legislators being clueless about the Airline environment and trying to fix something that only market demand will correct on its own.

 

True, it does not take 1500 hours to turn the autopilot on at 1000 feet, be a system manager from there until 200' on an ILS approach, then disconnect the autopilot and land.

Have more flight time *does*, however, bring with it experience that molds aeronautical decisionmaking. How to deal with abnormal situations beyond what is experienced during Maneuvers or LOS training, how to anticipate a slam-dunk visual approach, how to anticipate & mitigate an unreported windshear on short final, how to pick your way through a line of weather.

I'm 100% for Captains mentoring (note I didn't say instruct) FOs who are new and/or have less experience...but count me as somebody that does NOT want to see the Euro aviation model imported to the USA.

 

This is not a good example. Medical interns have a set time where they will then no longer be interns. Some people move to the majors after barely completing IOE at a regional, while others with over 10 years of experience at a regional are still not getting a call.
An economic downturn or terrorist event may leave you at a regional for your entire career (as many already know). Regional pilots shouldn't be paid with an assumption that all of them will move on to a legacy because that is not a guarantee.

 

Let's everyone take a deep breath. I don't agree that loans alone will fix the problem, but access to reasonable financing for flight training IS a problem. If you don't go through an aviation university, you are looking at paying upwards of 7-9% interest in private loans. That is outrageous. While I think pay should be addressed as well, student loans for flight training is one of the biggest barriers of starting flight training.