Military pilots also get screened for aptitude, intelligence, education, health, fitness, and motivation before they attend training. It's also pretty competetive, ie there are more people who actually meet the mins than there are jobs available.

Civilian screening is just an FAA third class medical and a credit check. Civilian training is essentially all the same...if you pay a larger amount of money it doesn't get you much in the end but larger loan payments. Foriegn operators who put 200 hour pilots in 737's have a brutal screening and training process...the license written tests are graduate level, and I think there are FOURTEEN of them :eek: . needless to say it's pretty competetive also.

This is the new reality (for a long while at least)...we'd all better start getting used to it. Next month it will be a new airline reducing its mins, then another. We shouldn't be so surprised at this point if tomorrow someone drops their mins to 500/50. Things change; the market for hiring is changing, it's not 1999 anymore.

There was an american eagle atr crash in san juan in 2004. The FO flying had just completed IOE and it crashed on landing with him as the FP. I can't remember the exact date but it was sometime around July/august of 2004.

The argument there however is that the pilot was new the airplane. Who knows how many hours that pilot had when he was hired. Whether it was 500 or 1500 that pilot was still new to the ATR. I don't know the specifics of that incident, but there were probably still many other factors surrounding that circumstance. If in fact that was proved to be a direct result of flying hours (or lack thereof) then the low hours argument presents some valid points.

it is amazing to see how they are really scraping the bottom of the barrel these days. I wonder if, as the supply of pilot wannabees dwindles, the pay will begin to increase in order to attract people to this now so crappy industry of lowest bidder.

No need to argue with RickAir about military pilots, he's got a serious hard on for them.

However, they are the best. Military and civilian guys don't even compare.

I have heard that military pilots (fighterpilots), have some problems adapting to the 2 crew enviroment handling CRM... Any truth to it?

When I went through my 737 type rating, my partner was an A-10 guy. Initially had a few problems with CRM and with letting the PNF help him out, but after a couple of sims, he was able to adapt quite quickly although I had to interject occasionally to let me help him. I would say, he had a harder time adapting to actually flying the 737. He didn't understand why there were soo many flap settings and had a little problem adapting to the automation and lack of maneuverability.

I'll bet most of the guys complaining about lower minimums are guys who back in the day had to wait till they were 1200/200 before they could apply. I believe that any pilot should know there stuff before moving to a 121, but if some guy has 650/70 and is current and proficient, why shouldn't he be afforded the oppurtunity that he has been working towards? He has to meet the same standards as the 1500/500 guy sitting next to him.

How many crashes have happened because a crew was fatigued? OR do they just call that "pilot error" and therefore there has "never" been any?

Tell you what.. you put your family on the RJ with the 1500CA and the 500FO.. I'll wait for the next one.