threeighteen

Nah. Let's keep it at 1500. There's already enough carveouts. Let them pay more.

kettlechips

Welcome back pay to play!

TiredSoul

Maybe one day we can have a complexity point system instead of just “flight time”.

Excargodog

It’s like the age of majority, age of consent, age to buy a firearm, age to drive a car.

Society is trying to use a readily measurable quantity to look for maturity and good common sense, something many people will never have however old they are. 1500 hours won’t be enough for some and will be far more than needed for others.

DocMcFly

Axe the 1,500 along with any other impediments to hiring otherwise they’ll have to raise wages to fill the flight decks... don’t let the the airlines drive the narrative- their bottom line is cheap labor.

Allegheny

When I was still in the 121 world, 2016, I attended a conference at Embry Riddle where Professor Kent Lovelace of North Dakota State University was leading the charge for the repeal of the 1500 hour rule. He now shills for the Regional Airline Association and the North Dakota State faculty webpage shows him as
Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor - Aviation Industry Relations Director. I am a late 1970's graduate of Western Michigan and I think these programs are great. HOWEVER, there is no way that a newly minted Com / Inst / Multi pilot is ready to fly in part 121 operations in a jet. They simply do not have the required level experience.

Graduates of these programs already have a waiver on flight time down to 1000 hours. That's the bare minimum IMHO. That 1000 hour minimum should also require an extended training program at the airline. The RAA and the majors are loath to extend the hour requirements for training. If you lower the hourly requirements there should be a corresponding increase in the training footprint and IOE requirement. This is not a minor thing. Frontline, a PBS documentary program, has just released a hour long program on the Boeing Max. Pilots received no training on the MCAS, maneuvering characteristics augmentation system, because Boeing didn't want to add a training session to deal with it. (Were they pleasing that customer who only operates that particular type of Boeing Airplane??)

I have no first hand knowledge of this but I have heard that in the US there have been MCAS failures with random trim activation. The US crews quickly recognized the situation as a trim runaway and dealt with that as a memory item, de-powering the system. I personally believe that experience played a part in these accidents. Again I have no first hand knowledge but it is my personal belief that experienced US crews are much more inclined to "turn off the magic" if the airplane is not doing what it is supposed to do. Foreign crews seem to be much more reliant on automation.

The rest of the world operates on a MPI, or Multi Pilot License concept. A pilot can end up flying for a major airline in the EU or in Asia with less than 100 hours in an actual aircraft. Simulators are fine, I have more time in sims than many pilots have in total time but they don't accurately simulate real weather, turbulence, real handling degradation due to icing and other factors that require some experience.

On a clear VFR day Air Asia landed short at SFO. It was determined that the ILS was out and the flight crew did not respond properly to the situation. Sim scenarios would have the crew fly the ILS profile. Auto thrust would be in speed mode after glide slope intercept. If they crew was a little high and fast, a distinct possibility on a long winged airplane which has burned off a lot of fuel for landing after crossing the pacific, it would be a bit of a floater. A managed descent with automation on, just as they are trained, and a visual approach using the ILS for guidance. However, no glide slope, no auto-thrust.

Did they do that specific proflie in the simulator?? We don't because you only make that mistake once. And the manual specifically prohibits Level Change mode below 1500'. Auto thrust generally needs a "vertical event" of some type to go from idle descent mode, back to speed mode. There are some many ways that pilots can screw up automation, we are human beings and capable of some real creative ways to mess-up. There needs to be some experience and even mores so some confidence in the ability to turn off the magic when we don't understand what is going on and look out the window and fly the airplane.

During my probation year at US Airways in the DC-9 I had an old captain told me "dammit kid you don't need no ILS, there is the runway,in front of us, we are #1, I just accepted the visual now land the damn airplane! [ DC-9 automation was a compass and a clock. It did have an auto pilot but only altitude hold and we operated in heading mode because we didn't have RNAV and allowing a dinosaur AP50 autopilot circa, 1966, would make everyone in the back puke due to chasing wavy VOR radials.

Even an Airbus works just fine without any magic.

Approach1260

The biggest reason I don't ever see the 1,500 hour rule going away is because I can't think of a single politician who would go on the record to fight for something that would appear to normal people as making air travel less safe.

It was a stupid rule and an arbitrary number, but I don't see it going anywhere.

tallpilot

Absolutely correct!

rswitz

Fair point. The FO needs to be ready to act as PIC. The 250 hour RJ crash course guy probably wouldn't cut it.

ZeroTT

True but it's a false distinction. If going to Riddle mans you can do it at 1000 hours, then you can come up with a non-141 r-atp pathway.