The main challenge with the 1500 hour rule is the Ponzi scheme it sets up. So you're a freshly minted CFI with ~300 hours and ~200 hours dual recieved. To get to 1500 hours you need to give 6 additional students 200 hours dual instruction. Those 6 students each need 6 students, who need 6 students, who need 6 students.....20 cadets in an airline pathway program need 120 cadets to teach as instructors, and those 120 need 720, those 720 need 4,320... ad infinitum...it gets pretty unmanageable really quickly. Before you know it, every man, woman and child in the US is a flight student.

Big flight schools have always solved this problem with non-CFI producing training programs for foreign airlines. Chinese, Korean, Indian, etc. But COVID and the geopolitical turmoil has all but killed that.


I don't think that they will do away with the 1500 hour rul. There will be a new FAA Part 14X standard that comes out for an MPL license. The Europeans have been doing it for decades. Japan does it. You train for ~250 hours in airline specific training, then you move on to type training, and then you have an MPL certificate that only coverts to an ATP after you get more than 1500 hours.

And that assumes that every person makes to through and ends up teaching, too.

True. The washout rate helps reduce the burden.

That’s the ATP business model…get everybody in there [on a loan] and let Gawd sort ‘‘em out.

This is factual, there were MCAS events in the US. Airplanes got flown, trim switches got turned off.


I don't know, there always seems to be at least a little PFM on the bus.

Overseas they do that because most other countries don't HAVE a GA infrastructure which pilots can grow up in. I think here in the US, the airlines will just fund time building... that doesn't require regulatory changes, or much capital investment and they can stop doing it as soon as they don't need it any more. Either ad-hoc time building or maybe an academy format.

Because by the time they realize they need to do something it will be too late for major regulatory changes or setting up a new training infrastructure. It's easy to just rent ASEL in the US.

I think this is where it will go. Once a GA pilot gets over a certain number of hours, they interview, get golden handcuffs, and then an airline will pay for time build. The airline then hires them. If not, some sort of arrangement for partial reimbursement by the pilot will have to be made.

Republic Airways was doing this pre-pandemic. You could get an advance on the new hire bonus to pay for time building to get you to class sooner.

The Majors created the regionals as a way of lowering cost. Cheaper pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, ground crew. Gordon Bethune said it best in a post-colgan interview:

"They're all flying airplanes, but they're not flying the kind of airplanes you are with the same kind of standards that you're flying. So, you let that (regional) operate as an independant business because other people are in that business, but you can't afford to have a lot of excess cost and still win a contract, so it makes the management be cost effective."

Part of that "cost effective" was Rebecca Shaws income at Colgan during her first year, $16,000.

If you allow management to hire 250hr pilots again, wage rates will drop.

The whole career is a Ponzi scheme. CFI, Regionals, LCC, Legacy, narrow body, wide body.

That experienced captain isn't a check airman and shouldn't be a babysitter. I've said it from the start, the right seat of a jet airliner with 50+ paying people onboard is NOT the place to learn how to fly an airplane. Captains aren't there to babysit, they're one part of a two man crew. If the guy next to me is a wet behind the ears zero experience kid holding onto the tail for 4 days, they're of no use to me or to those on board in case of a real emergency. It's one thing having an experienced pilot with no airline experience trying to figure stuff out for a few days. It's a whole other thing having a zero experience pilot try to figure everything out, from "How does an ILS work" to "Why are people yelling 'guard' at me when I talk on the radio?"

Not to mention that pay will be cut and the whipsaw/race to the bottom of the early 2000s will be back if the 1500hr rule went away. All of us civilian folk have had to work our way through the world of aviation and building flight time. This isn't some new thing and honestly if you're willing to work, getting to 1500hrs isn't that difficult, especially right now. There's countless charter, surveying and CFI jobs out there again that can provide priceless experience to a young pilot. Go fly some airplanes in real deal IFR and get some experience before jumping into an ERJ with auto-everything.