I would agree whole heartily that better experience than SE VFR would greatly improve the quality of avator that transitions to a jet cockpit, regardless of it being 121, 135, 91K or corporate. If every future professional could fly in the right seat of a turboprop freighter at 500 hours for the next 300-500 hours, the airlines hiring them (and by extension the captain's obliged to bring them up to speed) would have a better trained/experienced product to mold. The problem is, there are not enough SIC seats nor any systemic program to shepherd inexperienced professionals to the next level. Ameriflight has had a program to allow airmen to fly in the right seat, as best I can tell, the FAR's do not require an SIC for its type of operation and there is no incentive to even make this seat even available. In aircraft that aren't certified requiring an SIC, a pilot can't log time toward ME time and as such loses the ability to gain experience while logging time. You still need 25 ME for the ATP but are obliged to seek other avenues to get those hours.

If the requirements for the CPL required more X-country and required it to be after the INST rating while flying on a INST flight plan, at least the 250 hour student would have been obliged to get some real world experience with ATC beyond what is currently required for the instrument rating. There are definitely ways the system could improve the experience new aviators get before they reach the level of a 121 cockpit but as of today the FAA doesn't see fit to use the levers it has to improve the experience level required for the CPL. IMHO, it should.

The rule already allows 750 hours for military trained pilots. There are several entry points for the ATP and all vary by education, training and experience. the catch all 1500 hours is only for those with no formal aviation education combined with formal training. In other words, the existing rule already recognizes the differences.

Is a 1000 SIC in 135 better than 1000 CFI preventing newbies from killing you, and knowing aviation well enough to explain and teach it to others? Certainly a topic for a good debate. All they're saying is by 1500 hours, even in a C150 going in circles you've learned enough to move on. Have others learned more, and will they be better prepared, absolutely. It's just the minimum experience required without the formal education and training, not the maximum.

If the OpSpec requires an SIC, then yes the SIC can log that time.

Get some experience and then talk, 1500hrs isn’t even that much, especially if you just built it all as a big box CFI

Uhh, if you don’t suck, the same thing, upgrade to PIC

That is true for 135 ops, but since it's not required for certain flight ops (freight only) than there is no incentive (actually a dis incentive) to put a pilot onboard. Why would an operator train and pay someone to be in a seat that the law doesn't require? I also was alluding to time/experience building in lighter weight twins that don't operate under 135. Not certified to require two pilots and as such, any airmen in the right seat would either have to be teaching or providing a service to the PIC who was flying with a view limiting device. A low time pilot with a freshly minted ME could learn a lot if they were allowed to somehow show that time as experience. As it stands now, and new ME commercial pilot has to hopefully get one of the few seats any 135 operator would provide (without any time beyond flight training and check ride), more likely they are burning more $$$ to get a MEI and hope to teach some. Anyway it's done, 25 hours ME looks like the ticket onward and upward today, whether you pay or someone makes a log able seat available.

Insurance.

They could log the right seat time in a single pilot plane if the operator has a training mentor type approval, flew for a place that had one

Issue is, it’s MORE work for the pilot, as the guy in the right seat is more of a student than real crew

Also experience wise learning to be PIC is huge, being the first, last and only word in the cockpit is a very different type of experience, I don’t like the euro model, I think the old school US model where people who start off flying smaller planes, CFI banner drop zone etc, then their first turbine around 1k tt, then etc etc, that’s the way

Being a seat warmer and running radios and flipping gear from 250hrs - “the airlines” isn’t a good profile IMO

Of course, the qualitative differences are noted, but the economics aren't there at the volume of hires 121 demands currently. The time builders don't pay enough to incentivize the applicants to eat that training cost subsidy to the airline, like prior hiring environments (pre-lost decade) perhaps could. At least the regionals fixed the pay for bad schedules, alas they aren't hiring FOs. But bad schedules and bad pay (inflation adjusted 2023 cost of living environment)? Yeah that's a hard pass, and right back to lost decade lack of interest in the profession, which is how we ended up in present circumstances in the first place on the labor supply side. Single pilot work is hazardous work, and should pay more, not less, even if it's stipulated as higher turnover work filled with the lower experienced. It's a catch-22, the revenue to pay pilots competitive wages exists in big bus pax carriage, not ancillary freight or small fry unsked.

Ab initio is disliked by 121 merely because of course it shifts the cost to them. Nothing new there. And though I do agree with the generic notion that MPL in Europe is carnage waiting to happen, the reality is that they aren't really far behind our safety record per capita. Which is to say, as much as I'd like to thump my chest and decree everyone should be able to pass military UPT just to monitor self-flying buses in the sky (sorry not sorry), I don't think capital punishment in a caravan/PC12/metro should be the price to pay for inexperience just because the airline doesn't want to eat ab initio training cost.

No buck, No Buck Rogers. Moral appeals to some protestant work ethic are ineffectual and frankly insulting.

I agree for the most part

We have more pilots who meet 121 eligibility than they even need

Issue is the job path hasn’t been attractive for a long time, do your slave labor for a crappy regional to get “121 time” to get into a legacy, with the hopes of getting the years in to make good money

It’s better now, but for many for a long time it’s been a dangling carrot, add to that the better pay and QOL for those who didn’t try to chase the 121 dream, it wasn’t a matter of getting the experience it’s a matter of the cost of entry to chase the airline dream

The airlines made their bed, there’s no “pilot shortage” never has been one ether


Even now, their obsession with “121 time” is silly, as are their hiring games, they put more value on playing Sudoko, silly crap like putting N/A in boxes, and god forbid a recommend letter saying “delta airlines” vs “delta air lines” than the actual type of flying you’ve done, the amount of quality applicants they lose now over stupid HR NPC **** does not match up with what you’d expect out of a company who actually desperately needs pilots, but it does match companies who are used to being tax payer bailed out and I’m not just talking one of the airlines

Yeah, I have zero sympathy for their self made issues