Certainly not lacking bias though, gotta give 'em that! :p

Did you notice how they stated that none of the last 5 accidents were attributed to experience.....while showing footage of charred wreckage.

"If i'm not mistaken, on a side note, when airlines were looking for pilots in the 60's and 70's, most of those guys were just found off the street and put in through training"

Yes, you're mistaken. I was there in the 70's and it wasn't like that. Maybe in the early 60's, but still, they went to the F/E seat and didn't train in sims. They trained in the real thing, to proficieny, thus proving they were somewhat competent to do the job.

bwhahahaa ROFL!!! :D



one more thing......abc can get this piece and sit on it.... just trying to scare the general public as usual.... i think that in the US we have very good experienced pilots that are safe and competent... all you have to do to understand this is to visit any flight school doing international training for countries like mexico and china.... 100's of 21-25 yr olds who get their commercial instrument and multi in the usa and go straight back to their county of orgin to fly 737's....now thats scary!!!

We have some of the best maintained and safest aircraft as well as some of the best most efficient training in the world, hence the 2007 safety record. The FAA is there for one reason only, to protect the airlines. They could care less about GA to be honest.

I like how they showed clips of SWA jets while talking about 'inexperience.' :D

Have you ever seen a news-personality that was not in desperate need of a reality-check? They're jokers feeding on Americans fears...and a classic case of the blind leading the blind!

I'm really really glad they went easy on us as far as flight time required to fly for the airlines, 1500 for majors vs 500 for regionals. In reality it looks much worse than that, probably more like 5000 vs 500. I liked how they also mentioned that experience has nothing to do with the past crashes, then what was the point of the story, to scare the public??

It's not even worth watching network news anymore. The point of this story, as with any other, was to "sell" the news and get the ratings. They've got it down to a science - fear and mass-hysteria sell great!

In fact, most major airlines require regional pilots to have just one-third of the experience they demand from national pilots.

Uh.....so the "national pilots" require 1000 hours?????

Military pilots have relatively few flight hours and they fly nukes around.

Granted, some regionals have better training than others, but in the end its about quality more than quantity of experience. And basically I think alot comes down to each person individually- maybe thats a product of culture at each airline to promote excellence.

In any case, there's a captain there to make the tough decisions, the FO only really needs to be able to fly the plane and thats what the training teaches. Eventually with enough exposure the low-time FOs will learn how to think like a captain.