There are some 1500 hour skippers out there....Don't that make you feel safe?

reason why were in this pickle is someone asks if there's anything that can be done to bring back this industry and your answers are raise hiring mins. immediately the finger gets pointed at fellow pilots... man, theres some serious solitary floatin around.

If 1250 hours of it was as an FO in a transport category aircraft, then well yes:p

Re-regulation is all thats needed. The rest would come naturally.

I think that the FAA would need to make training more difficult as well. The reason why we have so many pilots on the street is that Flight Schools will train anyone with enough money. The FAA has allowed much of the "high standard" training to diminish. I worked for a European flight school a few years back and most of the pilots who get hired on with British Airways as FO's on a 737 only had about 300 hrs. The reason why it is not a problem there is because the flight schools often weed out the potential "bad pilots" even before they begin their flight training. My best students came from that school because they had better potential of becoming a "good pilot".

I think it would be wise to raise the standards in Flight Schools. This would not only reduce the amount of pilots, which would make it more competitive for the airlines to fulfill their needs, but also it would increase the percentage of "good pilots", who hopefully would only want to work at the airlines that provide good competitive pay and QOL.

So what happens when there are too many good pilots and not enough good jobs? To label a one colgan captain and two 9e morons as 'bad pilots' and then roll the rest of the regional industry into it is assinine. Do you think that all of the USairways pilots are bad because they have lost more hulls than DAL. Were they all inexperienced, and trained to a subpar level? Maybe there pay wasnt as good, so they must have been the percentage of pilots that werent "good". They problem is that this whole industry is on big quagmire, and dont kid yourself into thinking that we are all on the same team here. The lines are clearly drawn in the sand and we as pilots are the ones to blame.

There has indeed been drastic change. However, according to some old farts that I know, it was never "glamorous".

Respectfully, I don't think the answer is to reattain glamor that may or may not have existed. I think the answer starts with unity within the profession (perhaps through a pilot's version of the AMA?). Only then can we effectively go for better pay, bennies and QOL.

Well that says to me that pilots should never go through that 800-1000 hour "danger" window in an airliner. Minimums should ensure that pilots are well past that window before flying the general public.
ATP mins for FO's would at least get them past that.

Yep, regulation is the key. The pricing power of this industry went to the bottom feeders. There is only so much pie in this industry now, and to give the top guys most of it, requires regional guys flying bigger aircraft for less and less pay. Until the legacy carriers regain their pricing power ability, the airlines will continue to slide.

You do realize that due to regulation, the ensuing reduction of available seats and fewer passengers flying due to increased prices would result in everybody posting on this thread to be out of work right?