I thought Mason32 worked for American Eagle.. maybe I got it wrong and he works for mainline American... if not someone needs to explain to me how Eagle isn't a regional?

DOT defines an airline with over a billion in revenues as a major airline which different from how the pilots define major and regional airlines.

People with smaller... umm... things usually need to make up for their inadequacies by making themselves bigger and more important than they really are.

No, you lie.

You do what you do because it allows you higher Jumpseat Priority.

Actually WHEN the congress bill passes, they will never be that low again.

First of all there hasn't been a wet commercial hire in probably 2 years at a regional, so that means that they could possibly have 2000 hours by today. And second, those guys were in the minority. It's become the norm now, the 200 hour wonders this and 200 wonder that. But the reality, was VERY hard to get some kind of advanced flying with a wet commercial. The people that did are a small percentage that went to advanced training, that were really trained only to fly the CRJ or ERJ. Yes I wouldn't get near them if they're flying a 172 solo but as far as airline procedures they were certainly more prepered for their job than a street guy flying laps in the pattern. Yes there were many of us that didn't get a CFI but it didn't mean that we were 200 hour wonders.

I've seen 500 hour guys with no CFI that were excellent in training because all they did was fly IFR XC and I've seen 1500 VFR CFIs that were afraid to hand fly an airplane with no FD, and a bunch of other examples. It all depends on the individual and also the training they've had. 1500 hour is just a number, it doesn't mean anything.


Colgan crash FO had a 2200 hours and was hired with 1700. The CA had 3500. So 5700 combined.

Comair crash they had thousands.

Show us an accident that was caused by a 200 hour wonder.

You get what you pay for.

So true, and sometimes people dont want to pay our asking price.

Passengers only care about flying down to Orlando for $49.00. They demand cheap airfares and then whine when there's no service.

Comedians made careers out of complaining about airline food, then were upset when the airlines stopped serving said meals.

But these same people want to fly for the cheapest possible price available. They have demanded Greyhound prices and seem surprised by the Greyhound services.

People want to enjoy the finest things in life - best car, desiner jeans, huge house, big screen TV. They then DEMAND "Sully" when something goes wrong up there on their $49.00 flight, flown by a guy making $17,000/year (and hasn't seen his wife in 10 days).

Remember after the Colgan crash - there was all that talk about airline pilot pay. Hell, even Congress was concerned. Ahh, that was a good week.

Sorry, I'm not at Eagle. Doesn't mean I never ever was either. Take it for what it is.

Didn't the CA have just barely over 100 in type? and didn't both of them admit to having very little experience in icing weather....

There is your accident caused by low experience, and poor training.

What's the point of this thread? I thought the real reasons minimums were so low a couple years ago are well known by everyone? Obviously not though!

Exactly and the 100 in type is an airline training problem, not a pilot problem. Both of them admit to having very little experience in icing doesn't really matter anyways since this was not an ice issue. Most of the time you start seeing real ice when you start flying advanced planes, not as a VFR CFI. And there are thousands of cases where pilots are forced to fly in unsafe situations. It's nothing new.

Low experience does not mean low time. Poor training? YES As did the AA pilots that went into the mountain in South America. Again, you haven't shown an accident that was caused by 200 wonders.

I did too but not one person has mentioned it yet.

Management doesn't have personal legal ramifications for their practices and insurance companies somehow seem to think that a 300 hr. pilot is acceptable with 80 passengers but a 1200 hr. pilot can't get a job flying a Falcon......hmmmm, I wonder who pays more on insurance premiums.

Training is another reason I'm antsy about riding on regionals. The training departments do basically enough to cover within the shadow of the law. This is especially true at the "lower end" regionals.

The majors have made many mistakes over the years which have resulted in fatalities but many improvements to training and equipment. However it looks like the regionals are trying to redo them and learn the same lessons over again. Never compromise savings, right?

the AA pilots that went in simply line selected the wrong NDB lat/long... for some reason the FMC prompted a far away ndb of the same name as L1.

Combine that with high workload/task saturation, an unfamiliar area, and very high hills...

Combined with poor SA, failure to crosscheck, poor execution of SOP's, not knowing the state/configuration of their aircraft, etc.

Said it before, say it again. A highly experienced/compensated crew is just as capable of bending metal/killing people as one that is not. It's proven time and time again.

Procedures have been put in place to mitigate that situation since then- in fact your FMS confirm/execute procedure as well as GPWS escape procedure on the CRJ is a direct result of what was developed after the Cali accident.

The regional and other low end company training departments are pushing the limit on the low end constantly just to maintain the illusion of following the regs.

Unfortunately, there will be plenty more accidents like colgan to come. The culture has not changed.

Are you sure airlines didn't already have this, but in the case of AA it was nonexistent? When you say "your procedure on the CRJ", I've never flown it. But yes, I know what you're referring to.

Depends on who you're talking about. Both "regionals" I've worked for had good training. My last one had AQP, combined with a lot other things not required thrown in, and that was in 2000 when I got hired. The props had it before that. But lumping all regionals into one category is pretty shortsighted.

Once, when I was jumpseating on a mainline carrier, the Captain (30 years with company) made a snide comment about the lack of experienced pilots being hired from my company by his airline. (Apparently, 7,000 hours was not enough experience.) As we approached 500 feet on landing, the FO put his hand on the spoiler lever, calmly looked at this Captain, and asked "Sir, would you like me to put these in?" Apparently experience doesn't cover all sins.:eek: