Very informative....worth the 1 hour and 30 minutes of your time.

Small and rural airports in Pennsylvania!...OMG, only connected to a massive road network and no more than an hour or two from a major hub...Oh yeah, there'd be massive suffering without EAS :confused:

"Byron" Bedford :p

Typical bait and switch. Our FOs make 30k, plus bennies, plus our cost to train them.... It's not US, it's THEM!

All of the RAA has the same problem- they all signed low margin contracts expecting nothing to change and now want the traveling public to sacrifice for their lack of foresight. It used to be their employees that sacrificed but they can't find any more :o

As far as teaching touch and goes in a SEL not contributing to experience, it absolutely teaches airmanship as well as what PIC really means.

Interesting to watch! If you are in a time crunch, at about 21:15 Capt Moak Testifies, followed immediately by Bryan Bedford.

At the end is question and answer session. At about 1:14:00 Congressman Graves gets his turn to ask questions. I honestly thought he came off as more of a d bag than Bedford. He comes off as if every 300 hour pilot can keep up with a 20,000 hour, no problem. He keys on good judgment as being paramount, hours be damned. My question is, how does one develop aeronautical decision making without real flight time??? He also says he would do away with FAR 117*, which even Bedford replies that FAR 117 and just good pilot rest in general is a good idea. I am going to send Mr Graves a message and politely explain a different point of view.

*Disclaimer, I think FAR117 could be tweaked, but to say repeal FAR 117 is just ludicrous. .

Well, Ford & Harrison coached BB pretty well. Build a rapport and a reputation for reasonableness by supporting "safety" and FAR 117, answer a question with a statement you want to make, create a strawman, provide half of the facts, and praise your adversary--Moak.

F&H finally found a way undermine 1500 hr rule while dissociating from the Colgan crash. Make it a "Colgan only problem". Yet the same FAA is responsible for overseeing Colgan and all regionals.

Funny Bedford hired all those Colgan guys to run his Q400 program....

Not trying to be judgemental, but there is no shame in not paying back those who invested in your career, as we sit here on the precipice of a real hiring wave?

Delta's hiring all they can train right now and that may continue for more than a decade. Why shoot yourself in the foot?

I don't think there is the political will for this committee to reverse itself and recommend changes in the form of a new or amended bill to the full congress. The FAA is of course still within their congressional mandate boundaries to alter the 1500 hour rule somewhat to ease the burden on regional airlines. But they didn't do that, they elected to put the hammer down on the regional airlines.

In the end, the committee also accepted testimony from the non partisan CBO who concluded that although the truth about a true pilot shortage remains mixed, there is no real evidence to support a pilot shortage finding. They did go on to say that there might be a shortage of pilots willing to work at a regional airline for other reasons.

I think the CBO testimony will carry a great deal of weight. If any changes are coming we'll see them from the FAA not Congress.

Had it not been for ALPA (or any union, for that matter) on the property, right now the Envoy pilots would be flying under an incredibly concessionary, long term contract. What happens then? Now every other regional would be forced to match that concessionary Envoy contract if they didn't want to shrink.

Please elaborate on this. How did Alpa keep Envoy from flying under an even worse contract?

News for today. Regional Airline Association
 

Is it just me, or did Bedford's argument boil down to this:

"We can't find enough pilots who meet our high standards*, so we want Congress to lower the standard."

*Claiming only 18% of those who applied last year did meet their "high standards".

Talk about a non sequitur.