Here's the thing. Someone with 1000 hrs as a CFI still has zero experience with turbine aircraft or airline procedures. The difference being that the CFI might have more bad habits from GA flying.

How do you propose someone gain this experience?

 

Bad habits or not, it comes down to experience. One trait that most pilots share is that we are easy to train and we are able to easily adapt our past experiences to future situations. Look at it this way: who is the better driver? Junior whose license is hot off the press? Or someone who has been behind the wheel for 10 or 15 years? If you are not sure of the answer, call your insurance company. They don't just make up those numbers for 16-25 year old drivers. The difference is experience and maturity.

 

About what?! First experiences shaving? How annoyed he gets when his mom comes into his room when hes gone?

 

I know the military (navy) and I know the civilian flight training world...

Almost all military officers, including pilots, are FAR better screened than the lowest-common-denominator in the civilian world. This applies to judgement, motivation, and maturity as well as piloting skills. In addition to meeting the service's minimum standards, the majority of commissions go to scholarship students...that 4 year free ride inserts an additional competetive level that is higher than the "published mins". Don't get me wrong there are many awesome civilian guys/girls out there, but there also a few ringers who wouldn't have had a chance in the military...in any capacity.

The unique problem in the US is that airline pilots (especially regional pilots) mix it up with GA on a continual basis...ever fly a jet into burbank on Sunday afternoon? 1000-1500 hours of GA/CFI will help develop some survival instincts...TCAS doesn't work if the transponder is broken, off, or not installed

 

My FMS doesn't know about the mountains, but my EPGWS does. Actually, so do the Mexican controllers. The controllers just assume you know about them and are perfectly capable of avoiding them. Besides, you didn't have any mountains in your theoretical descent problem.
My point is, you act as if low-time pilots can't figure out crossing restrictions; I disagree. Rules of thumb for descent don't care what kind of plane you're flying, just how good your math skills are. Anybody who can divide six by three can also divide 33 by three. Not that there's any reason to do the math on that, given that the FMS is capable of figuring out descent rate to a degree so precise you won't even be able to fly it.

 

Oh, so YOU'RE that guy who has never screwed up a descent...

 

Boy, I wish our 1900s had a computer to tell us all that fancy stuff...


Well, you can make the KLN-90Bs do a little...

 

I’m not advocating the hireling of low time pilots, I just wanted to point out that there have only been a hand full of people hired with 250-500 TT, and as far as I know they have all been from Riddle/UND, which have RJ training programs and have training agreements with the airlines and higher standards than many other flight schools (not all of them). I have also heard that the airlines in question have access to training records, grades, and even question professors about the student’s past performance. And just because an extremely low time pilot gets into a class, it does not mean that they will not wash out (which I hear some of these guys will). The odds that there will be many 280 hour RJ pilots are low, and the few that do make it will be watched like hawks.

 

When I worked in Europe I was hired with about 260 hours TT. The difference is that the schools there train you to be an airline pilot from day #1. There is no wasting time on becoming a CFI or that sort of thing.

Also, the screening and selection process is vastly deeper and more thorough over there.

But go to Europe and fly on any major carrier - BA, AF, LH, LX, etc and you will fly with pilots who started their career flying Boeings and Airbusses with between 200 and 300 hours. It can be done and it can be done safely.

But the screening and training must be there to support that lack of experience.

To a certain degree, experience can be overridden with good training. The guy on the left seat over there does have plenty of experience. So it is just the guy on the right seat who is really low time.

Anyway, there is no magic number of hours needed to make someone safe. But less experienced pilots have to perhaps be screened a bit more thoroughly than someone with more experience.

But there are plenty of more experienced pilots who also have no business flying around in jets.

 

Your right, I believe it Vnav mode on the KLN 90