I couldn't agree more. When you're a commercial pilot, the world is big and your problems are small. When you're an ATP the world is small and your problems can be big and affect many lives. The First Officer needs to be a competent and well versed captain in his/her own right.

Ref: Asiana 214, AF 447, Colgan 3407

If pay/work rules were higher, the highly skilled applicants would be filing through the doors at the regionals in record numbers. The fact is, nobody want's to run up $100,000 in education costs to get a $30k/yr job that works them 21 days a month. Imagine that.

So the bill didn't pass the house so it's dead for now?

There's no magic to your experience argument as far as the Colgan crash went. The issue comes down to training and minimum required training.

A pilot can have one hour of flight 1500 times and still have crashed the airplane. The only thing higher time does is allow a greater filtering (or vetting) of the individual prior to being hired by the airline. Now you might call that experience or the school of hard knocks. What I call it is desire to get the job.

I have flown with new hires who came from the military with less than 1500 hours and they were more than satisfactory. Many even had never flown in severe weather days do to the mission of their airplane.

Another issue with the crash was fatigue and commuting, but you all seem to have forgotten that.

BTW I am in favor of keeping the current minimum requirements or requiring more training. But, anything that would increase the cost of pilot training will also fail.

In addition every pilot should be required to have a full aerobatic training course up to about the skill level of an IAC sportsmans sequence. And in particular should be required to complete a full aerobatic emergency maneuvers training course with a complete spin recovery series. Normal spins, inverted spins, cross over spins and flat spins, upright and inverted.

If we want to address the problem that is the answer. An extra 1250 hours of touch and goes does little to address the issue that caused the Colgan crash.

We should get rid of any current regional pilots that were hired with less than 1500 hrs prior to the new ATP rule then. That's a major safety concern.

I hired on with a regional after I had 1600 total time and an ATP. Accrued through flight instructing and single pilot 135 cargo. I resisted all of the short cuts at the time i.e. ‘pay for training’. Not so much the flight instructing, but the single pilot 135 cargo days stay with me today; Invaluable. And it wasn’t impossible or onerous to get the ATP. Not a big deal from an effort standpoint, and hopefully stays as law today. Short circuiting this process is unnecessary and doesn’t add to a safer product in right seat, nor help our profession.

I would be in favor of low/no time FOs if the branding of the regional affiliates was made crystal clear to the flying public, e.g. livery paint jobs are clearly that of the regional and all advertisements are that of the actual airline doing the flying. So the flying public knows they’re getting a vast disparity in crew experience

So what's actually different? I appreciate that the Buffalo newspaper is still championing 1500 hours, but the reporting isn't great; they said different hours can now be counted towards 1500, but any hour already counts towards 1500. Are there more exemptions for who can get hired at 1250 or 1000?

What rest requirements are those? I'm on day 8 of 9 with a four hour commute on each end and two red eyes stuffed in there flying an Airbus for B6. 117 has done little for fatigue safety. We're cycling from red eyes to day trips in the same four day sequence. Flying from JFK to Vegas at 6am eastern, then 11 hours later flying back to JFK. How do you manage sleep on that one?

I get asked about this from non-aviation folks all the time and it drives me nuts.

The Colgan accident was poor airmanship and was ridiculously preventable. Watch the NTSB animation.

The answer is that the captain failed pretty much every checkride he ever had. Why doesn't anybody focus on that part?

I'm all in favor of training standards and aerobatic training...but really--at some point we have to draw the line when it comes to the left and right seats.

I don't know...maybe if you failed your Private, Instrument, Commercial and ATP ratings you need to do something else.

You don't. You call in fatigued in Vegas before the red-eye return. Cancel enough flights and they will eventually stop scheduling that crap. The 4 hour commute isn't something I would complain about making you fatigued though...