Quote:
Originally Posted by Elevation
Today we are making about 2 new ATPs for every retiring airline pilot. Emerald Coast still has plenty of people paying to get a leg up in competitive interviews. Job fairs are still being attended by pilots trying to get some edge to gain consideration for their jobs. Companies are still getting people to pay money just to sit in the right seat of single pilot airplanes on freight flights.
There are qualified pilots out there. A particular job just has to be appealing enough to recruit and retain those pilots.
The 1500hr rule along with Pt.117 came about to increase safety of the flying public. We are measurably safer as a result. At my company, where corners were cut and processes evaded, we crashed a 767.
Standards get cut at our own peril. Say what people may about quality of training, ultimately what's being proposed is a reduction in standards.
I'm pro-union and all, and I get that ALPA's goal is to get rid of the regional model altogether (which was 100% built on taking advantage of pilots), but some of this is misleading. There is definitely a pilot shortage. If "we are making 2 new ATPs for every retiring pilot," then that's an unsustainable blip on the radar. The regionals are enjoying a short-term backlog of 1,500-hour recruits from COVID, but that reservoir will dry up quickly. I don't know if it'll be next week, next month, or next year, but it'll happen, most likely before any of us can change our career strategies. Even before COVID, the regionals would hire anyone who met the legal bare minimum because pilot supply/demand had driven them to the lowest legal standards. There're a lot of bottlenecks that the new generation of pilots face on the road to 1,500 hours that we didn't have to worry about. Most notably, the 'civilian pipeline' to 1500 hours needs to quadruple to meet retirements, but I don't see the low-time commercial jobs quadrupling, so now a bunch of pilots with a ton of training debt will be stuck fighting for table scrap jobs to get from 250-1500 hours, most likely being unemployed for years, with a highly perishable skill. It's great we already climbed the golden ladder, but it's also screwed up to pull it up behind ourselves, and I see a lot of the "there's no pilot shortage" talk as misinformation contributing to that.
Being realistic, the 1,500-hour rule was just one of many enacted as a result of Colgan. Pt 117, cockpit culture (CRM, TEM, etc), and additional FAA-mandated training (EET, ATP-CTP, etc) created a safer environment, but if I'm being honest, I think a high-quality training dept at your first 121 operator goes much further toward safety than the 1,500-hour requirement. I've seen some pretty wild stuff from 1,500-hour pilots, who were probably good at flying a Cessna barefoot in uncontrolled airspace, but that doesn't transfer much to a 121 job. As soon as medium-sized cities start losing or getting reduced service and ticket prices go up significantly, Congressmen will start digging, find this to be true (or easy to argue), and switch sides. I see the writing on the wall, and whereas there should be a limit that's higher than 250, I think 1,500 hours across all airframes is arbitrary and overkill. I think we should be advocating for a realistic solution that also keeps safety in mind. Maybe jet experience counts as triple. twin experience counts as double, time flying in controlled airspace or IFR gets a time bonus, etc, to incentivize flying that builds experience instead of doing the same power-on stalls in the Class E practice area. Also, if the FAA mandated more specialized training requirements for airlines hiring first-time 121 operators, like what LIFT is talking about, that would probably contribute quite a lot to the safety of 121.