John Stossel on the pilot shortage.

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Like to have heard the rest of that one.
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Quote: Around the same time-frame I'm on a mesa jumpseat, the LCA was doing new-hire IOE. From the east to BFL or maybe FAT, so rapid descent into the valley after clearing the Sierras. We do the lav shuffle, and the CA tells me (while the trainee is out) that she has issues with descent planning. On this leg, he's not going to say anything and just let her manage it all on her own. We get PD for the descent... and arrive over the marker at FL230
How would 1500hrs in a 172 have helped her understand how to manage a slippery jet coming out of the flight levels though? The GAO reported to the Senate Committee on the Colgan crash that the main issue they discovered is a lack of transition training from single engine pistons to transport category aircraft and the more comments I'm seeing about people saying they're babysitting FOs even at 1500 the more I'm convinced that we never fixed that area of training and that's far more relevant than hours in a seat.
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A very strong case could be made that the 1500 hour rule makes us less safe.... Why? Because the regionals are so desperate to hire anyone, as long as you can fog a mirror, you can get in.
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The most annoying argument people make about the Colgan crash is how the captain had over 3000 hours before he crashed which, if my math is correct, is more than 1500.

Thats entirely besides the point. He got the bare minimum certification before flying 121. He didn’t have to build basic airmanship or a situational awareness foundation before he was flying airlines. You get that by trying to prevent students from killing you around the pattern for a thousand hours. It’s not how many hours he developed flying a Q400 on autopilot, it’s the hours that developed him before he had the chance to do that.

The rest of the video is totally facile too. “Evil government regulation!” How about you don’t need any licenses at all. Just play Microsoft flight simulator, then if you can get through the Delta sim program by golly it’s deltas right to put you on the line. If people stop buying tickets then that’s the free market at work!
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Quote: This is bogus. Stossel is out of his range here. Constantly showing people flying GA and saying really? 1500? What do you mean this kid flying a 152 can't be an FO on a 737? 1500 unsupervised hours meet the requirement "but." Of course "but." If he did any research he'd know that no one with just 1500 piston SEL is getting hired at any ULCC, LCC, or Major.
The unions cited low pay for a lack of pilots. Yeah, that's correct. No one wants to fly for foodstamps. Go figure going into significant debt and being paid peanuts wasn't appealing. Training has changed, applicants are more experienced, and the main thing, safety and reductions in accidents shows that.
Teamsters highlighted quality experience in their response to Republic’s waiver request. And commended program’s like SWA’s cadet program that has partnered with 135s like JetLinx and XOjet.

I was disappointed to see Stossel not cover every side of the issue. I’ve followed him for a long time and he usually does a great job of presenting all sides of an argument.
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Makes me wonder what else he’s told me about that he has no idea on but said it like an expert.
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A lot of the pilots in the crashes in recent history started their careers at the Gulfstream pay to play operation (lack of judgement there…)
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Quote: How would 1500hrs in a 172 have helped her understand how to manage a slippery jet coming out of the flight levels though? The GAO reported to the Senate Committee on the Colgan crash that the main issue they discovered is a lack of transition training from single engine pistons to transport category aircraft and the more comments I'm seeing about people saying they're babysitting FOs even at 1500 the more I'm convinced that we never fixed that area of training and that's far more relevant than hours in a seat.
Concur that transition training is a weak spot.

But the FUNDAMENTAL issue at hand is being a freakin' PILOT and exercising BASIC AIRMANSHIP. You do not learn that in the right seat of an airliner, especially a cushy, automated glass RJ like a 175.

Foreign airlines employ low-time pilots with minimal fundamental aviation experience, look at their track records. Consistent and repetitive failures in basic airmanship... even the ones with thousands of hours of airline experience (ie selecting fixes in the box and logging overwater checkpoints).

The 1500 rule is not a cure-all by any means, what it is, is a good start.

Also everybody forgets WHY we got the 1500 rule... prior to around the turn of the century, you needed 1500-2500 (plus 300-500 ME) to be COMPETITIVE for a regional airline job. Then the rise of the RJ's, and the industry (a lot of it anyway) dropped their historical standards like a hot potato. The Fed simply re-applied the common-sense historical standards which the airlines themselves had established.

A 190-hour wet commercial is qualified to fly traffic watch, or to work on his/her CFI ratings.

Could you do a carefully regulated military-style program (possibly even post-commercial) to instill some serious airmanship (aerobatics, hard IMC, etc) in wet commercials? Sure, but as always at a $ cost. Even with something like that, there's still benefit to flying around in the system as a PIC, especially if it's a JOB with all of the competing pressures and tradeoffs that come with that.
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Quote: A lot of the pilots in the crashes in recent history started their careers at the Gulfstream pay to play operation (lack of judgement there…)
Oddly enough, that's a correlation which has held up well over the years.
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Quote: Thats entirely besides the point. He got the bare minimum certification before flying 121. He didn’t have to build basic airmanship or a situational awareness foundation before he was flying airlines. You get that by trying to prevent students from killing you around the pattern for a thousand hours. It’s not how many hours he developed flying a Q400 on autopilot, it’s the hours that developed him before he had the chance to do that.
It's quality time, not the quantity of time, which is his point. Burning holes in the sky doesn't equate to learning a lot. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. The 1500 hour rule had nothing to do with safety, not sure why people keep buying into that political talking point.
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