Quote:
Originally Posted by jakeinthesky
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.