Bingo.

The 1500 hour rule is the best compromise possible.

The only part I disagree with is keeping the 23 year old limit. 21 would be perfectly ok.

Yes and yes...I feel sorta bad for guys waiting on turning age 23...

Actually big difference between 21 and 23 as far as maturity goes, however thats a generalization. Prob depends on the individual as I never grew up until last week

This is true however, At 21 it's woman for a night, At 23 It's well.........

I did know some damn good pilots who had more ratings than I did at 20 and could have flown circles around some airline guys. Age is just a number, just ask the blond in the Corvette with the old dude

I believe if you would take a poll from passengers they would want to see some experience on the flight deck. It's really not so much of stick and rudder skills which is important but just having a good amount of flight time. The current culture tells us that older pilots with a ton of flight time are not the top pick for jobs, this is a sad trend.

Wow, just reading this thread is depressing. 4-years instructing to get the 1500 min, people with 3000TT not getting interviews at a Regional. I am seriously reconsidering this career choice.

At a busy flight school you will certainly not need 4 years of instruction to get to 1500 hours.

After reading through various posts from first to last, and realizing that the majority of these posts are from pre 08/2013, there is another issue that nobody seems to be bringing up. If it is true that there is a looming "shortage" of qualified pilots, few domestic students enrolled in flight schools, and the mandatory retirement that is now taking effect, don't you think at some point the airlines (entry level positions) might increase entry level pay? After 4-5 yrs of college, $60 - 100k in flight training, and now a requirement to have 1500 hrs before anything remotely serious will look at you, it's no wonder they might have a hard time attracting anyone with any sense. I guess they figure that after we have gone through all of that we must be crazy, so therefore we'll be glad to work for $22k/year. They do that only because they can. I'm hoping this supposed "shortage" comes to fruition and they are forced to pay what one would think is reasonable for someone going through that amount of training, handling the amount of responsibility that is required for the job. Does anyone ever realize that your garbage man makes more than the new Regional pilot?

If you like flying then don't give up. Nothing is typical. I have had friends that have gotten hired to fly Lears at 800 hours and guys who have thousands of hours who never got hired anywhere. (Though with the state of the regionals currently the ladder is not likely. Also you never know they could have something in their backgrounds that they don't want to cop to that is why they are not getting interviews. It could be that a company just didn't think that you were the right fit for them. I know I have been turned down for jobs before and the people who got my job had less time and far less experience than I had. Timing is everything and when its your times it will all work out. I have just missed out a few times and every time it has happened it has saved my from being furloughed or working for a company that went bankrupt etc.

It's one of the last things they'd do, not impossible, but higher improbable. It's expensive.