It isn't a 1500 hour rule. It is an ATP rule.

1500 hours is just one of the requirements of 14 CFR 61.159.

 

What a sack of crap. The 1500 hour rule is only a small piece of the puzzle.

What kept people from flying is the idiotic pay that commuter airlines have paid FOREVER. A guy who wants to fly will find a way to get 1500 hours. Teaching, towing banners, flying jumpers, crappy freight jobs, etc etc etc. Just as civilian guys have done forever. 30 years ago, you weren't getting a job without at least 1500 hours, if not more. I well recall an ad for the original Colgan in which they asked for 3000 hours and 1500 multi for new F/Os. But back then you could get your tickets for under 30K. Major airline pay was not only extraordinary, they had killer work rules and pensions, so it was a calculated risk.

But in the 90's and beyond the cost of obtaining the tickets and a degree wasn't justifiable for most people when they looked at the potential salaries. Add to that over a decade of relative stagnation and furloughs and guys said: "eff it". There are a lot of 20-year guys stuck at regionals because of the vagaries of the industry.

Bethune and his airline buddies might not have created this mess, but they sure enjoyed suppressing their costs as they parked Boeings and gave our jobs away. They bludgeoned labor for years while lining their pockets.


Show us the money, B*&^%
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRq0O4lnsKE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP5bmRrm9hE

 

1500 hours doesn’t make a competent pilot if the training is weak, the learning curve is poor and the experience not relevant.

Many pilots entering the field now have informal training and no professional experience. 1500 hours of $100 hamburgers does not make an airline pilot.

 

Exactly. Now he is an errand boy for his old club. Just say no to scope relief.

 

Yep. 750 hours and "no failures" isn't exactly an accurate measurement of anything. There simply hasn't been enough time for the guy to have a "bad day in the sim."

Give him 10-20 years of 2 checkrides/year and a few type-ratings, then see the stats.

 

I might add: Is this the same Gordon who paid his newhires $29/hr with no benefits for six months -- at a legacy.

 

First I would like to say that I was a long time LCA with a regional before I came to United. I watched the decline from the left seat as I trained these folks. I have seen 5000hr pilots that were weak and 500hr pilots that did well. There is always a bell curve, and like all bell curves the majority fall in the middle

This is not the problem "now".. this has been a building problem for a long time.

Back in the 80's you needed north if 1500 hours to even get a call back from Bar Harbor or PBA to fly BE 99's or C-402"s.

In the 90's, even as the regionals got bigger, you still needed 1500-2000 to even get looked at.

I went to my first job fair in 1999 at the begining of the regional wave with 1300tt and 900 multi and was basically told I needed more time.

Shortly after that (early 2000) i got hired with basically ATP Mins. I was the 3rd lowest time guy in the class of 30.

In the coming years the hiring standards came down. 1500tt 500me became 1000tt 200me, then 500tt and an ME rating, and so on. Even the majors have lowered bar over the last 10 years.

My point is that the pilot supply has been slowly dwindling for decades. we can argue about why later. As it did, the hiring standards lowered.

To your comment above. Yes, they are hiring anyone with 1500 and a pulse. DUI, checkride fails, etc. What you are missing is the fact that were already doing that at 500hrs before the ATP rule. The only real qualification the regionals cared about was your willingness to do the job for 25k-30k a year. Nothing else mattered.

One of the interview folks at my former airline made the comment that they reached the bottom of the barrel then lifted it and started digging. That was about 6 years ago.

There are lots of great pilots out there, but they don't want the job any more. That is the real problem.

 

The 1500 hr rule isn't the issue for finding regional pilots. That is really a red herring as some have said here.

The only thing the 1500 hr rule did was lower the number of pilots available for the regional guys to choose from, which gives an upward vector to pilot labor. Demand went down.

We are at a point in the pendulum or sin curve of airport labor where the pay and benefits are going up. We had 15 years where the curve went down. Before 2001, the labor market for pilots was at a peak. Wages and benefits were at an all time high, relatively. This created demand for more pilot labor prior to 2001 because people looked at the road to the majors as "attainable" and a great job.

Fast forward to 2018... 9/11 happened... Pan/Am and TWA went under... Age 65... Oil Crisis... Scope farming of mainline flying to Regional flying... The regional job used to be one of many stepping stones to a major back in the day. With the expansion of regional airline flying post 9/11, regionals were doing more domestic flying than their mainline counterparts, or close to it. This is partly why Pan Am/TWA ceased to exist. They were unable to control their own domestic product and when international traffic took a dive, they were done.

Right now, one thing needs to happen to reduce the pilot shortage...Shrink the regionals. That's it. If the regionals become a small subset of mainline again instead of the behemoth they have become, they will once again become a stepping stone to more jobs at the majors instead of what equates to more than half the time it takes to accrue a full retirement in the military.

Only about 2-5% of regional guys "want" to stay at the regionals. The paradigm is to gain experience, then move on. Right now we're missing the ability to "move on".

So when little Lucy or little Johnny asks their uncle/aunt how long they were at the regionals before they got hired at SWA/AA/United, when they hear 10-15 years, most kids would rather go to Med School, Law School, start a business, etc.

At least if you put 10-15 years in the military, you can still get a pension from the reserves or guard, and feel patriotic for doing so.

Make the regional stop-over a 3-5 year gig (about the time to get an advanced degree) and you will have no more threat of a pilot shortage. A 2nd option would be to have the pay/benefits at the regionals so that you wouldn't have to "Stomach" working there or be sacrificing your family's future for a "chance" at a better job. Of course the 2nd options defeats the purpose of having "regionals", which is a nicer way to say B-scale/C-Scale labor.

 

Ok Larry thanks, I know that. I've had an ATP for many years. I also know how lift works and how to tie shoelaces.

My point was that the 1500 number for ATP minimums is just a number, if arbitrary. I believe I've made that point clear already twice now. I guess I don't know enough advanced ph.D level English to make it any clearer now.

 

There are a lot of 'arbitrary' numbers. Minimum age for a driver's license, minimum age to buy/consume alcohol, mandatory retirement age, etc.

For you to say that there's no research behind the 1500 hr number chosen, you need to back that up. I'd bet that if you dig through the archives, you'll find that there was a study/rationale for choosing 1500 hrs long ago. I've read old studies on why various 'arbitrary' ages were chosen and they're not nearly as arbitrary as you and Bethune think.