US Pilot-Training Rule Faces Revisions Amid Congressional Debate

Both pilots of the Colgate crash in Buffalo had well in excess of 1500 hours which prompted Congress to pass the 1500 hours requirement as a knee jerk reaction. Hours had nothing to do with the accident, fatigue and the requirement in training that their aircraft maintain altitude when recovering from a stall. Politicians should do their homework. Senator Duckworth was a chopper pilot which is more complex than fixed wing aircraft and riskier to operate, she should not use her combat training to apply to airline's right seat access.

Jacob van Zanten had 11700 hours total time on March 27, 1977. 1545 hours in type on the 747, and was KLM's Chief Instructor pilot...for the B747. Experience and Professionalism are two different things.

Interesting dilemma? For decades flight schools haven turned out pilots by the hundreds who became instructors themselves, logged many hours of students trying to kill them and then the airlines pilfered the best from these schools. Flight school owners bitched because every few years the airlines came along and hired away their employee’s. That is no more the case, so now the airlines are forced to train their own pilots at great expense and the many, many flight schools have closed due to cost of training. Except the el cheapo flight academies that promise right seat employment at the super low time of 250 hours, then the accidents caught up with reality. Airlines want pilots…..train them yourselves and pay them while training. Those that may not be successful may just be better suited to the many other areas of aviation. Gate agents, baggage handlers, dispatch etc.

Requiring 1500 hours just to get in the cockpit of an airliner is wrong. To be a captain, yes, it's good to have more experience but even then 1500 hours is overkill. Sen. Duckworth should know that. How many hours experience did she have when she began flying her operational missions? Probably less than 300; that's 300, not 3,000. I was a Navy pilot who flew large airliner-sized airplanes. Our new pilots in the fleet arrived with about 300 hours including 50-60 hours experience in the large airplane. The new pilots gradually worked their way up to being an aircraft commander (captain) in about a year to a year and a half as they gained more experience and training as copilots. The low experience factor is even more pronounced for those pilots flying jets; they received about the same amount of flight time and instruction in their type airplanes. The big difference is that those pilots typically flew single-pilot airplanes; there wasn't a copilot system to speak of, and they flew some very demanding airplanes and missions with only a few hundred hours total instruction and experience. The Navy trusted us with some very expensive hardware and responsibilities. The main difference between civilian and military flying was the intensity of instruction. There were no awards for just participating; if students flew poorly during training, they were rejected. The few that made it through training but still weren't adequate for the task were dismissed later.

What Se. Duckworth is proposing though with good intentions would cost more and discourage prospective pilots from becoming commercial aviators and would just make the pilot shortage worse. Some kind of combination of the 1500hrs and an Airline Apprenticeship Program might work here as it does for this airline in the UK.

https://careers.easyjet.com/pilots/thinking-of-becoming-a-pilot/

Letting families of plane-crash victims hold sway over aviation legislation was always a mistake. Instead, go with the data. What is so special about 1500 hours? More experience is definitely better, but I suspect pairing a less experienced FO with an experienced and exemplary captain is vastly better than the same potential FO racking up random hours of who-knows-what quality. Also, to go the other way a little bit, don't discount the economic factor in the airline's calculations. Supply and demand considerations mean that increasing the pool of available pilots puts downward pressure on their salaries, saving money for airlines.

Here we go making new pilots endentured servants to the airline training schools. While it sounds good, it makes it impossible to afford to become an ATP without a contractual commitment in exchange for training hours. We should be hiring the best skilled pilots, not simply an arbitrary number of hours.

Does Duckworth have any insight into how a prospective pilot will accumulate 375 hours in the desired type? Does she believe any airline will permit either real or virtual time on their equipment?

Why don't they look at how Luftansa hires and trains new pilots?

The CTP is what I have a problem with. It’s a joke and a money grift. I earned an ATP single engine in 2010, went to add multi privileges in 2017 (with over 4,000 hours) and was forced to retake my written - in order to do so, cough up $4k for CTP and take a week off work unpaid. BS. All this 121 airline crap to captain a citation turbojet 135.

I appealed to the FAA only to get a “No” and your “training, experience, and ERAU Aviation Degree don’t meet the rule.” Even though I showed them I met the rule multiple times over.

Longstanding 1500-hour rule? That rule was implemented in 2013! Ten years ago. The damage it has caused was at first masked by raising the retirement age to 65. Post COVID19's early-retirement incentives, the real pipeline problems are coming to the surface. Tammy Duckworth is too stupid to for words to describe.

Here we go.....a sitting U.S. Senator with NO airline experience dictating new rules for prospective
airline pilots. What's wrong with this picture?

Senator Duckworth has the experience to know the value of actually flying in different conditions that you can't get from a simulator.

Well at least they're rethinking this 1500hr rule. It's quite excessive and is needlessly exacerbating the pilot issue. It takes experience to gain experience, so if they would allow pilots to get experience they would make better pilots. Also what ever happened to the sim evaluation? If they used that to hire new pilots they could easily filter out those pilots who aren't ready to take on the advanced training.

FAA/ICAO, Airlines, Military, etc. Great job with safety over aviation history. Always gotten better. AI Deep Learning will add to more efficient training in the future. Salary is dependent on economy, up and down. Do it for the love of flying. Good flights.

Always elected dipsh!#$ that know NOTHING about ANYTHING, passing laws & making rules on subjects they know NOTHING about! Amazing when you think about it. Welcome to the 21st century!

Seems to me correct

WHY is everyone so upset about this standard? An American that works 40 hours a week works 2,080 hours a year. As a professional safety manager, every job I apply for requires 5 - 10 years experience. 10 years is over 20,000 hours.

You guys are whining about putting someone with less than a years worth of man hours behind the yoke of aircraft carrying carrying our loved ones. Shit up and do the work. I don’t care if you rack up your 1500 hours in a year or two years. The longer it takes you, the LESS experienced you are.

1500 hours is the equivalent of about 38 weeks of experience. As a private pilot I say no thanks, my family’s life is in your hands.

Why are they doing it those people have no idea what is or is not needed they will stick there nose into an area they shouldn't be in.

3000 hrs if you haven't ticked all the boxes in every category. I'm happier with the 15000-hour guy/gal up front.

Many universities have programs that allow their students to get jobs with the regionals as FOs at 1000 hours total time. My nephew and his whole class (2018)…they went straight from the university to the regionals as a FO @ 1000 hrs total time. Happens all the time via major universities.