US ULCC

[newlygrounded]

Federally mandating both pilots have a ATPL in the front would be a start.

This will absolutely not happen ever in this country. We had some of the worst duty regulations on the planet, and the new ones aren't much better and still don't apply to smaller operators!

There was not reason for them to be so lax, and it only changed due to multiple near disasters happening.

[PRM1]

“The folks whining for a 1500 hour rule in Canada dont understand one of the realities of how the regulator works. The regulator is tasked with ensuring safety of the travelling public, not with creating an environment that artificially increases pilot wages.”

We really haven’t had whole-scale adoption of 250hr First Officers here (yet)on large jets, so there wouldn’t be a lot of transport aircraft accident data available here. We have a pretty enviable safety record for such a large country, there have been many international accidents connected to inexperience in the flight deck. The regulator was very slow to enact the duty regs that were proposed about 15 years ago, they certainly aren’t a flawless organization. Having a copilot with 1-2 years commercial flying experience occupying the right seat on a A320/B737 shouldn’t seem like a big ask for the ‘travelling public’. They are certainly not a single pilot Aircraft.

I’m guessing you are against it as a lever for pilot wages in a shortage, not the idea of have experienced competent flight crew in the cockpit.

The whole notion of 250 hour pilots being unsafe is nonsense. Look at Europe, everybody goes direct to a 320 or similar airframe. On the contrary, we have AC759 in SFO which was seconds away from being the deadliest crash in aviation. The cause? Pilot fatigue. The captain was 19 hours without "significant rest" at this point.

Wages are low because people just keep taking the jobs. There are KingAir captains at 140K/year, yet people rush to Jazz for the AC carrot.

This is exactly it. Sure an ATPL means somebody has sat in a seat for at least 1500 hrs. But can anyone honestly make the argument that an instructor on a 172 flying circuits for 2 years will be better prepared for an airline operation than a 250 hour pilot who has been trained an-initio to operate a 320 or similar? Probably not.

There are many of us out here that got into the industry at low total time and still have to go rent a Cessna to finish part of the 250 PIC time that isn’t covered by the 100 PICUS hours. Now tell me how flying a Cessna for 10 hours after flying 705 for 5+ years will give me the necessary experience to be an airline captain?

It’s just ridiculous.

The pay issue has a lot more to do with the fact that we are willing to take just about any job for any pay. And if you aren’t willing to take a job because of the pay, you can bet there is some other guy/gal out there who will jump at the chance.

Pilots are fairly unique in that we are passionate about what we do, but it is prohibitively expensive to pursue our passion on a daily basis without flying equipment owned by somebody else. The airlines understand this and will exploit it as long as they can. Change in the industry isn’t going to happen until we all refuse to fly for relative peanuts. But we also know that won’t happen.

Guess we will have to wait for retirements and pilot supply issues… LOL

[Col. Panic]

Hate to break it to you, but 100 hours of flying a Cessna by yourself, having to make your own decisions, and not following a script is better experience than your 100 hours of PICUS! Please enlighten me on how those PICUS hours differed from all of your other hours as FO— what made them qualify as command time?

Someone once said that the hardest thing about flying is knowing when to say no. You learn way more about that fly a small airplane, under self dispatch, etc. than you do in an airline environment. But those skills sure come in handy when you are at an airline and things are going sideways.

[PRM1]

I’m not comparing 100hrs of PICUS to 100hrs of PIC cross country. I’m comparing it to flying around in a circuit or to the practice area with a student. But thanks for pointing out the obvious…

[Col. Panic]

DP

[Col. Panic]

Ok, you try bombing around the circuit with a student trying to kill you every 4 minutes, and then tell me it isn’t valuable experience. Fast forward to being a captain flying with an inexperienced FO, those skills help you decide how far to let them go before you take control.

It’s amazing how much you learn when you scare yourself in an airplane. It’s best to do that when there aren’t 200 passengers in the back.

[NotDirty!]

I think just as there are instructors who are good at teaching, and ones who are less good at it, there are some instructors who will get more value out of being an instructor than others.

[88gtst]

Ok, you try bombing around the circuit with a student trying to kill you every 4 minutes, and then tell me it isn’t valuable experience. Fast forward to being a captain flying with an inexperienced FO, those skills help you decide how far to let them go before you take control.

It’s amazing how much you learn when you scare yourself in an airplane. It’s best to do that when there aren’t 200 passengers in the back.

Also you know, 703/704 experience gives you that same knowledge. Flying around in a King Air with 500 hour pilots, then a DHC8 with 300 hour pilots, and zero instructor experience I was more than capable of knowing when to take control, and for the record that was virtually never.

[Col. Panic]

I didn’t say that instructing was the only way to get experience, I was justifying the value of instructing. My second paragraph about scaring yourself wasn’t limited to scaring yourself as an instructor. Scaring yourself in a King Air is great learning too. I just think you’re a better prepared airline pilot if you have a couple of thousand hours in small aircraft, preferably in situations that have tested your decision making, without a co-authority dispatcher supporting you.