1500hr Rule - Do you think the industry will adjust? If so, how?

B.E. Lewis

B.E. Lewis

New Member
I currently only have 122.4 hours total time. I am close to completing my instrument rating, then, I plan to work on my Commercial, CFI's, Multi, etc…

It is depressing to think that I still need about 1400 hours-alot of time and money yet to invest.

CFI's: It seems as if the FBO flight schools are on the decline, because many prospective students are realizing the futility in chasing a dream that used to be obtainable. I speak to these students everyday. They are quitting in droves or deciding not to start at all because of the cost. Additionally, many of my local flight school's also have the problem of hiring 20 CFI's to 10 students. Thus, I worry about the state of the CFI job market when I am ready to enter it. Especially, since less are deciding to chase the dream of becoming a pilot.

Pilots: The 1500 hour rule and ATP - enough said.

I know this has been discussed rigorously, but…

How do you think the industry will adjust? Where will the pilots come from?

Humor me... I need a pick me up...
 
Sure it will adjust. Pilot pay will triple, ensuring a new cadre of young guns with a gleam in their eye, and a hole in their wallets.

Seriously, it will adjust, a minor bump here or there, and that will be that. My prediction only and worth entirely what you paid for it.
 
B.E. Lewis said:
I currently only have 122.4 hours total time. I am close to completing my instrument rating, then, I plan to work on my Commercial, CFI's, Multi, etc…

It is depressing to think that I still need about 1400 hours-alot of time and money yet to invest.

CFI's: It seems as if the FBO flight schools are on the decline, because many prospective students are realizing the futility in chasing a dream that used to be obtainable. I speak to these students everyday. They are quitting in droves or deciding not to start at all because of the cost. Additionally, many of my local flight school's also have the problem of hiring 20 CFI's to 10 students. Thus, I worry about the state of the CFI job market when I am ready to enter it. Especially, less decided to chase the dream of becoming a pilot.
Click to expand...

The best students to have are not the ones looking to become CFI's or to become an airline guy. The best students are the ones that buy planes / rent planes / need BFRs and instrument instruction, and have disposable income. You know they will come looking for a BFR/insurance checkout/aircraft checkout/IPC with some regularity. If they like flying with you, not only will they continue to do so, they'll refer their friends too. That part of the market is not going anywhere, but it does take some time to develop your customer base.

Also - there are a lot of skills you can teach as a CFI that aren't common for the pilot-mill-style flight school. Tailwheel, high performance singes, glider, seaplane, aerobatics -- most CFI's aren't qualified to do so. Which means if you are, you suddenly get a monopoly on that type of work.

And the 1400 hours - well - once you have a commercial ticket, lots of opportunities to get paid start opening up.
 
drunkenbeagle said:
The best students to have are not the ones looking to become CFI's or to become an airline guy. The best students are the ones that buy planes / rent planes / need BFRs and instrument instruction, and have disposable income. You know they will come looking for a BFR/insurance checkout/aircraft checkout/IPC with some regularity. If they like flying with you, not only will they continue to do so, they'll refer their friends too. That part of the market is not going anywhere, but it does take some time to develop your customer base.

Also - there are a lot of skills you can teach as a CFI that aren't common for the pilot-mill-style flight school. Tailwheel, high performance singes, glider, seaplane, aerobatics -- most CFI's aren't qualified to do so. Which means if you are, you suddenly get a monopoly on that type of work.

And the 1400 hours - well - once you have a commercial ticket, lots of opportunities to get paid start opening up.
Click to expand...
I will second what he said. Set yourself apart from the others. Learn a skill that other CFIs dont have experience doing. And dont worry about the 1400 hours. It will come. If there is a glider club close by stop in and see what they require hour wise to fly their tow plane. You can have just a private and do that and be compensated for it.
 
Ab-initio programs. But not in the traditional sense. Kinda what ExpressJet is doing at some places:
1. Go to this school
2. Go through our interview process
3. Keep your grades up - we'll be checking
4. Graduate
5. Get hired as a CFI at said school and get 1500 hours
6. Flow into the right seat with a guaranteed interview at mainline sometime in the future
(Oh, and if the industry/company takes a downturn, all bets are off)

The "shortage" is not gonna occur at the top. I just can't see mainline carriers experiencing a pilot shortage as long as the regional model still exists. They would have to dry up the supply of regional pilots first, which is a very large supply. That leaves the shortage at the bottom, the regionals. Programs like the above are going to look very nice in the brochures and will entice future students. Problem solved. FBO training is going to be mostly limited to those who don't have airline ambitions, whereas the big 141 schools are going to be the airline's supply mill. If the regional supply does run dry, the majors simply move away from that model and reduce frequency. Stop sending 7 CRJ-200s per day into Hicksville and instead send 3 717s. Less airplanes = less pilots. We're already seeing this in some markets. Tactics like this should keep any "shortage" at bay. If it gets any worse than that, the government will be forced to open up cabotage and allow foreign pilots and airlines to fly our domestic routes.

Once you get that commercial ticket (and especially a CFI ticket), you'll have the opportunity to build those hours pretty fast. CFI at a busy 141 school, maybe 2 years. Trust me, in the grand scope of things, 2 years ain't nothing.
 
Fayev touches on a few good points above. Ultimately though, the airlines will have to solve their staffing issues by making the job worthwhile. They'll be able to mitigate some crunches with larger airplanes and lower frequency in some places, but many airlines are already feeling the pinch.

Even if delayed, the 1500 rule has ensured that the cost of just buying your way into the job is too high for nearly all. End result, you won't have every drooling new commercial pilot cramming into every time building job possible- the economics of the job are being seen more realistically to the rest of the world.

As for cabotage, it likely wouldn't do much good anyhow. Foreign airlines send their pilots here to train. Many are luring Americans to expatriate. Russia even recently passed a law allowing non-Russian pilots to fly there.
 
IMO, nothing will change. There are still a bunch of kids out there who's parents are paying for everything, or co-signed for everything.

Edit to add: the 1500 hour rule is written wrong. This is why things will not change. You can still purchase your way in through an aviation university and indentured servitude. If you think the regionals aren't already scheming to make this happen. You. Are. Blind.
 
mshunter said:
IMO, nothing will change. There are still a bunch of kids out there who's parents are paying for everything, or co-signed for everything.

Edit to add: the 1500 hour rule is written wrong. This is why things will not change. You can still purchase your way in through an aviation university and indentured servitude. If you think the regionals aren't already scheming to make this happen. You. Are. Blind.
Click to expand...


Actually it will change, only for the WORSE. As your scenario plays out, the ONLY pilots at the regionals of the future will be the born with a silver spoon in their mouths, ERAU and UND punks.
 
A-300F4-622R said:
Actually it will change, only for the WORSE. As your scenario plays out, the ONLY pilots at the regionals of the future will be the born with a silver spoon in their mouths, ERAU and UND punks.
Click to expand...

There is plenty of other ways to do it other than those two schools. My point was that there will always be a supply of fresh pilots to fly the regionals.
 
At least Firebird2XC is being up front about the 1500 rule as a way to artificially manipulate the labor market. Good on ya for admitting that. And yo dawg, I heard you invented aviation safety in 2009?

I still say that a 1500 hour CFI is going to have just as steep a learning curve as a 500 hour CFI when it comes to learning a new airplane and operation. Hell, I flew with guys with anywhere between 300 and 1000 hours at Cape, and I didn't notice much difference until they had some time under their belt at that operation. In fact, by the time the 300TT guy had 1000TT (700 in the 402), he was stronger by far than the 1000TT CFI who'd been teaching stalls. It's type of experience that's important, not the sheer number of hours.

But hey, what the hell would I know?
 
dasleben said:
At least Firebird2XC is being up front about the 1500 rule as a way to artificially manipulate the labor market. Good on ya for admitting that. And yo dawg, I heard you invented aviation safety in 2009.

But hey, what the hell would I know?
Click to expand...

Yeah, not really. How could I admit anything about it? Wasn't my idea, right?

Didn't come from ALPA either. What then?

It will manipulate the market, sure- changing a baseline does that. But pilots not coming so cheap will mean they won't be so disposable. That'll mean less pushing, ergo, more safety. Try to keep up.
 
Firebird2XC said:
It will manipulate the market, sure- changing a baseline does that. But pilots not coming so cheap will mean they won't be so disposable. That'll mean less pushing, ergo, more safety. Try to keep up.
Click to expand...

They'll still show up cheaply. Ask the guys in the late 90s who PFT'd with 2500TT to make $14/hr in Brasilias. You guys aren't going to do a thing to stop the fact that the regionals are still entry-level jobs.
 
dasleben said:
You guys aren't going to do a thing to stop the fact that the regionals are still entry-level jobs.
Click to expand...

When regionals were 15-20% of an airline's branded flights and flying 1900s and ATRs, maybe.

Now that they are 50% and poised to go even higher, flying baby 737s, I'm not so sure.


Having more experiance in the cockpit is a net gain in safety, although there is no obvious causal link.
 
dasleben said:
They'll still show up cheaply. Ask the guys in the late 90s who PFT'd with 2500TT to make $14/hr in Brasilias. You guys aren't going to do a thing to stop the fact that the regionals are still entry-level jobs.
Click to expand...

You're forgetting an important thing- 9/11.. and maybe a few others. The massive bankruptcy rape that 9/11 brought down on the 121 world seriously bottlenecked lifetime earning potential. The whole reason people ran like rabid lemmings to the regionals in the 90s was promise of fast upgrade, high turnover, and movement up to the majors and the big bucks. Then in the late 90s RJs hit the scene, and the rung in the ladder became a plateau.

9/11 killed the real big bucks in the sky in any rapid fashion. Since then things like the 3407 crash made the economic reality of airline pilots very obvious. I was phone interviewed for Michael Moore's movie segment on how far pilots had fallen economically. Pilots were his canary in the coal mine...

Since financial entities like Sallie Mae got wicked burned by loaning money to aspiring RJ drivers, they don't do it anymore.

There might still be some willing to show up for the gig as-is, but not nearly as many.

If projected airline turnover is as expected at all levels, we'll see an overall loss in the size of the so-called regional airlines.
 
USMCmech said:
Having more experiance in the cockpit is a net gain in safety, although there is no obvious causal link.
Click to expand...

This is a point I was previously making; simply having more flight time does not mean that you have more experience.

I wish you guys the best of luck in waiting for this rule to change something. It's my opinion that it won't, but I suppose only time will tell.
 
I
dasleben said:
This is a point I was previously making; simply having more flight time does not mean that you have more experience.

I wish you guys the best of luck in waiting for this rule to change something. It's my opinion that it won't, but I suppose only time will tell.
Click to expand...

It ready has, man. $5k hire bonuses, referral bonuses, so on- it's changing the way the hiring process works.

Things aren't how they used to be. Nothing ever goes forever without changing. Will we have a fatal crash again someday? Probably. But over time it'll be a lot less likely to be because pilots come cheap.

EDIT: ... still entry level jobs? How?

At a bargain rate of $100/hr, 1250 more hours comes to $125,000 *additional* beyond the approx $60k for the first 250z

Who in their right mind writes a check for $185,000 (... Plus interest) for a rate of return like a regional FO salary? Even if you're betting on an 18 month upgrade... That's a HUGE gamble.

... if the economy burps, an airline folds, you lose your medical... Most lenders wouldn't do it.
Most parents able would think twice. Anybody rich enough not to care, well, that's the so-called 1% for a reason, right?

Anybody half way paying attention knows that having somebody else pay you to run the Hobbs makes more sense. Airline flying is absolutely off the table as an entry level job to professional flying with the 1500 rule.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top