BobDDuck
Island Bus Driver
There's three issues at play here.
First off is the 141/61 training pipeline. The "standards" of training in this country are varied and inconsistent. Some places (whether it's a ma and pa outfit or a Riddle type massive university flight training program) just teach to the bare minimums or have such restrictive policies that students don't ever get a good fundamental base of knowledge and experience. Couple that with some DPEs and "stage check" pilots who are like Santa Clause and lots of pilots that are weak never are able to strengthen their skills and then pass their checkrides when maybe they shouldn't. Because you can (mostly) throw money at a problem and make it go away (extra training, retraining, retesting etc), almost anybody who has the finances and time can get any and all their ratings. Related to this problem is the fact that many training setups (especially the bigger academies) tend to inbreed and hire their students as instructors who then pass along the same training deficiencies that they were subject to, to their students. And the cycle continues, producing pilots who are weak in some areas due to a lack of training and exposure or pilots who are just weak in general but despite that have managed to squeak through by throwing money at the problem.
The second issue is the fact that you can get hired at an airline with low time. Take away the 1500 hour number and just focus on the fact that right now the number is 250 (or 210 if you went through a 141 program). By not forcing pilots to do ANYTHING beyond what they did to get their commercial ticket before heading to the right seat of an RJ, there is a whole world of experience that these pilots never get exposed to. I don't care if a guy spends 800 hours doing circles in a pattern. He is going to know more AFTER those 800 hours than he did before. This buffer of flight time allows the pilots who had holes in their training due to deficiencies in the teachers to hopefully start to fill in some of those holes. The student who wasn't ever allowed up in a crosswind of more than 10 knots will, in 800 hours of pattern work probably experience a crosswind of more than 10 knots. The student who's instructor never took them into busy airspace will, in 800 hours of buzzing around, probably experience a busy airport. The student who never saw an actual cloud while getting their instrument rating in Arizona in the summer, will, in 800 hours of flying probably get the chance to fly through some clouds and actually use their rating.
The final issue is that airlines are far from selective when hiring new pilots. There is no good way to evaluate a candidates airmanship in a 1 hour interview so they go solely on a quick take of their personality, the ability to pass a knowledge test and recommendations. None of those things is a very good predictor of how a pilot will perform down the road. Flight time is also sometimes used as a screener (which is an ok thing based on the previous paragraph) but it is generally just used as a minimum threshold. As we saw during the "great pilot shortage of 2008" the minimum number very quickly became 250.
Coupled with this issue is the fact that airlines push people through training as quickly as they can and while most places have "good" training programs, a weak pilot can very easily slip through the cracks (as long as they cooperate and graduate) and become a ticking time bomb on the line.
The solution, as has been stated multiple times throughout this post is to solve these problems at each step of the process. Mandate better initial pilot training, from the PPL level onward. Ensure that DEs are doing their job and not just in sweetheart deals with various training academies. Raise the minimum number of hours needed for 121 jobs (which has been done although I'd have been ok with the 135 mins already in place as they've seemed to work for a while now). Force the airlines to be more selective in who they hire. I'm the last person that wants tougher interviews but there should be more scenario based testing and less rote memorization. Also, the training needs to be continuously improved so weak links are weeded out.
First off is the 141/61 training pipeline. The "standards" of training in this country are varied and inconsistent. Some places (whether it's a ma and pa outfit or a Riddle type massive university flight training program) just teach to the bare minimums or have such restrictive policies that students don't ever get a good fundamental base of knowledge and experience. Couple that with some DPEs and "stage check" pilots who are like Santa Clause and lots of pilots that are weak never are able to strengthen their skills and then pass their checkrides when maybe they shouldn't. Because you can (mostly) throw money at a problem and make it go away (extra training, retraining, retesting etc), almost anybody who has the finances and time can get any and all their ratings. Related to this problem is the fact that many training setups (especially the bigger academies) tend to inbreed and hire their students as instructors who then pass along the same training deficiencies that they were subject to, to their students. And the cycle continues, producing pilots who are weak in some areas due to a lack of training and exposure or pilots who are just weak in general but despite that have managed to squeak through by throwing money at the problem.
The second issue is the fact that you can get hired at an airline with low time. Take away the 1500 hour number and just focus on the fact that right now the number is 250 (or 210 if you went through a 141 program). By not forcing pilots to do ANYTHING beyond what they did to get their commercial ticket before heading to the right seat of an RJ, there is a whole world of experience that these pilots never get exposed to. I don't care if a guy spends 800 hours doing circles in a pattern. He is going to know more AFTER those 800 hours than he did before. This buffer of flight time allows the pilots who had holes in their training due to deficiencies in the teachers to hopefully start to fill in some of those holes. The student who wasn't ever allowed up in a crosswind of more than 10 knots will, in 800 hours of pattern work probably experience a crosswind of more than 10 knots. The student who's instructor never took them into busy airspace will, in 800 hours of buzzing around, probably experience a busy airport. The student who never saw an actual cloud while getting their instrument rating in Arizona in the summer, will, in 800 hours of flying probably get the chance to fly through some clouds and actually use their rating.
The final issue is that airlines are far from selective when hiring new pilots. There is no good way to evaluate a candidates airmanship in a 1 hour interview so they go solely on a quick take of their personality, the ability to pass a knowledge test and recommendations. None of those things is a very good predictor of how a pilot will perform down the road. Flight time is also sometimes used as a screener (which is an ok thing based on the previous paragraph) but it is generally just used as a minimum threshold. As we saw during the "great pilot shortage of 2008" the minimum number very quickly became 250.
Coupled with this issue is the fact that airlines push people through training as quickly as they can and while most places have "good" training programs, a weak pilot can very easily slip through the cracks (as long as they cooperate and graduate) and become a ticking time bomb on the line.
The solution, as has been stated multiple times throughout this post is to solve these problems at each step of the process. Mandate better initial pilot training, from the PPL level onward. Ensure that DEs are doing their job and not just in sweetheart deals with various training academies. Raise the minimum number of hours needed for 121 jobs (which has been done although I'd have been ok with the 135 mins already in place as they've seemed to work for a while now). Force the airlines to be more selective in who they hire. I'm the last person that wants tougher interviews but there should be more scenario based testing and less rote memorization. Also, the training needs to be continuously improved so weak links are weeded out.
