Bryan Bedford addresses House panel on pilot shortage

upup89 said:
Wonder why he kept assuming that people would just go up in 152's and burning holes in the sky all day long getting to 1500 hours. My assumption would be the increase in CFI applicants. Are there really all that many people would be willing to pay shell out that kind of cash?
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Ok this might be totally wild and completely wrong but.... I was having a convo with my young flight instructor. Basically he said who do you think came up with 1500 hours? He went on to say that ALPA was asked by the FAA what would be an appropriate number. ALPA came back with 1500 with the hidden, or not so hidden, agenda of raising mainline and possibly regional salaries higher and higher. Granted his father both work at Frontier. I had/have no knowledge in this area so I smiled and that was about it.

Anyone want to prove him wrong or right? Where did the 1500 actually come from? NTSB? FAA? Congress?
 
bc2209 said:
Ok this might be totally wild and completely wrong but.... I was having a convo with my young flight instructor. Basically he said who do you think came up with 1500 hours? He went on to say that ALPA was asked by the FAA what would be an appropriate number. ALPA came back with 1500 with the hidden, or not so hidden, agenda of raising mainline and possibly regional salaries higher and higher. Granted his father both work at Frontier. I had/have no knowledge in this area so I smiled and that was about it.

Anyone want to prove him wrong or right? Where did the 1500 actually come from? NTSB? FAA? Congress?
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Your instructor is wrong on how it was ALPA that came up with the numbers

Simply put, there was an Aviation Rule Making Committee (ARC) that had industry, regulators, and labor on it. They came up with 1500 hours as the rule.
 
Seggy said:
Your instructor is wrong on how it was ALPA that came up with the numbers

Simply put, there was an Aviation Rule Making Committee (ARC) that had industry, regulators, and labor on it. They came up with 1500 hours as the rule.
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I love how people make it seem like the 1500 hours is some insurmountable achievement.

I'll admit that it's a bit on the arbitrary side. I'll also point out that I'm not a particularly intelligent person, but I was hired with 660TT and 28multi and had zero training issues.

But as we can see, the 1500 hour rule and rest rules are working together to make this industry a better place. Even without the ATP requirement, people just aren't learning to fly anymore. The pay out isn't worth the investment anymore. These regulations just magnified the problem. Whether it leads to better compensated regional pilots or mainline carriers reclaiming most of their flying, we come out ahead.

I know it's putting extra strain on the few people working to join the industry, but as someone who basically had the rug pulled out from under him, I totally would have been ok with instructing another year to lead to improvements when I got here. Unfortunately that wasn't how the game worked back then.

It's also putting a lot of strain on regional management. I don't doubt that they only get a finite amount of money from their mainline overlords. But at my own carrier, we are finally starting to management realize that the front line employees are refusing to be an ATM when we see blatant waste all around us every single day.
 
So where does one find this info about life expectancy? I found some interesting papers on Google Scholar but they were mostly from the 90s.
 
I had 4500TT, >2000MEL when I was hired in 1997. I was the lowest time guy in the room of 20 interviewees (except for an Eagle intern) and I thought this was a practice interview for later when my hours were more competitive. Not all that long ago, 1500TT was a minimum to even get looked at.

This is a manufactured crisis, has nothing to do with the pilot shortage and some of the testimony regarding safety is reprehensible.
 
What John said. In 96' you needed 1500TT and 500 ME minimum and that was for a low rent operator that required a $10000 training "investment"
 
hook_dupin said:
Usually... From the finance side of a pension or life insurance company.
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There were hints that ALPA is actually collecting this data which is what I was looking for. I'm not really interested in life expectancy of any group other than 121 pilots.
 
Screaming_Emu said:
I love how people make it seem like the 1500 hours is some insurmountable achievement.
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I think it's out of touch for anybody who got hired at an airline with less than 1500 hours (myself included) to say that amassing 1500 hours isn't difficult.
 
I'm not sure if you are saying 1500 hours are difficult or if people are really saying that the passage of time is difficult. I found neither to be but the topic is highly subjective anyway.
 
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adk said:
I think it's out of touch for anybody who got hired at an airline with less than 1500 hours (myself included) to say that amassing 1500 hours isn't difficult.
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Getting the first job is, or was at least, difficult. I think it took me 3-4 months looking in 09 without a CFI. After you're over that one hurdle, building 1500 hours is not difficult.
 
JohnGardner said:
I had 4500TT, >2000MEL when I was hired in 1997. I was the lowest time guy in the room of 20 interviewees (except for an Eagle intern) and I thought this was a practice interview for later when my hours were more competitive. Not all that long ago, 1500TT was a minimum to even get looked at.
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I had 1600/150 MEL by my interview at Eagle and I was "average" in 2005. Blows my mind that the current requirements are an issue for anyone.

Side note, from one not-very-anonymous internet guy to another, I think you show up as a captain in my logbook from 2006 Miami ATR...possibly?
 
bronco21016 said:
There were hints that ALPA is actually collecting this data which is what I was looking for. I'm not really interested in life expectancy of any group other than 121 pilots.
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The financial planners at the airlines back when they had pensions were very much interested in your lifespan as well. Pilot death statistics following retirement affected long term profit projections. Calculating 401K contributions is so much easier from a corporate finance side.

Just a gut feeling: I suspect ALPA negotiated to get the data vice collect it themselves.
 
z987k said:
Getting the first job is, or was at least, difficult. I think it took me 3-4 months looking in 09 without a CFI. After you're over that one hurdle, building 1500 hours is not difficult.
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It really all depends on timing more than anything else. When I was looking for that first job in '06 I had two jobs fall into my lap without even trying that hard.

I know things are different nowadays, but there are jobs out there.
 
I had roughly 1500/300 when I flew my 1st 121 flight. It's not a big deal but I don't support the legislation. I don't think it solves the problem. It merely makes the problem less ugly. I believe pilots who have 1500 hours are actually still in the beginning of the mathematical probability timeline that they will have a wreck. Not that I buy that as a huge indicator of a candidate but your average Joe does and is missing their own point if they buy it from their Legislators.

We, as pilots aren't the ones who will have issues with the 1500 hour rules. We'll still get there. It's the companies that wanted to hire at commercial mins, when they were hiring like crazy, that will suffer when hiring goes nuts for periods of time.
 
zmiller4 said:
I had 1600/150 MEL by my interview at Eagle and I was "average" in 2005. Blows my mind that the current requirements are an issue for anyone.

Side note, from one not-very-anonymous internet guy to another, I think you show up as a captain in my logbook from 2006 Miami ATR...possibly?
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I was a Miami captain then but I can't put a face to the last name miller. I was in Miami till 2008.
 
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