When 1500 Hours Equals 10

Murdoughnut

Murdoughnut

Well sized member
"In a nutshell, the 1500-hour rule has resulted in a generation of ATPs who have only the vaguest idea how to fly any airplane, much less a 100,000-pound jet."

Old man shouts at cloud, or legitimate beef? Discuss.

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When 1500 Hours Equals 10

The 1500-hour rule is creating the previously non-existent problem it was meant to address.
www.avweb.com www.avweb.com
 
Hmm. Almost a Lav worthy discussion. Lol

I’m interested as to what prior experience they think would be acceptable as to flying a 100,000 lbs jet.
 
i seem to recall the same conversation when 1500 wasn't a rule..........Would increasing the TT requirement solve the problem? Doubt it..... If the hours aren't solving the problem of 'experience' then what purpose is it serving ? I can recall interviewing with Mesaba for a crew scheduling position when I had about 150 hrs TT. They flat out told me if I had 50 more hours and a multi-commercial they would bring me in for a pilot interview.... I was shocked. I know that plenty of people went from a Seminole to a jet with less time than me. Some of them have come through JC as well.... I would think the experience would only come after being hired, silly as it sounds.

solutions for 1500 TT creating the same 'issue'....hell, it's to early in the morning for that....
 
The way the rule is written now;

1500 hours

Reduced by college and 141 - 500
Reduced by flight engineer time - 500

I could have gone to the airlines at 500 total pilot time.

Ended up getting hired in 2019 at 830 hours. If there are ways around the hour requirements, then to me it’s not about the hours.
 
Whole lot of evidence missing in that old-man-yells-at-cloud editorial.

Besides a contrived narrative of “clueless gets the hours” and one anecdote of a crewmember failing to embrace the spirit of CRM and declaring they’re “flying as a single pilot,” where is even basic aggregation of raw counts of ASAP/ASRS intake to even hint an objectively indicate something has changed? Where is the inspection of some recent high-profile events and the attempt to tie it back to crew experience? Where is the effort here?

I miss Paul Bertorelli’s reporting.
 
It isn’t like puppy mills came along after the 1500 hour rule either, they’ve been a thing for decades. Much prior to the 2000’s you just couldn’t reliably get interviews much below something like 1500tt/300 multi, and the real number was often higher. Now if the point is that the schools & CFI’s are milking students for hours by not soloing them when they’re ready, well there could be a lot of reasons for that, some more charitable than others. Might also be that this 737 CA is seeing the sort of pilots that used to be only hired at the regionals, he’s just used to more airline experience than he’s getting, or maybe he’s just so salty cows wanna lick him. In any event, if you’re a 121 captain, it’s expected that you’ll be doing some instruction, regardless of what you’re flying and for who, all part of the job.
 
Talking with some DPEs, there are some serious deficiencies in pilot training right now. I'm also hearing some interesting stories from friends who are simulator instructors and check airmen at legacy airlines. Is it because of the 1500-hour rule? Eh, maybe indirectly, but doubtful that's the full picture. I personally believe what we are seeing is a change in generational learning, and we are continuing to teach the way we've done it for decades hoping for the same results. The US flight training industry should consider a generational shift away from standard training methods and move into more simulator-based training, especially with VR and AI. In a simulator you can expose a student to an array of experiences they would not get flying in VFR-daytime conditions repeatedly as a CFI. Build decision makers through artificial experiences. Those artificial experiences can then be used as a building block for actual flight operations. If we are training our airline pilots only on simulators, can we not do the same with the rest of our pilots? Some young students who turn into CFIs may not have the confidence to be good teachers. Why force them?

A side benefit of this shift towards VR-based simulation training would be a reduced cost to obtain pilot certificates. Fuel is expensive. If you could train someone for $20 an hour of simulator maintenance cost versus $143 of airplane rental cost, that opens up aviation to a potential whole new group of candidates. Potential students from low-income communities now could potentially afford to get their certificates and start down a path to a lucrative aviation career. This industry would be diversified as a byproduct of this. There is likely a large group of potential outstanding instructors out there who maybe lost their medical and would enjoy teaching young pilots part-time to stay in aviation.

A week ago I had an opportunity to fly a full-motion VR-based helicopter simulator. It was incredibly realistic. I fully believe you could train a pilot in VR using a similar system and reduce the number of actual flight hours by two-thirds. That saves fuel, the environment, and will produce a better pilot due to increased decision-making ability by sheer exposure to abnormal events.
 
I may be talking out of my backside, but stick with me here ...

I feel like a lot of the young people I meet now who are in puppy mills did not know they wanted to be a pilot a year or two ago. That it wasn't until the news started heralding the mass pilot shortage, and social media went nuts with the type of content that is designed to attract idiots young people, that some of these folks first considered it as a career.

That's fine, but I wonder if there isn't something different about the kid who knew he/she wanted to be a pilot from as long as they could remember - the ones who rode their bikes to airports, begged their parents to take them to air shows, and kept showing up to every Young Eagles event.

Some of this is based on some of the chatter I've read from student pilots who admit to being afraid of general aviation - how they can't wait to get past this flying and onto the airlines as soon as possible. I get SJS, but if you dread going up in the airplane each lesson, and have no interest in diving into the books to learn more, then I can't understand you as a pilot. Hell, I read aircraft specific flight manuals as a hobby just because I enjoy learning about the different nuances and systems.

You can love aviation and be a bad stick for sure, but when a DPE hands you your certificate and says "remember this is a license to learn" ... if you don't get that, then maybe you're never going to be that proficient.

I've flown with a few ex-military pilots who were looking to join the flying club I was in, or in other training environments. It always blew me away how humble and fascinated they were when driving a 172. Dennis Koehn, who recently popped up in some of @MikeD 's USAF photos from decades ago, joined our flying club at KPIE many years ago. He asked to fly with me and had a ton of questions, and was generally fascinated to learn the mighty Chickenhawk. Dude had flown F-4s and A-10s in combat in Vietnam and Iraq, and had recently retired from NW having flown widebody on the DC-10/747. Funny enough, he didn't have a single-engine endorsement since his flying started in the military. He had to take a PPL checkride and walked into the oral with a stack of logbooks at least two feet high. We all laughed, but he was super humble about it.

I just don't see that level of respect for the beast in some of the kids today.
 
We’ve swung too far to the extreme other side. You used to have to know how to build the airplane to fly it. Now rote memorization is the key to passing a checktide. In almost every aspect.

I now have 4 business jet types in the last four years. The checkride is the same. Only the numbers change.
 
Wardogg said:
We’ve swung too far to the extreme other side. You used to have to know how to build the airplane to fly it. Now rote memorization is the key to passing a checktide. In almost every aspect.

I now have 4 business jet types in the last four years. The checkride is the same. Only the numbers change.
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I was training for my CFI when life popped up and put a stop to it. At the time I didn't have to take the FOI because I was adjunct teaching at a community college. But I did review the FOI material and it made me laugh - every training prep focused on acronyms for the various concepts of learning, while also stressing the importance of deep understanding of material. "Deep understanding and experience is best! Here's a silly acronym to help you remember that!"
 
Murdoughnut said:
I may be talking out of my backside, but stick with me here ...

I feel like a lot of the young people I meet now who are in puppy mills did not know they wanted to be a pilot a year or two ago. That it wasn't until the news started heralding the mass pilot shortage, and social media went nuts with the type of content that is designed to attract idiots young people, that some of these folks first considered it as a career.

That's fine, but I wonder if there isn't something different about the kid who knew he/she wanted to be a pilot from as long as they could remember - the ones who rode their bikes to airports, begged their parents to take them to air shows, and kept showing up to every Young Eagles event.

Some of this is based on some of the chatter I've read from student pilots who admit to being afraid of general aviation - how they can't wait to get past this flying and onto the airlines as soon as possible. I get SJS, but if you dread going up in the airplane each lesson, and have no interest in diving into the books to learn more, then I can't understand you as a pilot. Hell, I read aircraft specific flight manuals as a hobby just because I enjoy learning about the different nuances and systems.

You can love aviation and be a bad stick for sure, but when a DPE hands you your certificate and says "remember this is a license to learn" ... if you don't get that, then maybe you're never going to be that proficient.

I've flown with a few ex-military pilots who were looking to join the flying club I was in, or in other training environments. It always blew me away how humble and fascinated they were when driving a 172. Dennis Koehn, who recently popped up in some of @MikeD 's USAF photos from decades ago, joined our flying club at KPIE many years ago. He asked to fly with me and had a ton of questions, and was generally fascinated to learn the mighty Chickenhawk. Dude had flown F-4s and A-10s in combat in Vietnam and Iraq, and had recently retired from NW having flown widebody on the DC-10/747. Funny enough, he didn't have a single-engine endorsement since his flying started in the military. He had to take a PPL checkride and walked into the oral with a stack of logbooks at least two feet high. We all laughed, but he was super humble about it.

I just don't see that level of respect for the beast in some of the kids today.
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Mr Koehn was old school Hog pilot, brought his Phantom experience forward into it. Think he had something like 5 or 6 DFC awards earned.

What you write above is true, regarding the passion, or lack thereof, for aviation. To many these days, it’s just another job, one that they can make a lot of money quickly in…so they have been told. But there’s no flame of passion for it.

Another place this exact thing is being seen, is in the professional fire service. Example: Phoenix, AZ fire department used to, way back in the day, be nearly impossible to get on with unless you were a legacy surname or knew tons of the high ups in the department. Yearly, there would be nearly 3500 applications for maybe 20-30 slots, and these were applicants who had a passion for the job.

Today, Phoenix, along with many other large departments, who historically never had a problem hiring, are advertising hard for applicants. What is being seen, are people applying for the job, getting hired, but who have no real passion for the job. They get into the academy, and maybe a few weeks in or so, decide the job is too much work or too much effort. Not what they thought it would be etc etc. And they’d drop out. So here’s a slot that could’ve been taken by someone who maybe didn’t test as well on the written test, or didn’t score as high on the oral board, or whatever; but who had a complete passion to do the job, whatever it took. And time and effort was wasted on someone who was just looking for a job that maybe looked somewhat interesting….figured they’d try it out and see if they like it.

Similar to aviation, I’m running across a lot of young hires in both fields…..aviation, firefighting, and to some extent LE, who don’t have that pride in their craft. To want to know as much as they can and constantly strive to improve. Lately, I’m seeing more and more people only strive to want to know just enough to get by, that if the minimums weren’t good enough, then they wouldn’t be the minimums, would they?
 
roundout said:
#adultingsohard
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“A day in the life: Selfie, tanner, walk down hallway rehearsal, filming, selfie in cockpit, check likes shares subscribes, shoot a visual approach in severe clear, post like you just did a sweet-assed dead stick landing in the Hudson holding a baby in hand… ‘You have to PUSH against the winds if you want to flyyyyyyy’ rinse… repeat”
 
I actually had a tipoff to this going into the interview. I made the acquaintance of one of those people who make you question all your life choices. He's a 737 captain in his mid-30s who's accomplished more in aviation than any 10 pilots I know. His frank assessment? When he gets a new hire on his right side he assumes he's flying as a single pilot.
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Funny how he taps some 737 captain in his mid 30s as some sort of SME, which, assuming he wasn't military, came up through the very 1500 hour system he's criticizing.

It seems like it's quality vs quantity to me, the 1500 hour rule was always a red herring. It wouldn't have even prevented Colgan to begin with - both of those pilots were well over 1500 hours. I see far too many well financed kiddos on Facespace looking for people to share the cost of mindlessly flying a 152 or 172 in circuits around the state/country for weeks on end to think an arbitrary 1500 hour rule actually has any significance.
 
Murdoughnut said:
I may be talking out of my backside, but stick with me here ...

I feel like a lot of the young people I meet now who are in puppy mills did not know they wanted to be a pilot a year or two ago. That it wasn't until the news started heralding the mass pilot shortage, and social media went nuts with the type of content that is designed to attract idiots young people, that some of these folks first considered it as a career.

That's fine, but I wonder if there isn't something different about the kid who knew he/she wanted to be a pilot from as long as they could remember - the ones who rode their bikes to airports, begged their parents to take them to air shows, and kept showing up to every Young Eagles event.

Some of this is based on some of the chatter I've read from student pilots who admit to being afraid of general aviation - how they can't wait to get past this flying and onto the airlines as soon as possible. I get SJS, but if you dread going up in the airplane each lesson, and have no interest in diving into the books to learn more, then I can't understand you as a pilot. Hell, I read aircraft specific flight manuals as a hobby just because I enjoy learning about the different nuances and systems.
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This tracks with my recent schoolhouse experience. I was amazed at how little research people did about the industry, flying, and what life as a pilot might look like outside of their TikTok feeds.
 
N826AW said:
This tracks with my recent schoolhouse experience. I was amazed at how little research people did about the industry, flying, and what life as a pilot might look like outside of their TikTok feeds.
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One of the perks of hanging around a place like this.
 
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