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Republic Airways has asked the FAA to lower the hour requirement for pilots. It went up after the Colgan crash.

I think that 1500 is probably too high, and that Republic has some good points. My cousin is a captain and says that the main difference is now they get high-time people who should never be in a cockpit flying, and that's about it.

Anyone have any insight?

I agree. There has to be a happy medium between 40 hours and 1500. I will say this, when I worked in the industry there was always talk that just prior to the Colgan crash the pendulum was swinging the other way and people with not enough time or experience were getting hired. Thankfully the vast majority of them washed out. The Colgan crash was a combination of several human factors as well as job working conditions. Thinking that placing a 1500 minimum on pilots would be the cure all was just lazy thinking. It's probably placed more of a strain on a system that was already facing a manpower shortage than was necessary.

As an example, in WW2 it would take anywhere from 140 to 160 flying hours to train someone who had no flying experience to a rating in a B17 in the Army Air Corp. I actually think flying those would have been as difficult as a modern-day jet as virtually nothing was automated and there wasn't a bitchn Betty or stick shaker to point out your basic failures.

Lucas wrote:Republic Airways has asked the FAA to lower the hour requirement for pilots. It went up after the Colgan crash.

I always thought it was typical bureaucratic response especially considering that both pilots in that crash had more than 1500hrs.

The industry is very much in love with the concept of "well, we've always done it this way!" and for good reason. Aviation is extremely unforgiving and if something works, it's best left alone...to a point.

I think the whole training pipeline needs to be refreshed, which is what Republic appears to be doing. I question their motives, though, as airlines, especially regionals, have historically been reluctant to increase quality of life unless forced by Unions. We don't have a shortage of qualified pilots, we have a shortage of pilots willing to work (or stick around) for the compensation being offered.

That said, the current building block method of training (PPL -> INST -> COMM -> ME -> CFI) needs to be rethought, perhaps combining the training. At one time in the past, it was suggested that the PPL and INST training be combined into one rating, but it went nowhere.

For folks intending a career out of this, going through all the steps in between PPL and COMM adds expense. During my PPL training, many of my CFIs held me to COMM standards and we even practiced some COMM maneuvers.

DXing wrote:I agree. There has to be a happy medium between 40 hours and 1500. I will say this, when I worked in the industry there was always talk that just prior to the Colgan crash the pendulum was swinging the other way and people with not enough time or experience were getting hired. Thankfully the vast majority of them washed out. The Colgan crash was a combination of several human factors as well as job working conditions. Thinking that placing a 1500 minimum on pilots would be the cure all was just lazy thinking. It's probably placed more of a strain on a system that was already facing a manpower shortage than was necessary.

As an example, in WW2 it would take anywhere from 140 to 160 flying hours to train someone who had no flying experience to a rating in a B17 in the Army Air Corp. I actually think flying those would have been as difficult as a modern-day jet as virtually nothing was automated and there wasn't a bitchn Betty or stick shaker to point out your basic failures.

My cousin says he still sees people losing their crap in the sims (he comes from a versatile background including gliding and aerobatics) over things which are routine if you focus on flying...and he flies out of ATL as a captain now. After the Prime plane went down, I started wondering if he perhaps had a point. I'm glad that in ATC we cut people out early who are not destined for success. It's best for all involved. (Though we also cut people out to preserve OT and because we're filled with a-holes at some places.)

I see that there are pushes to increase the retirement age now, too. It seems that we really might need to address this with a less lazy approach.


Shy--That seems to be on to something. I've been watching Dan Gryder's stuff, and while he does go ripping into everything (that is his brand, so I don't fault him), he also makes some excellent points about how we need to re-tool training from the very ground up, starting at PPL. If we followed his advice on some things, I think we'd have a world of better aviators.

Stuff I didn't know:




Sounds like the FAA was retarded, the pilots both followed their respective, flawed training (some oopsies), and the government responded by doing something stupid.