Why did experience (or the lack off) have any relevance to Buffalo?
Incompetence, poor training yes, but experience no
Truth. Colgan 3407 was not caused by fresh CPL new hires who were an unknown quantity. Both pilots had prior professional flying experience before joining Colgan. The Captain had failed multiple prior checks which he didn’t disclose to Colgan, so he definitely wasn’t a “known” quantity to them. The FO had previous experience as a flying instructor in sunny Arizona, which didn’t really help out in a Buffalo NY snowstorm.
To an airline a 5-10,000hr pilot is only a known quantity for as much as you can glean from them during a brief selection process, many an airline has recruited a high houred pilot only to discover the person they thought they were hiring was not the person who existed in reality.
Not only does the rest of the world outside of the USA put low time pilots into the FO seat, it’s been going on in Australia for decades at a rate higher than most posters here would realise. Norwegians, Swedes, Finns other Europeans can put low houred CPLs into the RHS of a big turboprop or jet and have them operate in poor winter conditions in near perfect safety.
A thorough selection process combined with standardised and appropriate training and oversight avoids the problems which led to a Colgan 3407 crash.