Originally Posted by
bafanguy
Kenny,
Your friend's comment is very interesting...especially since he's doing interviews. His comment that "...if we want to maintain the experience level." is a critical qualifier.
I can't forecast anything with certainty but will venture a guess that the legacies will accept lower experience levels vs the wildcard of pilots hired on renewable visas that are subject to political whims...and may be cancelled when it suits some political harlots. There may be some comforting certainty in being able to bring along lower-time pilots vs risking training cost and line utilization in accepting some 2K hour regional ATPs in lieu of visa holders ?
Your employer hired people with minimal hours in the 1960s and they worked out very well long term. True enough, they sat on the F/E seat and watched for a couple of years but that form of learning has limited utility. And today, there are learning avenues that may equal or exceed that (simulators, etc.). Eventually, there's no substitute for grabbing the bull by the horns and flying it. And people have done that successfully with limited total time but under controlled circumstances.
This is really fun to watch.
They are already pretty close to taking the 2000 hour ATPs. Markets dictate everything here. We don't need turbine command time or a degree any more. I wouldn't be surprised if it got to the point where we were taking fresh ATPs.
Of course if US legacies somehow ended up looking abroad for pilots, it would send ripples through Australian aviation. People are already bailing out of QF ground school to go to Atlas.