I fly jets with 200 hr F/Os that I wouldn’t want to send out on a C206 charter flight let alone in Baron, which their CPL/IR would qualify them to do. A few of our Captains wouldn’t meet the insurance requirements for a Banderante command in PNG yet are flying jet airliners on international routes.
IMHO it’s how they’re trained and what they’re trained for that is the issue. A sausage machine school operating out of a capital city G/A airport is more likely to prepare students for an airline job rather than a bush one. Having a control tower, 2000m tar runway with VASIs and possibly an approach aid whilst flying a new generation training aircraft equipped with a glass cockpit isn’t good preparation for the bush.
Putting a product of this training system into a 30 year old C206 with a Garmin 100 and expecting them to operate into a short dirt strip in marginal VFR weather is asking for trouble.
Back in my day we learnt on round dials, because that’s all there was. Map reading was important because there wasn’t normally a beacon and GPS was still a few years away for civil use. I had several hundred hours experience before I knew what a VASI was and over 1000 hrs before operating into airports which had them.
However CRM training was non existent and multi crew was what you did when you got into an airline. No one knew about human factors and there was a lot less regulation and oversight. Flight data monitoring was in its infancy.
We were better prepared for a G/A job and less prepared for an airline one. This didn’t matter too much as you were unlikely to get near the airlines until you had at least 2000 hours under your belt.
Now the situation is reversed.