Originally Posted by MungoP
...we would ALL like it if those numbers prove accurate but even if they are we still can't allow inexperience in the right hand seat to put lives at risk... If an airline can't recruit suitable experience for the F/O position that's their problem... either they offer better T&Cs or they'd better start growing their own crop of future F/Os by putting second officer/junior F/Os whatever you want to call them into the jump seat and letting them watch while tough decisions are being made at the front... they can witness many hours and trips that will demonstrate the good, the bad and the ugly CRM and see a few winters of survival flying before pretending to be pilots.
With so many newbees prepared to fly for food it would cost the airlines little more than the price of the extra useful load and a few hotel room costs... a small price to pay to arrest a decline in public confidence in the regionals.
Don't shoot the messenger ... but, I'm having trouble understanding just who's problem you think we're describing ... because I don't think the airlines are going to think its their problem. The requirements right now (at least in the US) for the right seat in an airline job is to have a commercial, multi-engine certificate with an instrument rating. That equates to between 190 and 250 hours of flight time - including training ... and, also, the pilots must pass the relevant airline training program. There is legislation pending in the US Congress that might require that right seater to have an ATP (which requires 1500 hours and includes the equivalent of an instrument rating) ... and I would presume that it would also require a multi-engine rating, but that wasn't specifically described, according to my sources. I also heard that some have suggested that legislation be modified to include an alternative of requiring airline "new hires" to be a graduate of an accredited school that also has a flight training program.
What you're proposing may sound logical, but, at least in the US, it would require a rather major over-haul of some significant rules and regulations (read that as "a snowball's chance in a very hot place").
You probably should know that Boeing has completed a couple of Beta tests on the ICAO program known as MPL. While the Boeing test graduates took considerably more time than originally described in the ICAO MPL descriptions (ICAO describes something like 250 hours of training time and the Beta Tests took more on the order of 380 - 400 hours), the results are, nonetheless, apparently quite impressive. Until someone comes along with something more logical, less expensive, that provides pilots with better training and/or more experience ... I'd submit that the MPL approach is likely to have the inside track.