P51guy.
RS was hired with in excess of 1000 hrs (Q400 mins at colgan at the time) and I think she may have even had 1600 at DOH. Yes MR was lower than 1000 when he got hired, but not by much. In any case, both were well over 2000 TT at teh time of the crash. Other people who have told me about him have said how professional he was to fly with.
This bill is a BS knee jerk reaction to pacify the US public. They have not address the two main issues that have led to this tragic event
1. Crew fatigue - Flying pax for 16 hrs followed by more part 91 flying repo's then 8 hrs off before more 121 flying?????? The US system is stupid but most unions will ot address that as it may reduce days off per month which the senior pilots with 18 days off per month will not agree too!
2. FAA training is a joke. Zero to hero in 4 months being advertised by some schools. That is plain retarded. Learn 1000 questions and have a 1 hr flight test per rating. If you are ever bored, watch a video by nasa on youtube about TP icing, showing the tail stalling first requiring recovery action of pull back and flaps up. Could MR have been tired, and mistaken this that was shown to him in training at Colgan? Who knows. He saw the movie in intital training and probably every year in recurrent, so its possible.
You can't even blame colgan for this. They did train to the FAA standard. Problem is that the FAA standard is a little hard to find!
The only thing they have accomplished is the following pyramid situation:
1 flight instructor will need 5 students to qualify for the airlines. Those 5 students becoming instructors will need 5 students each. So out of 31 CPLs only 6 can goto the airlines. Couple that with the latest and greatest by TSA reducing student numbers, and funding being cut left right and center, there will be a real shortage in the near future. Then the airlines will petition congress to drop the bill in a couple of years. So nothing achived there!
As I said. This bill is retarded and is just there to please the public until they decide that they don't have enough pilots.
They need to look towards Europe for better standards such as
1. Removing DPEs from IR, CPL and ATPL and just use staff examiners on salary who are not trying to complete as many check rides in a day to line their pockets
2. Increase requirements in the theoretical knowledge to a way that maybe cuts some candidates who can only use rote to pass exams.
3. Make skills tests a minimum of 2.5 hrs.
4. remove POI's from airlines who are obviously in the back pockets.
5. Stop part 91 flights after 121 fights
6. reduce max hours worked then increase minimum rest periods.
7. get rid of "legal to start legal to finish"
8 Introduce 6 month sim checks for both FO's and CA.
Oh but wait...... that all might cost too much and maybe the old farts at the top of the seniority lists will end up havign to work more than 10 days per month! Ok, scap that and pat yourselves on the back for a job well done!
Don't jump on the graves of the dead, look to the other issues that were REAL issues!