"Low houred pilots flying airliners with experienced captains has always been safe and will always be safe. End of. Anyone who thinks otherwise clearly hasn't flown a plane. It's about having someone next you in your inexperienced days, nurturing you through the process. Whether you have 1000 hours or 250 hours makes less than no difference. End of."
Beak - disagree entirely with that statement except for:
"It's about having someone next you in your inexperienced days, nurturing you through the process."
That's precisely what Flying Instructors and Training Captains are for but more often than not airlines are relying on line Captains to look after newbies after accelerated Line Training to save costs.
What happens when that experienced guy next to your low houred pilot keels over from food poisoning or heart attack? It does happen.
Speaking with one of the world's best aerobatic pilots (who has seen many friends loose their lives in his 20+ years of display flying) he said you don't really know an aeroplane until you've flown it for at least 1000 hours. And he was talking about a single engined fixed gear aerobatic machine.
1000h on a Seneca 1 in crap weather and no ability to climb above terrain if you end up Single Engine on approach develops more airmanship than sitting in the cruise in a 737 on autopilot.
Yes a 737 has energy and pitch power couples when flown manually, but if one goes off the end of a runway it is big news with more than 150 lives at stake cf a Seneca accident.
Unless the low houred FO is given the input by the training Captain and allowed to practice flying skills they are learning very little and their SA and instrument scan will suffer.
"Low houred pilots flying airliners with experienced captains has always been safe and will always be safe"
Define always safe. What about accident/incidents like these?
Turkish Airlines Flight 1951 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Uncorrected poor technique led trainee to land A320 hard
The other issue is going straight from a 200h flight school course to a shiny airliner means crew can loose handling skills and have not developed basic airmanship beyond what is needed to get by. That combined with poor pay and conditions and fatigue is a recipe of disaster.
Here are some cases of slightly higher hour FOs who went this route (ie: flight school straight into glass cockpit automated machines):
Air Accidents Investigation: 3/2009 G-THOF
http://www.ntsb.gov/dockets/aviation...027/431209.pdf