Darkroom - the irrefutable fact of the matter is, most of the flying public couldn't give a rats arse about who sits in the flight-deck.
And that's obvious by the US congress passing laws requiring minimum flight times.
Flying is routine and with the locked door policy, Jo Public almost never sees who (or how old) the 2 people up front are. The first time any consideration will be given is when it is evident that the proverbial poo is hitting the fan - and that just (almost) never ever happens.
This is the crux of the matter.
And it's not really what I or any other pax care, but it's what the lawyers and insurance agents say that matters.
So it's all well and good for you and others to sit in your armchair and pontificate about why YOU would never hire such people into YOUR airline - the the fact remains, YOU are not running an airline. So your opinion in fact counts for sod all. It is just that, an opinion like anyone else's. You are entitled to it and so is anyone else.
Thanks for allowing me to have an opinion.
I was trying to point out, to obviously some very closed minded people, that a company is not going to hire people with just a few years training and experience to put in charge of high-profile expensive projects or activities if they can, in any way, get more experienced individuals.
As a side note - how many serious incidents / accidents have occurred with inexperienced newbies (lets say less than 3000 hours using your yardstick - which incidentally could be 8-10 years experience in my sector of the industry) compared to the old timers at the controls?
Here, you've hanged yourself. I guess you've not been paying attention to the news for the past 2 or 3 years.
Just what percentage of Darkroom's tiny 2600 hours would have been racked up at FL350+ for over 8 hour sectors with the autopilot doing the work - gosh you really learn your trade in the cruise don't you???? Total volume of hours is not in itself the only way of measuring experience.
Again, this is not experience FLYING THE PLANE, it's experience living, dealing with situations that are OUTSIDE the norm. It's being responsible, it's dealing with management, and all the junk. Pilots of big-iron are NOT paid to fly the plane. They're paid to deal with emergencies. And if their total experience is 250 hours before they started flying computers, then they have NO experience dealing with emergencies, or even hand flying the plane if it's just a simple autopilot failure - recently this happened in case you haven't been paying attentiong (again).
Without diving into the details, seems to me that the likes of American, Delta, United etc etc etc have lost more hulls than Ryanair and EasyJet (and those two companies complete a HUGE number of sectors per year combined) - clearly it hasn't been many in recent years, perhaps technology does have an impact?
Try reading or listening to the news.