Someone, in an earlier post, mentioned the holy grail of command and how quickly it can be obtained; implying a lowering of standards. When I started in this game the common threshold was 5000hrs to be considered eligable. There were other criteria, but this was a base point. If the candidate was exceptional and had been in the company for many years, it might be lowered to 4000. Now, 3000 seems to be the norm. Hours aren't everything, it's the quality of those hours; short-haul v long-haul etc. However, hours does identify exposure to the enviroment. A reduction of 2000 hours is about 3 years less exposure. 3000 hours, after flying school, is only about 4 years experience. Given that the chappie in the right seat could be a rookie, I do not believe 4 years is enough exposure time, especially when it is often the captain who has to make the desicions, even about ground handling matters down route. In the second and lower level airlines, the organisational back-up is minimal. There are no station managers. The general answer from mission control is "you're on the spot. do what you think's best."
On the technical side, 4 years is a short time to have experienced any significant snags or querks; the sort of apparently minor events, that if mishandled can become major ones. The more so in our 2 crew ever more sophisticated a/c.
2 experienced crew members can, even if a little tired, keep the show on the rails by drawing on experience. Under the same levels of tiredness, a raw crew IMHO are more susceptible to mistakes, possibly because the monitoring process might be weakened. Shoot me down if you will; it's only a discussion point.
The matter of total cockpit crew hours (experience) has been raised before. I felt it was too lightly dismissed by the companies.
Regarding pricing and the publics attitude to crew T's & C's; and the idea that they only travel because of the price. This is certainly true in the LCA's. Many of the pax are flying for the first time because it's so cheap. The enviroment is bursting at the seams. The delays are contributed to by the massive rise in traffic at a faster rate than the system can adjust. I thought the airports planning forum and scheduling committtees were supposed to prevent this over burdening. Seems it's not quite right, yet. There was once a phrase in the package holiday sector, when people were decrying the loss of ethnic values in some countries whose only major income is tourisim; "We are polluting the world with people." That's what low pricing does. The demand become greater than the supply of experienced crews. By lowering the thresholds you can increase supply.
Any views??