Originally Posted by shaun ryder
agree with most of what's written here however I do not think the skies are any less safe because of the degradation of experience. Tell me Rex old son, were you not once a 200 hour hero straight out of Oxford? Pay to fly/Oxford hot shot, what's the difference?
Referencing the recent CHIRP I received where a training captain expressed concerns about the cumulative fatigue effect of constantly training due to the higher workload on the Captain of an inexperienced First Officer. Some bases, it stated, were purely training and the regulator's response was that it issued recommendations to operators to balance experience levels. Clearly, if there is a high volume of low houred guys then the fatigue levels of training captains will increase significantly.
Furthermore, the low-hour First Officer is operating under extreme financial stress, which is a symptom of the industry at the moment. So, whilst everyone was a 200 hour pilot at some point some were cadets and financially protected from the massive financial risk or gaining hours on MEP and MET aircraft. That's a significant difference the "we all had 200 hours at some point" fails to address.