Captain C.B. Sully Sullenberger
22 December 2015 ·
I just watched the story on CBS This Morning about a recent proposal by Jet Blue to take people with little or no flying experience and make them airline pilots in a relatively short period of time, and the Regional Airline Association's continued efforts to weaken critical pilot experience requirements.
Several important facts need to be pointed out.
As I testified in April before the Senate and House Aviation Subcommittees of the U.S. Congress, for most of the last 80 years newly hired airline pilots have had several thousand hours of flight experience and were seasoned professionals who already possessed the necessary knowledge, skill, and judgment, and greatly exceeded the rock-bottom FAA minimum flight hour requirements (250 hours) that existed then. The airlines hired highly experienced professional pilots because they understood that what pilots do and how they do it matters. They literally hold the lives of their passengers in their hands.
It was only more recently, after regional airlines had lowered their hiring standards so much (to the FAA minimum, a minimum that isn't good enough!) and the rash of fatal regional airline crashes in the 2000's that culminated in the February 2009 Buffalo crash, that Congress correctly chose to return airline hiring standards closer to the norm that has been proven to work, by requiring airline pilots to have an Airline Transport Pilot certificate. The 1500 hours that an ATP requires is still not at the historical norm for entry-level airline pilots, but is far superior to the totally inadequate previous 250 hours!
So, the current requirements are not a sudden increase, but instead are a more adequate floor to keep the worst airlines off the bottom of the barrel in their race to the bottom.
It is also important to understand how critical it is to have a crew of TWO fully qualified pilots in every airline cockpit, not a captain and an apprentice. Every safety protocol airlines use is predicated on having two fully qualified pilots. The captain should be the leader of a team of experts, not an instructor teaching basic skills to a novice.
Passengers deserve better than to be involuntarily subjected to a flight where the first officer is undergoing continuous on-the-job-training and has not seen before everyday operational challenges like avoiding thunderstorms and dealing with icing.
In spite of what one of those interviewed in the CBS story said, experience matters...a lot. It is critically important. There is no substitute for it. It can mean the difference between success and failure, life and death. There is a vast difference between the structured, hand-holding world of training and the ambiguous, challenging environment of real-world operational flying. There are no shortcuts to experience or to airline safety.
If the airlines do not hire the most qualified and experienced pilots, they will not be able to continue to make air travel safer, and in fact may not even be able to keep it as safe as it is now.
Let the airlines cut their costs on peanuts, not on pilots. When they offer wages, working conditions, and career progression sufficient to attract experienced pilots, they will have the applicants they need.
The traveling public deserves nothing less. I know my family does when we fly. No one should have to pay the ultimate price for pilot inexperience.
Doubt that Sully would agree with you STP...