Originally Posted by
boofhead
What really drives me in this matter is the damage being done to the US aviation industry. By cutting the supply of pilots through this stupid and unnecessary 1500 hour rule it has, most importantly, caused a shortage in the newbie ranks.
Well, again, I don't know when you arrived on the scene in US aviation, but I'd speculate that it was sometime well after the 1990's were past. If you had been here, you would know that the minimums to get hired at a regional/commuter were 1200 hours and 200 multi time. Many regional airlines had higher minimums, but you were pretty much wasting your time applying to any scheduled operator without 1200/200. At the time, it was pretty much an article of faith that you had to instruct, tow banners, haul skydivers, etc for a while before you had the minimum time to get an interview at an airline. I'm not sure how or why that became the magic number, but it did. That's only 300 hours less than the current regulatory 1500 minimum. That's not much difference, yet, the world still turned, airplanes flew new hire classes were filled, and people became pilots and got jobs. The 1200/200 persisted into the early 2000's before it started to fall.
The point here is that 1500 hours isn't a significantly higher barrier than 1200/200, yet the 1200/200 requirement didn't prevent people from becoming pilots. If there's a shortage of pilots now, it wasn't caused by the 1500 rules, because there were plenty of pilots back when the realistic minimum experience for an airline job was 1200 hours. It's just silly to claim that the need for 300 more hours is having a profound effect on whether people enter aviation.