Am I feeling lucky?

[2016parks]

In the great state of Ohio, one needs 1,800 hours of training to become a licensed barber (way too much, I think); 1,000 hours of training to become a licensed police officer (sounds about right); and 120 hours of training to become a real estate salesperson (again, sounds about right). Where does a commercial pilot’s license fall on that spectrum—both in terms of hours needed, and in terms of “responsibility assumed when doing your job”? I ask because I have seen some numbers given out, in many posts on this forum, that seem quite low (“Do I want someone with the training of a realtor to be flying the airplane in which I am a passenger?”) On the other hand, there seem to be relatively few commercial air accidents in terms of number of total hours flown, so somebody must be doing something right. Is it that the amount of training really is sufficient? Is it that the work is almost always routine and thus super skills are almost never needed? Is it that there is an enormous supporting structure (well-developed rules, ATC, etc.) that almost always makes up for any crew shortcomings? Thoughts?

[jonkster]

When talking about "hours" needed to become a real estate agent or police officer that would be time spent in classroom training, studying and passing exams, not time spent actually doing actual police work or selling properties

Pilot "hours" are just what is recorded in your log book.

To end up the pointy end of a commercial operation you will have done a large amount of training and spent many more hours of study and preparation than the hours in your log book.
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[Denti]

One can get an MPL and legally fly passenger jets with as little as 80 hours. However, as Jonkster stated correctly that is just the time spent flying an airplane. In the trainings i know there are another 200 hours spend in flight training devices, and if you include briefing, debriefing and session preparation you end up with two to three times that amount. And that is pure flight training without any theoretical classroom training that is required as well. Classroom training varies of course, but again in the courses i know it equates to roughly another 1500 to 1800 hours with at least the same spend studying on your own. All in all two quite intense years of learning and exams.

In the US one has to get quite some experience as well in flying, although the merits of that are debatable except shrinking the labour pool and raising prices, which it did very successfully.

[2016parks]

Good information, thank you, I hadn't considered all that.