WHY I think the “1500 HOUR rule” is RIDICULOUS!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 พ.ย. 2022
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Some are trying to present the 1,500-hour rule as choosing “Quality over quantity”, i.e. that allowing more pilots through, without the rule, risks their quality. In reality, this rule offers neither quantity NOR quality. Even worse, the actual effect of this rule on safety is probably the opposite of what we all want. Let's explore...
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Maybe keep the 1500 hour rule, but then allow the airlines to hire someone as a 2nd officer or Flight Engineer with 500 hours.
Then require that the total hours of all flight crew combined add up to 5000 hours minimum regardless how many flight crew are present, 2 or 3.
I don't fly a big jet, so I don't know if this would work, just throwing it out there...
After your previous video.. it was obvious.. that you might have already put together a rather direct take on this.
(As in what you think of the 1500 hour rule in U.S.A. ... versus how in the European countries there is more reliance on quality over quantity).
Thanks again for these analytical productions with nuanced insights... which even amateurs like us (from outside the aviation industry) can understand.
@@fredashay The main problem with your suggestion is that 2nd officer and flight engineers are non existent jobs these days at most airlines.
What makes being educated at Yale or Harvard exceptional in the way students are screened for admission. Perhaps flight schools should have a pre-admission screening test as well.
I notice the screen of the plane flickering in an interesting way.
Can you set up camera at different frame rate and capture what they are actually doing?
Thank you.
Just because someone is rich, doesn't mean they will be a good pilot. Conversely, just because someone does not have financial means, doesn't mean they will be a bad pilot.
Absolutely correct.
@@MentourNow I agree completely!
Unfortunately that is the American way, and is the reason people like Trump and Musk are considered geniuses by a lot of people there.
@@57thorns I'd hope NO ONE considers orange Hitler a genius
Millions of Americans consider that dufus a hero.
Saying 1500 hours is akin to saying learner drivers have to have 150 hours of driving experience before they are allowed to drive on the road, but in the same breath saying that they cannot drive on roads to gain this experience, so either have to drive on parking lots, or pay to drive on special roadways instead.
Spot on. Drivers instead have a trial licence for the first two years, and in some place even an L plate for Learning driver.
Which is basically the same as working as a first officer.
Well, when I did my DL, it was 70 hours with a parent or guardian, on top of the driving with the instructor and classroom hours
So any time we went anywhere, I was driving. I blew through the 70 hours well before I could get the actual license and could say I had an honest log.
Some people had trouble getting the hours, their parents would just write it in and sign off on them, there was really no way of knowing.
Maybe you could drive 150 hours in the forest and feel like a rally driver afterwards, it will definitely improve your driving. This is how letting someone "learn to fly" in a crop duster feels to me.
5 years work experience required, is another circular crap that IMHO needs to end
@@booqueefious2230
when i got my car license, there was no such nonsense about being accompanied by anyone. a few days after getting my license, i went on holiday with my parents, and since we took my car, i did all the driving.
You’re spot on.
That rule also pushes many pilots into a CFI role they don’t actually want, leading to bad instruction that screws up newer pilots.
And it leads to many mediocre pilots into a cul-de-sac of somehow building 1,500 hours while piling up a lot of debt, only to then get rejected by the airlines.
With the recent accident caused by such incompetent CFI this issue is even more evident
You’re only a bad instructor if you choose to be. You’re responsible for your own actions
No, no he is not spot-on.
@@guillaumefuentes3184 Please explain how? I am doing my commercial and I for sure dont want to be a CFI, I want to get into charter operations after I finish my ratings but this stupid rule is holding us back. Just becuase you have 1500 hours or more doesnt mean you're a good pilot, its all about your attitude and confidence in yourself and your abilities.
To put it simply, one often doesn't have 1000hours experience, but just 1 hour experience 1000 times.
well put!
That puts it pretty well how much and what quality experience you get from relatively monotone job of flying short flights with crop duster or checking pipelines. The learning you get from repeating the same two hour flight path in similar weather 250 times is pretty much already peaked. You're not going to learn anything more from that same job during the next 500 flights that will finally fulfill the 1500h limit. If anything, the monotone job will make you learn bad habits just to make the dull job a bit less dull.
I think that they should allow pilots to get jobs with cargo carriers that are below the 1500 hr threshold. Like FedEx DHL and Amazon. this would let them get their hours extremely fast and would be "quality" hours that directly apply to passenger craft. I heard about a crash that happened to a woman that had a HUGE amount of hours accumulated because she flew pipeline for 3 years. BUT this was in a tiny Cessna and all her hours were in good weather and daytime. So even though she was instrument multi engine rated with 2200 hours. they were not "quality" hours. Basically she flew in ideal conditions, or didnt fly that day.
At just over 550 Hours, I was told something like this, by a FedEx Rep: "The Minimum Hours we require for a Pilot, is 2,500 Hours, but we are currently only hiring Pilots with Over 3,500 Hours!" (It was back in the summer if 1988 or 1989, or so!)
Personally, I don't think the "Number" (1,500) is so bad, but, it should include both a Variety of "Activity Types" (Banner Towing, Skydiver Hops, Glider Towing, Flight Instructor Single Engine) as a first portion of the "Working Hours", (After the "Flight training"), followed by Multi Engine Training & Experience, including Day & Night Cross Country Flights of longer than a single Tank of Fuel, plus Multi IFR personal and Working Trips, as a Stepping Stone!
@@robertweekley5926 You are completely missing the point of the video. In fact, you do your darnest to skip around the issue without actually touching it at all.
There are two facts in the video that are extremely relevant to your comment. 1. Studies suggests an ADVERSE effect of long flight time requirements while not confirming any of the positives. 2. It is clearly stated that the QUALITY of the teaching and learning is by far more important than the QUANTITY of it.
But you get this completely backwards. You say that broad spectrum of experience is important but you also say it can be achieved through long flight time requirements. That is not the case. The strict requirements for flight time is exactly the reason why quality has changed into quantity, as it is literally impossible to enforce the quality of the experience to be at some level. Your comment is wholly a non-argument in favour of 1500h requirement and you don't even see that.
I’m a captain at a US regional airline, and I agree with you 100%. Like many others, I’ve done what I had to do to comply with the 1500 hr rule requirements before joining the airline industry. I have even instructed in a higher end flight academy with high professional standards. The professional gain from instruction was extremely valuable for the first 500 hours (around 800 hours total time). Could I have already be a successful airline First Officer even before then? Probably. But afterwards, the skill level and experience I gained from 800 hours total time to 1500 was minimal. And again, this was at a high standard school. For most people, at some point it becomes about burning fuel more than anything else.
Why does the ALPA keep saying there’s no USA pilot shortage
makes me think of the continuing ed requirements for my career. I burn through the coursework in about half the mandatory seat time, and the literally have the course running in the background counting minutes while I do something productive until it lets me send in the course credit.
I learned from a lot of mistakes between 800-1500. Agree to disagree
You can argue that the 1500 hour rule may or may not make better pilots, but one thing is for certain, it has made for significantly better pilot salaries! Look at pay before the rule was implemented vs. now. There were regional airlines that actually CHARGED people to sit in the right seat. Now a regional FO starts at $90/hour first year, plus bonuses at a lot of airlines. Yeah, it has raised the barrier to entry into the profession, but it's also made it a profession worth investing in again.
@@Me37368 I don't speak for ALPA, nor do I have the numbers in front of me.
I believe there is a strong expectancy of a shortage, especially due to the 1500hr rule.
At the moment there are more candidates than slots for the legacy airlines and they get their pick of pilots. But at current trends, at some point they would have to take whoever they can. The regionals are not far from this due to market trends.
The idea that a lower amount of high-quality experience can be a lot better than a higher amount of low-quality experience reminds me of a saying one of my instructors in the military used to use:
"Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect."
All people can develop bad habits over time if they cut corners or deviate from their training.
Skyhawk: And a high percentage of the accidents in cases outlined by various high quality shows on TH-cam documenting commercial aviation accidents where the pilots were ruled as the proximate cause have a STRONG tendency to show this.
Whether it's pilots ignoring rules, not understanding rules, being lazy and skipping (or not properly paying attention to verifying) steps in critical checklists, or ignoring / dismissing critical information given from the plane, the theme is all too clearly pervasive when it's pilot error.
And I realize human error is a factor and some such accidents are unavoidable, but the painfully obvious to downright stupid commercial pilot errors that bleed through SEVERAL layers of safety checks should be all but eliminated.
And no doubt, technology will help too. Hopefully by now, with GPS cheap and prolific, all commercial planes have GPS that will, for example, prevent pilots from taking off from the wrong runway, via blatantly obvious intervention warnings (especially runways that aren't even parallel to the correct runway).
Speaking of practice, given the quality and variety of situations the mandatory simulator training / retraining requires, it's amazing how bad some of the pilots who crash commercial jets end up looking, given how flagrant their various mistakes (especially groups of mistakes) are.
1500 hrs is a long time to embed poor practices
@@rogergeyer9851 well, also, as Petter pointed out, it forces pilots in many cases to get flight time... on the wrong kind of aircraft.
Military pilots reached that point of because of who they are and their work ethic, whether rotc, academy or ocs. Nobody should be comparing a kid from ATP academy to an air force academy grad.
@@rannyacernese6627 Why poor practices? Why not make good practice?
I totally agree. Having been training pilots for most of my career, it is evident for me that it is the quality of the training and the skill of the trainee that counts. Making "holes in the sky" to accumulate flight hours does not improving your skill, but might result in bad habits that can be difficult to iron out later on.
On the other hand Pay-to-play schools spit out barely competent jobbers who know less about aviating than most part-61 trained Private pilots.
It’s nice to think all training is good, but most places suck.
wow! Pilot jobs for non military pilots? You don't know how lucky this generation really is!!!!!!They wouldn't hire civilians with 3000 hours but military pilots were grand fathered into the airlines back in my day....stop complaining, and tax payers shouldn't pay for airline bailouts nor fund flights school thru the V.A. program. punk az america......
@@robertd7073 yea I started near the end of the big time days. People complaining that it’s $150,000 to get an SIC seat was what was realistically expected from a civilian when I started in the late 90’s. Then the RJ boom boomed and busted, and the military substantially cut back. And by 2008 when I got my Airline (Commuter, but still 121) kids were Rolling with 4-600 hours and a year and a half upgrade.
There was a small period of very lucky time. That’s all it was, though a trick of the light due to how weird things got in the economy after 9/11.
Now the airlines got too comfortable with it, and are once again for the 4th time since 1998 BEGGING for everyone else to fix their problems so they don’t have to adapt.
“Practice makes permanent and perfect practice makes perfect”. 1500 hours of bad practice == a possibility permanently dangerous pilot
Well Yea. If you told me I need 400 landings to be an airline pilot, I might be inclined to go out there and just do it as quickly as I can to get it over with without actually caring about the quality of the landings. It's not like I got passengers or other pilots with me to judge me anyways.
As someone who just graduated from an aviation program at a university university, I agree with all of this. About 60% of new students drop out of aviation at our college within a year, mainly due to costs
I was in the middle getting my GA license when this rule was put into effect. I was 17 at the time and wanted to become a commercial pilot, this rule put a halt to that. I just couldn’t afford it. I thought about getting a different job in aviation, engine maintenance for example, but at that point it just hurt too much. I ended up doing something non-aviation related.
I'm sorry...don't give up though! You can find a way!! Even if it means going to another country!
I got my a&p for $14k and majors are hiring those who's ink is still drying on their certificate. All around $35/hr start
Rock valley college Rockford, IL
I'm thinking about flying one day but not sure whether I want to make a career out of it
Not to crap on your struggle, because it's certainly real, but looking at where pay and benefits are today, I'd be willing to bet that if you had stuck it out you'd be doing very, very well right now. Granted there was no way to predict the future back then, but the unforeseen fallout has been very very good for pilots.
Great idea!! Have pilots do 1500 hours and build muscle/procedural memory in aircraft nothing like the ones they are eventually going to fly, haha
Good point
Gaining 1500 hours in a Cessna gains you almost nothing as compared to flying an large turbojet airliner. Basically, as I see it, you forget what you’ve learned after you reach 1500 hours…You basically forget what you learned in your IR by the time you get to 1500 hours which is very harmful…
And then the aircraft designer slightly changes the layout of the instruments and the next time the captain comes back from the lavatory and knocks on the cockpit door, instead of letting him in, you do a rudder hardover with the trim switch. True story.
Still better experience then just programming the autopilot and being paid minimum sallary. Lower limit, less pay.
You simply do not know what you are talking about. Large airplanes really do fly by the same physics and the same basic controls as small airplanes -- it is perhaps like cars and semis if you prefer. And the much bigger points are that the manual skill of coordination etc is not the reason for the experience -- it is judgement and competency in emergencies, as pilot in command. Put bluntly, you want weak pilots to weed themselves out in little airplanes -- either they realize they are unfit and quit, or they get weeded out by their employer or the FAA before they kill very many people, or they even kill themselves ... ditto.
Thanks for this presentation. I'm a retired U.S. Army aviator, and I've known some of my peers who got out of the Army to go into commercial aviation. I did not know about the 1,500-hour rule. Without thinking about it very deeply, I would have assumed that it was a good rule, but you clearly explained how and why it is not. Well done!
He clearly explained why he didn't like it. That's not the same as explaining why it's a bad rule. Youth and "talent" don't actually make a good pilot without experience.
@@psychohist Did you even watch the video? He clearly and also very logically explained why the rule is bollocks. Even coming from a non-aviation background, it isn't even remotely difficult to comprehend.
You can drive around in a family sedan all your life and be a decent and safe driver. Go on a racetrack with me (who has never driven your sedan) and I will beat you in this very car 10/10 times.
That's because as a car enthusiast and decent hobby racer, I learn other skills by driving cars on the limit than you get from commuting from A-B.
Similarly, both our experiences driving cars don't translate to much if you put us behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler or on a bike, as the characteristics and handling of these vehicles are completely different.
Most companies pay garbage wages to "first job" pilots. The flight school I worked at was no exception. They do it because "where else you gonna go?"
Yep
Excellent presentation. Sadly this exact discussion was had in the early nineties at university based "Massey school of Aviation" in New Zealand, the school was critical of the crazy idea that if you survive long enough as a pilot you're probably good enough to fly the big iron.
Back then it was recognized that the skills required for an airline pilot extended well beyond the heroic seat of the pants "Biggles" aptitude.
Here we are over thirty years later arguing that idiotic 1500 rule producing worse pilots and more overworked pilots.
It's a damn shame that intelligence is not a required trait for a law maker.
Paul van Dinther: Same for doctors. Apparently, the fact that lots of memorization is required for various legal and medical school classes, the assumption is that lots of intelligence to do that is implied.
But going through college, I knew people who literally memorized everything said in a lecture AUTOMATICALLY, so they did great on 95% of college tests and got very good grades (in their simple chosen area of study), just because they had a great memory.
Meanwhile, I had to work hard to pound all the material into my head, but I was very good at making a mental map of concepts and seeing how they all linked together and being able to reason things out from first principles. To me, I want a LOT more than the standard "they got good grades so they must be an effective doctor, lawyer or pilot), to determine actual skill. Both re training and testing.
When I can often figure out more than a variety of doctors on what's not working and what's more likely to work on things like prescription drugs, as a total layman, just by reading the physician's desk reference and using some common sense and logic -- something is very wrong.
And that's happened. For multiple patients / cases.
Apparently, the only requirement for law maker is having money and connections. How they get that money and network doesn't matter. Charisma and beauty help some, but intelligence is completely unnecessary.
@@falconerd343 having a last name like yours can't hurt. 😄
@@rogergeyer9851 I bet the M.D.s love it when you tell them they're wrong.
@@toddsmith8608 it's true, but unfortunately the name didn't come with any of the connections!
Thank you. This is spot-on and exactly why I didn't/couldn't pursue that path. When I looked at it by the numbers and realized of be in the sort of debt as an MD who was halfway through becoming a specialist but with much less remuneration do would be paying off that debt for 20+ years, even if I could secure the loans, it just didn't add up.
You're absolutely correct that the career politicians are far more interested in their next election and in amassing power and wealth than in their duty of representing their constituents interests. Interests like maintaining an adequate pool of pilots and, of course, NOT being impacted by unnecessary loss of life.
I did all my training under Part 61 in the US, and recently crossed 1,000hrs Total Time where about a third of that is dual given. It's been teaching Ground School that's helped solidify my aviation knowledge, but teaching in a classroom doesn't help for building flight hours. Flight instruction does help but only so much as you end up burning holes in the sky retracing the same Cross Country flights, doing ground reference maneuvers, and stalls.
My pays the bills job has allowed me to finance leaving the midwest US to get experience doing things like flying in the mountains, and those trips have been far more beneficial for growing my flying skills as compared to instruction because they've offered new to me experiences. It's thus clear to me how CPL holders elsewhere benefit because they get to get those new to them experiences in airliners to boot.
The 1500hr rule here in the US is indeed ridiculous, and I was hoping for a while now that you'd talk about the Colgan crash or cover the topic. Having now viewed your content on the matter, I'm glad you did.
I'm proud of my flying logbook, and so sometimes "marshal" incoming guests to the correct parking place at the end of the drive, when they arrive to use my Air BnB.
The other day a guest in a new Jaguar got out and asked "if I was in aviation?"
"Yes" I said pleased to be recognised for my aviation training, "35 hours, solo in a Microlite Eagle!!"
"Oh," he replied. "42,578 hours, Dreamliner 787, BA Captain, myself."
Sounds like he was a douche.
@@The_ZeroLine No. Nick. It was a moment of punctured ego and left us all laughing.
Nice touch with the WAPA video, I'm one of the cadets in it and I couldn't agree more with everything you said. Keep up the good work and rest assured that quite a lot of us cadets out there are looking up to you.
Aww, that’s so nice to hear 💕 Best of luck to you and your friends
@@MentourNow As a chartered engineer, everything that I see in your videos makes perfect sense. I often think that along with some practice and knowing where to find all the knobs, I would make a good pilot.
This raises a good question, of whether experience in maintenance and/or aircraft design, should in part count as experience.?
If I owned an airline, I would look for pilots with a scientific background and more importantly make a period working in maintenance part of their training.
It is far easier to operate something when you know HOW it works and more importantly what it will NOT do.
Getting 1500 hours favours those who can pay for 1500 hours over those who can fly.
Inaccurate.
Except it really favors airlines passing the bill to the pilots. I’ll never weep for the pilot shortage. Airlines made things this way, 1500 hour rule was the closest the government could come to actually regulating shit business practices.
As a pilot in the 90's. It's all about multi engine time not just single engine flight time here in the States. I had 2230 total flight time as an instructor, oil pipeline pilot and flying passengers for free to build up time, but I had very little access to multi engine time. I only had 122 hrs. of multi engine time. Which at the time was practically Zilch. I could not even get an interview with any regional, time and time again until American Eagle offered me a job that would average $12.880 a year only after me paying an additional $7,900 to them for additional training for their Saab 340. At that point, poverty was not what I wanted to do with life. The biggest disappointment of my life. An airline pilot dream since age 6. We had international students at my academy that once finished would return to their countries and immediately get hired by an airline and continue training directly with them for all type ratings and "ATP" equivalent. The ultimate in supply and demand. No internet back then to look into other countries and have access to information etcetera.
It’s a shame that considering how aviation safety has progressed over the years through science and psychology, and research, that they are now going against that with implementing rules that are no longer evidence-based!
I hope that makes sense.
Thanks Petter for another very well researched, reported and produced video!
Have a great day!
ps
I’m thinking we are a very long way off getting to the point of single pilot, transport category aircraft!
It’s about lobbying and unions. It won’t be undone unless the pilot union broken and the FAA gets forced by lobbing via congress to rewrite it.
The FAA has always had non-evidence based rules, especially regarding medical certificates and psychology
I am a retired long haul driver. There are drivers who run southern highways only during winter. Even though they have a million miles on the road, their experience with foul weather and harsh winters is minimal, if they have any at all. When I started driving, I was working out of Denver CO., I discovered a proficiency at mountain winter driving and foul weather driving. This included a developing sense of when to park instead of continuing into overly dangerous conditions. I retired with between 4 and 5 million accident free miles. It was a forced retirement due to failing health. In retrospect, it was the path that saved my sanity and my health. I will never drive commercially again, and I know I am not able to regain the proficiency I once had.
my dad is a trucker (about to retire) and I'm a pilot. I feel like we do pretty much the same thing.
@@genxer74 I understand, we operate other peoples equipment, go where we are told, whether we like it or not. In time, we become a class of lonely, sad people who know no one even wants to u8nderstand our lives.
One other characteristic I'd like to add to the training is discipline. Even with hours, you'd still have to train for every possible scenario. It's up to the pilot to stay disciplined and fresh up on their skills, as with any other skills in a trade. There have been pilots with thousand or ten thousand hours who will eventually make a mistake. It's the inevitable characteristics of being human.
Making the mistake isn't so much of an issue (it's a GIVEN), it's that the more experienced pilot will recover from the mistake more easily.
@@reubenmorris487 Well, if the pilot has the _right_ experience, yes. And therein lies the problem with the 1500 hour rule: instead of experience with many varied conditions, you can (in the pathological case) repeat essentially the same hour of experience 1500 times, which will be much less effective at building your skills in less usual conditions.
Also really it's 1000+ hours of any flying. I mean what good does 1200 hours of crop dusting do an airlune pilot.
@@mancubwwa it hones your vigilance and reaction time by flying really low... 😏
@@kittytrail Not really that much beyond first 200-500 hours. On the other hand it moves you further and further from your IFR training, as crop dousting is done 100% VFR (you need to see the fields) so once you qualify for airline flying you will need to basically re-learn your IFR skills. Among other things.
An analogy with driving a car: My dad had way more experience than I did as a driver. He had driven in snow lots of times. At one time he held a chauffeur license. He was smart and earned a bachelor's degree in Engineering. Two or three times, he successfully avoided a head-on collision on two lane mountain roads. He could drive a variety of vehicles, including towing a camping trailer behind our car. As far as I know, he started driving when he was a teen (15 or 16 years old?). He drove until shortly before his death at 87 years old. Probably he drove farm equipment when he was just a kid. I only know of one serious accident he was in, likely not his fault, and one ticket for a moving violation that was not necessarily a safety issue. Even after he lost a good part of his eyesight in one eye, he was able to pass his annual driving tests.
Yet when he was driving on long road trips, my mom would close her eyes and pretend to sleep. Later in life, after I had experience as a driver myself, I found riding with him to be a frightening experience-- the reason my mom would not watch him drive! He participated in carpools when he was working, but as time went on, it became harder for him to find people who were willing to ride with him. He was a skilled driver, but a terror to ride with. He seemed to not know, or care, about defensive driving.
Why was he like that? I can only surmise that, growing up in a very small rural town, he learned to drive on roads with very little traffic, no traffic lights, and few pedestrians. Even today, there's a highway that leads to his home county, on which you can drive for an hour, and not see a single car going your direction, and maybe just one or two vehicles going the opposite direction. I don't know if there was any driver education available at the time, either.
I am going to tell you, as an American pilot that basically got shafted by the 1500 hour rule (it was just taking effect as I got my CPL) it has not improved safety. I got my hours through a company called Eagle Jet that placed me at Ameriflight, a small cargo company. I got my time as a first officer there, and dodging thunderstorms in actual commercial conditions with a part 135 operator is what prepared me for commercial operations in 121. My first time PF in a commercial jet, there was a thunderstorm on my way back to DCA, and my training captain made sure that I knew he was there to take over the plane if necessary, but I told him of my experience and he said, okay, and I flew that thing around that storm and onto the ground with zero issue because I had done it about a hundred times before then. Actually, one of my proudest moments was the time I made a landing a US Navy P3 couldn't make because they couldn't do down to our mins. But there were plenty of guys who were just flight instructors when they came in, and they couldn't handle the training. Everyone who washed out of my INDOC and Type Rating course were all flight instructors except for the military guy. Now, it wasn't a lot of pilots, but still, half my class? The main reason cited was the lack of stick time or study time. As a flight instructor, you sit there and watch someone else fly and its almost always in decent conditions. Now, the FAA tried to make up for this with the FAA ATP-CTP training, which I didn't need since I had Part 135 training, but was just coming online, and that basically simulates the training I had at Ameriflight, but that training is $50,000, and at the time airlines didn't pay for it. Those guys who washed out, they had to take that training, and they just left the industry. But the idea for 1500 hours came from ALPA. The families pushed for this, so they defaulted to the only experts who actually thought more time was a good idea, ALPA, the big airline union. And it was well understood at the time it was just to protect high time pilots, not for safety. I find it funny that military pilots were 750 hours. While airlines won't hire at that level, the majors wanting at leas 1000, a typical military pilot will only get a 1,000 hours after 10 years. Yeah, because that's better.
As a current regional airline FO with R-ATP, the 1500 hours rule is definitely a barrier to entry.
Having a higher than 250 hours helps improve safety, maybe to around 750 hours total time. As a flight instructor, after about 500 hours of dual given, I already basically learned and became proficient in single-engine piston. Some of that skill transfers to a turbine aircraft, and some do not. What I do know is that if I started with airline training right after my Commerical, the chance of me passing airline training is quite low as my aviation skills were not that polished yet.
While instructing, I have students at the 200 hours mark that is terrible and 200 hours student pilot that exceptional and good at flying. So it is hard to measure competency by hours, but I do notice that higher-hours student pilots tend to know more, and like you pointed out, sometimes have more bad habits. It is really up to the person to apply themselves.
What the ATP rule does create is a way to force regional airlines to increase their pay. As you said, from 250 hours to ATP minimums is a long road of low-paying jobs that takes at the very least a year to accumulate all the hours. I was making around $20k a year salary, which is the national poverty line average, working anywhere from 50-60 hours a week. This definitely forces me to take my airline training very seriously as the alternative is not that great.
The flight hours requirements are reminiscent of other arbitrary barriers to entry for many upper middle class professions. You can't sit for a Bar exam without law school, regardless of paraprofessional experience. They force people just starting out with loads of debt.
Actually, you can take the Bar exam without law school. There are some other requirements, and you have to have some time working in the field, but law school is not required. At least not in CA, which has the most difficult Bar exam in the country.
When I was doing my training, I was made aware of what some pilots did to get their 1,500. They would go get a flying job where the pay and conditions were marginal, and they ended up with many bad habits that then made them bad airline pilots.
Don’t forget pay to plays where they paid to FO 1900s full of paying passengers.
Thems the breaks.
@@mzaite ugh. They took advantage of those that had the aviation passion so bad that they'd do whatever it took. They kept this up until enough pilots finally realized it wasn't worth it. Now here we are and pay rates are finally livable.
So I am a software developer and we have noticed a huge difference in developers with the same kind of grading. Lots of employers are looking for candidates who have 5 years experience. Sadly it's a terrible bar to set for new employees. In lieu of it, we started looking at candidates who are passionate about coding, are self taught, and have done projects for free (pro bono). Your getting candidates who are passionate about learning, and want to do great things!
I'm not saying it would be a great thing for airlines, for the simple fact that if I screw up some code, it wouldn't kill 300+ people. But finding people who are passionate about the aviation industry would be key.
That's very much the "having 1500 hours of experience" versus "having one hour of experience 1500 times" thing. It can be even worse in software development because there's nothing (such as weather) forcing you to have experience under different circumstances; in certain areas (particularly "web development") it's quite possible to write what is essentially the same program over and over again for years.
Its sad that there are so few entry points
Right now i am stuck in a loop, as coding seems to me like trying to learn an alien language (even though i have technically written a small amount of code, not counting anything i have done in roblox, it was a hangman game that i was pretty much given the code for, but the code was broken in some way, so i had to figure out how to get it working, and i then added a few extra features to it)
(A while ago, i created an elevator simulation in Scratch (which is pretty much a kids drag and drop “programming” thing), which you could make it go to different floors, and it would behave as close to a real elevator as i was able to get it (although there was a weird quirk with the logic where you could keep it from going to the second floor for a little bit), unfortunately, due to some issues with scratch, the thing permanently broke, i would like to try and recreate it at some point)
Not denying you are basically right, but programming ability is notoriously variable - a really talented programmer will not be twice as productive as an untalented one but at least 10 or 20 times as productive (there's plenty of studies of this BTW) - its not mainly a matter of experience or even training but a special kind of mind. Pilot talent is not as wildly spread - the majority of reasonably smart and diligent people could with enough time in good quality training become a good pilot. Tougher pilot school and more attention to individual airline culture (that non-sterile cockpit ...) is the main answer for pilots.
@@kenoliver8913 having been a programmer and a pilot I think critical thinking and problem solving are the most important skills needed to succeed in both professions. The main difference is a programmer won't end up dead when their lack of problem solving skills is put to the test.
A lot of the software industry acts like this. They pat themselves on the back saying things like "we care about experience not education" but in practice it's what you mentioned, need x years of experience in this field for an entry job. It's a nice way to avoid having to spend time doing proper onboarding and training on the job.
Another great video Petter and team! Thanks for touching on this topic in more depth. I totally agree...quality of education, training, and experience is MUCH more important than quantity, especially in the airline industry. One would think that the US would follow suit with the rest of the world in setting standards for new pilots, but more often than not, it's more about mostly useless rules/standards set on public opinion and not accurate data. I also agree that pilot training needs to be made much more affordable. Hopefully getting all this information out there will bring about the much, much needed changes.
I am a modular student and have built around 150 hours now... It has cost me an absolute fortune in the UK, I'm about 50k in after my PPL/night rating/ hour building and all the extra costs associated. I'm worried once I complete my training that I won't be able to get a job, it seems like low hour/freshly qualified pilots aren't getting lots of jobs, the instructors in my flight school haven't moved on. It seems to me that the airlines are still taking back on all the pilots that got laid off during COVID.
Thank you for your insightful research and education. As a private pilot and over 10 years of 100,000+ miles as a commercial passenger I greatly appreciate your advocacy of rational, potentially life saving practises!
Peter, great video. I am a flight instructor with 1700 hours, and am about to start training on the CRJ900 for Endeavor Air (Delta Wholly Owned Regional). It is true that some airlines are now trying to pay people to get their hours however in recent weeks most large regional airlines in the US started freezing FO classes altogether due to a huge imbalance between FO's and Captains.
Hopefully that will ease soon with more people upgrading to Captain. This ties to your other video about Regionals being an unsustainable model.
Thanks again for your insights and videos!
Welcome to 9E!
@@mybadazzusername Thank you!
The 1,500 hour rule is insane, and as you pointed out, bad habits ARE the main reason why. Think about how many GA aircraft crashes there are, and a lot of them are by “very experienced” pilots (the ole classic Dr killer crashes come to mind, most of which were caused by pilot error/bad habits).
The doctor killer example is not a very good example of “very experienced.” They are doctors, weekend warriors. I doubt any of the, went through a structured program.
@@jimziemer474 that’s a perfect example as to why 1,500 hours makes no sense. If you’re doing 1,500 hours of actual structured training, then sure, but most of those hours are instead filled with just buzzing around, or doing flight instruction, trying to fill the hours in
I would be terrified to be a doctor and a pilot. Like wearing a red shirt.
American regulators do this a lot making (ridiculous) rules sometimes for the smallest concerns often tying the hands of industry.
Rules need to be based on REAL safety concerns and not 'chicken little' fears...
Those politicians will not care about how to get the best result. They only care about race, gender, and loopholes to make themselves money.
@@mingchi1855 "...make themselves money."
And stay in power...
well as in the video this was Congress that added the rule, and only Congress can change it. in fact most rules regulators enforce are from Congress.
This is not just in America. All countries overreact with laws to incidents.
@@davidwillims2004 I couldn't find where the 1500 hour specification came from precisely; too much law to wade through
Most rules and regulations come out of the Executive Branch, not Congress.
Congress authorizes certain agencies to adopt rules and if I had to guess, the 1500 hour rule is the work of the FAA although I wouldn't underestimate the connection to the sponsors of that authority.
This rule was the final nail in the coffin for me finishing up my flight training. I couldn’t see the return on investment at that time. Regionals weren’t paying enough to eat or hiring. Now, I feel like I would have to start as if I’ve never flown before, if I were to get back into flying. I have my Private, instrument, and 280TT
It is very unfortunate.
@@user-st1hd6qe7h I’m sure you would have been an excellent captain. I know what you mean about flying with some CFI’s who really shouldn’t be instructing at all. Sometimes I wish this passion would just go away, but it doesn’t. I just joined a club and I am thinking of doing a leaseback with an airplane.
I agree with you! I have friends who had everything, commercial multi engine, even sea plane rating, then this rule came about. Some went to be a flight instructor, then even the rules there changed as well. Before a cfii or double I was only needed to train instrument pilots. Then it was needed to train commerciall pilots as well! That caused folks with only a cfi to deal with only intro flights and groupon flights. The added cost caused them to give up. and plus the bachelors as well increase the cost. Something they won’t use! Mines is in economics together with my flight training and I can’t remember anything 😂 about economics but I gotta pay the bank back for learning econ. All the bachelors degree proves as mentioned above is that one can get through structured training or learn anything! But after corona, a lot of airlines dropping the bachelors rule! They just need pilots in the cockpits.
And you are right about return on investment. I had the same mind set. I wasn’t about to spend 200,000 in student loans, even invest in my own type ratings to be competitive, and then be paid peanuts in the end. I have had friends in that situation and they are bitter right now. Some went to be air traffic controllers! The pay is better. So all these requirements, and depending on company structure and airline size the mechanics make more than you or got more financial wiggle room, cause of all the debts.
@@user-st1hd6qe7h I know the feeling. I feel your pain. I would just get the ga airplane and fly locally on the weekend to experience the passion. If I ever leave flying which I want to do, the pay isn’t great, I shall buy a 30 year old piper warrior for cheap. And some instructors are incompetent and nervous. One of my instructors in a Mooney, kept pushing the rudder, messing up my taxi roll out after landing causing a zigzag motion. I was like you know what guy, you handle the Rudders after I land. Then I dumped him and picked up somebody who never touched the controls. And the nervous guy flew for American eagle as a captain. I felt sorry for his first officers.
Here in America we're really good at doing things that *feel* like they're helpful without any real regard as to whether they actually accomplish the stated goal. I still remember my welding instructor in highschool said "Practice doesn't make perfect. *Perfect* practice makes perfect." Just as you said, hours spent practicing could be hours spent developing bad habits and poor technique.
Thank you for the thorough explanation and eye opening perspective, Peter. I find this is also the case in many other industries, where "experience" is valued more than expertise.
True. But at the same time, employers want candidates to be very young! Experienced older candidates are flatly ignored.
I agree completely. If qualifying as an Olympic runner was based on running hours, I might possibly be able to qualify. If it were based on the ability to run, I would most definitely fail. What matters is talent and good quality training. This applies to just about any career you can think of. I personally think that the 1500hr rule is potentially dangerous. It has the potential to filter out good pilots who cannot afford to clock up enough hours and allow in pilots with low ability who can afford the hours.
Superb! I really like the way you more completely understand true skill and performance and how it relates with intelligence and training.... YOU do have a higher understanding of the craft of flying and and having others follow in your path. I hope I never underestimate you again, Captain.
Wow, the pilot records database seems like one of the most important things that they could have implemented, sorry to hear that it wasn't included.
It’s beyond dumb. Let’s not implement the biggest contributor to obtaining safe pilots, but instead implement a rule that does nothing……
US government at its finest…..
Likely because that does not result in politicians getting their name in the news.
Yes. The decision to NOT implement that system, but proceeding to make the 1500 hour rule is mind boggling.
bet the main reason that it wasnt implemented was many in Congress have really only one goal, cut government spending so they can cut some people taxes.
It has been implemented since then.
What you want in a pilot is the ability to think in an emergency and properly handle the emergency, regardless of their experience. A highly experienced pilot that causes or exacerbates an accident is not who you want in your cockpit, and we have all seen videos of long-time pilots who pull boners, and all it takes is just one bad fatal decision.
You are more likely to get that result from experience.
1500 hour rule is a knee jerk reaction from a law makers based on feelings rather than supported by data. Spot on Peter.
Makes sense. Instead of training people to fly those big jetliners as part of a team when they are fresh and impressionable, first force them to acquire all kinds of bad habits sitting alone in a tiny prop plane you can fly by shifting your buttocks from side to side for a couple of years.
Maybe we should require our surgeons to work as butchers for a couple of years, too?
One of the problems with that time building aspect that you mention early on in the video is that employers don't want to pay you money because they know that you're getting something that you need to move ahead..... so they figure if they're letting you fly for them, they should almost be able to pay you minimum wage.
That's the upside to the rule. But IMO we shouldn't need a shortage to have good pay. Should doctors make minimum wage because there's no shortage of them?
And so we have a bunch of pilots flying on minimum wage, which means working 2 other jobs in order to survive - and somehow they have to get the required sleep to be able to fly safely.
Very precise wording here mate. Thoroughly appreciate the effort put into this video.
For a decade I've been struggling to accumulate $100'000 in order to get myself into a flying school with a "Zero to ATPL" program. And I haven't succeeded yet. I've launched a crowdfunding website - still nothing. No bank in my lousy country would offer a credit for pilot training abroad. I'm 40 y.o. already but my dream, my vocation still hasn't come true. Hence, the world is loosing another good pilot because of the unfair conditions (both money and hours, which eventually still equals money) to step onto this path. Banks, trusts, hedge funds - they own billions of dollars not knowing where to put it. And they don't give a sh*t about those aspiring future pilots who just lack some mere $50-80 thsd. Well done, all those involved who doesn't do nothing about this, well done!
My son flew oil pipe line inspections for about 18 months. He's flying 737s now.
He lost a piston at 600 feet but did limp to an airport. He kept the jug and piston.
My son has a sheepdog named Wilbur. He just shaved the dog recently. He's a good dog.
Where did he fly that? How was it? I'm considering something similar.
The ‘1500 Hour Rule’ is ultimately protectionism for the pilots unions. The ALPA and others serve as the biggest cheerleaders for this rule, as it keeps the cost of entry for pilots high, keeping the shortage of pilots high. It’s simple economics. If the supply is low and demand remains increasing, the only factor to adjust is pay. That is why US pilots have been receiving record breaking pay increases. The ‘1500 Hour Rule’ has nothing to do with safety and more to do with lining the pockets of pilots and their unions.
It's actually a misguided attempt by the families of accident victims. Better the pilots make more money than the C-suite.
What's wrong with that?
You are probably right. Most professions with high barriers to entry are well paid in the end.
Lol that's another major point not hit. This keeps people out from making such good wages though. There's tradeoffs to be made.
If I were to listen to the ALPA on this issues, planes would be falling from the sky all over the place is they rescind the rule.
Another great example of the high quality of content you produce! This is such great info.
Since I have started following this channel, I have wondered about the whole number of hours thing because it seemed to me that an hour flying a small prop plane taking off and landing from a county airport is no where near the same as an hour in a large commercial jet taking off and landing in a huge metro airport. But they seem to pretty much count the same for many important purposes.
It also seems that # of flights is almost more informative than number of hours since, from what ive learned on this channel, it seems 90% or more of incidents and serious near miss incidents happen during the whole take-off or landing (and taxiing) portion of the flights.
I'd rather fly commercial with a pilot who's flown in and out of major airports many times in commercial jets with 1000 hours than a pilot whose flown small planes in and out of my county airport that has 5000 hours.
What i learnt after years of practicing playing guitar by myself is that practice is useless if what you practice is wrong from the beginning.
Thank you for this video. As an older aspiring airline pilot in the US, it's virtually impossible to meet that 1,500 unless you are a CFI making $20-30/hr. This may seem like a lot, but unless you're flying at least 6 hours every day (likely the max any flight school would allow) , it's comes out closer to $10-15/hr. I like Mesa Airlines' cadet program (where they loan you the money to build your time and later deduct from your paycheck once you're one of their pilots), but it received thousands of applications. If airlines want to meet the pilot shortage, reform is needed. Hope this video gets around to the FAA administrator.
I absolutely love this. I recently discovered my love of flying and found a new dream to become an airline pilot. Unfortunately in my current situation I am unable to get a loan to go get enough training and hours to satisfy this rule. While I haven't given up, morale is low in this department. I love your stuff and have literally watched every video you've put out. Keep making the AWESOME content. I very much appreciate it.
Simar situation but for me instead of Finatual issues for me it's medical / mental heath issues
Chronic back pain, bad vision , often light headed / sometimes fainting , headach and migrains, anxiety and depression with adhd to name a few lol
Another home run Mentour, the effort you guys put into the research and then presentation of the facts
Is so appreciated.
Brilliant as always
Thanks for what you do.
Quality over Quantity -- SO TRUE. Many motorcycle coaches mention that folks who have been riding extensively for 10-30 years or more still struggle with the most basic maneuvers like U-turns, figure-8s, low-speed skills, etc. Why? Like you said, rather than taking classes and improving the RIGHT skills, they have extensive experience ingraining and reinforcing the WRONG habits by repeatedly doing things the wrong way. U. S. Legislators, take note -- reduce the hourly requirement and replace it with experience relevant to the certification being sought.
As a pilot who’s working in the U.S who previously had a Frozen ATPL from a flight school in Europe, I must say that I was shocked when I started flying in the U.S.
Many CFIs had zero knowledge and skills, their training is very poor and they just focus on building hours flying circuits around the airport.
I’m very thankful & grateful to the training I had in Europe, including my MCC & CRM.
Hey could you elaborate more ?
This is one of the reasons why this rule was implemented.
…and thanks to EASA silliness, you can also build a radio.
Now think about those instructors being hired into airline jobs at 4-600 hours. Because that’s what we got BEFORE the 1500 hour rule.
Totally agree. I would only add that having the least experienced pilots training the next generation of pilots actually makes aviation less safe. More than that, most CFI's now days are only doing it to build hours with little to no regard to the quality of the instruction that they are giving. I get students all the time with 20-50 hours that lake basic airmanship skills that they should have learned in their first 20 hours.
I love your analyses of the aviation industry. That last point of yours about training new pilots without the means really hit home for me. As a child, I wanted to be a pilot but coming from a background with little means, it wasn't something that I could do. The highlight of going back to the old country as a child was getting on the plane and having a chance to visit the cockpit. Now that I'm older, educated, and better off, I would love to take flying as a hobby. I hope that bringing awareness to the priciness of flight schools though, a young kid today won't have to settle for a plan B and let their dreams take flight 🙂
Very correct assessments Thanks for your perspective. Bureaucratic and political implementation of skill levels in occupations is suspect across the board. Aptitude seems a much better predictor of perfection and safety than arbitrary words put into legislation. I was Hired by a major air carrier in 1959. I was 24yrs old It was as third pilot, hired as flight engineer at the time which needed a certification as well as the required pilot certificates. The system was to work one's way to co-pilot (First Officer) and on to Captain through the seniority bidding system of established Union- Company contract As I recall to be hired, the company required at that time a commercial License, 2,000 hours of flight time, 2 years university and a second class medical. Applicant had to pass the staynine test ( a battery of tests that took about nine hours to complete) and a company physical exam, A personality assessment questionnaire and a face to face encounter with and evaluation by five people in various staff positions of the airline. The training and perspectives gleaned by years of observing the multitude of crews I flew with was a priceless boon to becoming a safe and competent pilot that retired at age 60.From propellers and 200ft. and half mile minimums to 747 automatic landings at RVR minimums. It was a nice ride.
One of the main problems with the flight instructor route is that flight instructors do very little hands on flying; their students do most of the flying..
I was literally about to post this, also some CFI's are there just to build time and can care less about giving quality training.
@@verge5384 As you know, flight training is expensive and you should expect high quality instructors. The results of time building flight instructors can be the difference between the student continuing or not continuing their flight training. I've had flight instructors who actually enjoyed instructing and they were excellent at their job. It makes such a huge difference..
No the real problem is most people are terrible teachers, but it’s the only job because general aviation is dead. So bad teachers make bad students, who then become bad teachers etc, etc.
@@AshleyWincer Me too ... I don't remember having a lazy or incompetent instructor, or one I wasn't impressed with and they all went on to become airline Captains eventually!
I looked into becoming a commercial pilot and when I did the math on how much it would cost me personally versus how much I stood to make, I realized there was no way I could make it work. Basically the same conclusion as this video. I’d have to go back in time and become a military pilot.
I think they will have to drop the 1500 hour requirement, it has choked off the pipeline. Or maybe they’ll do something wild like have just one pilot per plane to double the number of planes that fly. Or import foreign pilots with fudged flight histories.
Yeah, like those pesky Europeans, with no rules whatsoever
Or the airlines will have to start paying salaries that are enough to actually make the investment worthwhile....oh wait, that's already happening....because pilots are now in demand partially thanks to the fact that airlines can no longer just grab people fresh out of flight school for pennies an hour.
@@soffici1 Seriously, If I was a young USAnian with ambitions to be a pilot but unable or unwilling to join the military I would head straight to Canada or Europe. Training quality is at least as good, but it is a fraction of the cost and the pay and conditions are SO much better. You can get the bulk of those 1500 hours being paid for it.
Sigh, absolutely ZERO perspective of history here. The 1500 hour rule didn’t stop the pipeline, the airlines turning the job into one that no one wanted for a decade or more did that. Not all that long ago, you needed 3000-4000 hours total time to be even competitive for a job flying a Metro turboprop at a crappy regional airline making $20K per year, yet there were plenty of takers - because the ultimate payoff was worthwhile. Now this entitled generation thinks 1500 hours is too much time for right seat in a modern jet earning north of $100K per year. Cry me a river. There is a lot of intangible experience to be gained in that time, if you seek to be an actual airman and not just a dweeb airplane driver.
@@bradcrosier1332 Say it a little louder for the people in back.
As a guy who is trying to career change into flying, this whole process is frustrating. I have seen so many people make comments in random Internet places about struggling through flight school because they get a constant rotation of flight instructors.
I'm middle aged and "mildly successful" in life, so I can pursue this differently. I found a CFI who only teaches for fun with his own personal 172. My instruction quality feels very high (he also does aerobatics).
But once I move on from his instruction, I need to try and figure out the next step.
My goal is a career change. It doesn't have to be in the airlines, I just want to make enough money to be happy.
As a 52 yo student pilot about to embark on my CPL journey in January 2023, this video is resonating with me. I’m in Australia, where we sadly also have followed the US lead regarding the 1500 hour rule, and for what it’s worth, I think pilots in the US do at least have the advantage of much much cheaper flight training,coupled with far more opportunities (given the size of the aviation sector over there), than we here in Oz. Very interesting video as always, thank you.
There’s no 1500 hour rule in Oz. Just an over supply of pilots….
@@DJ99777
Apparently there is, according to several sources including the Australian parliament.
@@moviemad56 well please explain to me how the Rex and Jetstar cadetships work where pilots with 200 hours do their type rating and jump straight into the right seat of a SAAB or A320… I’d reckon I’d have heard of it being a pilot in the industry.
Arent you close to the mandatory retirement age after your training?
From Swinburne
"Becoming a commercial pilot for a major airline involves a lot of very important flight hours, which is why we are partnered with Qantas so that our students who are selected into the Qantas Future Pilot Program work towards their 1,500 hours through QantasLink - the airline’s regional brand."
Not implemented the same way as the US, but a 1500 hour rule there is.
You covered the issue very well, thank you! This is a very timely video in my case. I just got my IR and CP-MEL done at 250TT and now I'm facing the brick wall of finding my first paying gig. I really don't want to go the CFI route, it's just not for me. Any decent part91 opportunity in the area has higher TT insurance requirements (500-1000+). Even building up time for my CPL I really felt like I'm wasting time, money, and gas whizzing around in a 172 in familiar territory day after day with no particular job or mission at hand. Rental $ in my area (Phoenix, AZ) have increased like everything else. I've been paying $150-225 per hour web rates this year depending on how well equipped the plane is. Building up to 1500 hours at these rates is just unrealistic. There are tons of great pilots out there, able, ready, and willing, but simply unable to afford the time and money to continue down the aviation path. It's a real shame. There has to be a better way!!!
As someone who has put a lot of people through their commercial certs, there are a lot of people who *think* they are great pilots at 250 hours but they are almost universally not. You don't know what you don't know, and no one with that little time has enough real world experience with weather and being in the system to actually do a real flying job.
Suck it up and go instruct until you can get 500 hours. Then go do pipeline patrol or something.
@@bonchie1 Not arguing that at all. Most commercial pilots with fresh certificates know very little about real world flying. I'm just saying that it's not the total time in the air that makes you a good pilot. It's quality training and exposure to real world scenarios. At 250TT pilots don't know much, but they can get their CFI and teach others??? How does that make sense? I've flown with several CFIs with over 1500 hours that really didn't seem like they knew what they were doing, yet others with as little as 500 hours that were a wealth of knowledge, sharp, and on point every step. I'm at about 400 hours now. Do I feel like I know a lot more about real world commercial operations than I did at 250? Absolutely not. I go flying almost daily picking my weather and destinations, as well as my schedule... etc. All the 1500 hour rule does is delay the real world training for pilots that are ready and willing to learn now, while feeding the stalled, money hungry training industry, while wasting tons of fuel and ozone. Should a fresh commercial pilot be trusted with a complex flying job out the door? Hell No! But they should be able to train towards a specific flying job in the environment and equipment that they will be trusted to work in the near future. A friend of mine in a different country started training around the same time I did last year. She's off flying A320s because she was taken on by an airline and trained further for an FO position right after getting her CPL. While here in the US I must either get my CFI and teach others (while I don't know anything myself yet), or take on another mortgage renting Cherokees for a year or two at $200/h. wet.
On top of that most airlines require you to have a bachelor's degree. So $50-70k on a bachelor's degree plus getting your GA license followed by other certifications like instrument, multi engine, turbine, etc. Then followed by the ridiculous 1500 hours. Airlines are starving themselves. I don't feel bad for them I feel bad for the people like me who's dreams have either been crushed completely or made very very difficult.
Not a fixed-wing guy myself, instead I’m an ATP-H helicopter guy, but being American my transition into the working world was much the same as you are talking about here.
Back in the early 80s when I was a newbie pilot the deal was that you could often get jobs flying piston engine machines but you couldn’t get into the turbine-powered world until you reached 1,000 (not 1,500) hours. At the time, this rule, so I was told was stipulated by the insurance industry more often than the employers themselves. I myself began my career as a CFI and was able to get into the turbine world early with a bit over the 600 hour mark as a Co-pilot for a company operating twin-engined helicopters for a helicopter airline in NYC. Great video
Thanks for sharing! 💕
Great breakdown. I’m a student at a part 61 school for PPL and though they do have a lesson plan it doesn’t feel very structured. Even so plane availability is quite limited so sometimes lessons don’t happen for weeks and my skills decline costing more time and money. Fortunately I’m doing this only for myself not an aim for airline career. Strange instructors get multi engine and all their other complex ratings then spend hundreds of hours typically in a small single engine teaching students. By the time they go for ATP all that training was a long time ago.
Another great video. One thing I did not know was that a flight instructor does not have a minimum requirement of hours or experience. That seems a bigger issue. I would expect an instructor to have a wealth of knowledge and experience. Your thoughts.
The Colgan Air crash was due (in part) to pilots getting too many hours, not too few. Yet this policy would seem to push pilots to overwork themselves. Besides, lots of hours flying the same route in calm conditions is a poor substitute for training for unexpected situations.
Which is where Petter makes his training work, as he takes the familiar flights and slowly introduces different situations, all leading to a better outcome for his students. Then a great deal of refresher training to make sure they keep on doing it correctly.
Total pilot error, almost unbelievable. Stall warning and pulling back on the yoke , cosmically and fatally dumb.
No what killed that dufus was the lack of actually flying the airplane, When all you do is let the auto pilot fly, things will go bad when things go wrong. I recall a pair of Air France guys flying there airliner right into the south Atlantic!
Wrong. The ck pilot was commuting from WA state to NY across the country overnight because she couldn’t afford to live in NY on her $20k salary. The 1500 hr rules has raised pay since it choked off supply of 250 hr pie eyed kids willing to work for $20k.
@@GeorgeSemel so you are saying that "pull yoke, plane go up, push yoke plane go down, yoke to the left plane goes left, yoke to the right, plane go right" = flying?? That's just the exact thing that a high timer low experience pilot would say, the pilot who thinks he has great experience but actually haven't flown in less than stellar conditions 😂 or or the kind of a hotshot driver who boast that he drives a manual and thinks he's the greatest driver in the world but fails to see that ALL professional racers use automatics on their racecars.
This hits close to home. Thanks for another good take!
The US government is excellent at identifying a problem, and then passing a law to make people feel good even if it makes the problem worse.
Here in Canada we don’t have the 1500 hr rule. First officers on a regional are making minimum wage. Do you really want the pilot on your next flight to be surviving on ramen and have had no sleep because he had to commute from the opposite end of the country where the cost of living is cheaper?
It seems like a lot of people are conflating this rule with the terms and conditions of the pilot workforce. That’s a completely different discussion. A discussion i actually covered in one of my earlier videos.
In this video I’m asking if this rule increases safety (which was its purpose) and there are NO signs that it does.
@@MentourNow No, it's not a completely different discussion. The video is about the 1500 hour rule and its effects on safety but you neglected to address key elements that would have likely *prevented* the Colgan accident. You argue that the "pilot shortage" i.e. lack of pilot supply and over-demand is purely a bad thing (conversely, it can only be a good thing up until a point). What this commenter has highlighted is that in the absence of a 1500 hour rule, an oversupply of pilots can arise (this was the case in the US in 2009) which has been happening here in Canada for quite some time. An oversupply of pilots means that your wages can stay low, and your working conditions punishing, there is no incentive for an airline to make their company desirable from a compensation or work/reserve/commuting rules perspective. They can hire all the way down to 200 hour flight school graduates, so even if you think the conditions are abhorrent, there are 10 fresh CPLs lined up willing to take your place.
That rule has increased safety. Absolutely. Just not in the way it was designed to. Look at the lifestyle of your average American regional pilot now. When Colgan happened, people were being paid starvation wages, jumpseating cross country to show up for work fatigued (that's exactly what Renslow and Shaw did). No money to even get a crashpad or a hotel to rest. How safe are you going to feel when you discover your malnourished FO jumpseated through 3 time zones overnight and took a 20 minute nap in the crew room before reporting for duty? I would love to hear your answer.
That is happening here in Canada too, I fly commercially here and I have been through all that. It is a function of pilot supply, I have watched the regionals first hand lower their experience requirements and in many cases issue pay cuts almost simultaneously. If you work for a decent company you can at least book off for fatigue and not be questioned about it. If the travelling public knew what our flight crews put up with they would throw a fit.
@@MentourNowI agree, it's possible to have a competent pilot that has just finished training just as it is possible to have with an experienced pilot. What the 2010 FAA Extension Act removes, is the diminished responsibility that an inexperienced pilot could exercise. The legislation is a step in the right direction, wish it was here in Europe.
My daughter just started an aviation degree at a great university in the US. She already has her private pilot, so she is ahead of most of her cohort, but even so she may not be able to cram all the necessary flight time in in 4 years to get all her ratings. AND THEN she has to fly for many many hundreds more hours. What ends up happening is kids essentially do “work study” once they get their instructor rating and start working to train the freshmen. For example, a very sweet 20 yo college student taught my 17yo to fly at a university and in a couple years my daughter will be doing the same for other young(er than her) college students. And even then…we have had many discussions about how she can earn enough hours to work at an airline.
One option they push hard is military service (including Air National Guard) for a few years. My daughter was already planning on entering the Air Force, but it shouldn’t be the first option they are offering flight students. It’s HARD to get your hours in. And expensive.
It should be more possible for pacifists to become pilots.
Why is it not more common for this aspiring pilots to go out of the country to get their hours?
Ofc it's not very efficient
@@Suddhadeep moving to another country is a huge, expensive undertaking. And it’s not like I’m going to send my 21 yo just anywhere, you know? Europe is out because getting a work visa is impossible. I’m not sending her to Asia to live alone as a single woman who only speaks English. Where else could she go where safety is a priority (personal and aviation safety) or even feasible for a young person? Remember that most of these brand new pilots are in their early 20s with student loans in the tens of thousands of $$. Some even have $100,000 in debt for their university degree+flight training. How would they pay to move somewhere else if the problem is they don’t have the money to get the hours they need? You know what I mean?
@@viceroybolt3518 I totally agree. What ends up happening is kids grind out their hours doing gig work like skydiving or instruction. It takes years to earn the 1,500 hours. My nephew is going the private flight school route and he has his instructor’s license. He’s 21 and he basically spends all his time cranking out flights and trying to maximize the hours he can count.
Well almost all commercial pilots of the past came from the military. I’m not paying for your daughters flying
G,day Captain Petter from Sydney Australia.
I feel reassured that the commercial aviation industry will get talented people into the roles of first officer (FO) with ease.
🌏🇭🇲
As an aviation student studying a Bachelor of Aviation including ATPL theory and CPL flight training, you are spot on in your commentary. What we need is top notch training organisations utilising the best instructors, techniques and latest safety theory. This is not just a problem in the U.S. Qantas group in Australia just advertised for over 200 first and second officer roles earlier this year. However the minimum requirements even for a 2nd officer is 500 hours multi-engine time. This is very difficult to achieve, especially as these single pilot operations are being phased down in Australia and replaced by regional RPT jets. Furthermore, your comment on recency and quality of experience is spot on. Not all hours are equal. I have observed some new CPL pilots learning bad and risky habits for instance flying glider tugs and agricultural work, where the standards are WAY LOWER than what the legislation and rules require, and what we have been trained as part of the Bachelor program at my flight school. Yet these pilots will be the first to be hired by the airlines, as they have the minimum hours required. Furthermore, your comment about making aviation training financially ACCESSIBLE is very pertinent. I know many friends who have their private pilot license and would make excellent commercial pilots, who are not willing to take on the $150,000 debt required for the training and degree program. This debt is crippling and a huge sacrifice, as it makes it completely impossible to get a mortgage for a house for instance. We need a big shake up! If airlines have a shortage of pilots, then they are the ones who need to fund and administer excellent pilot training. This used to be the case in Australia decades ago, but it is not confined to just 2 airline direct entry programs - Qantas in Tawoomba QLD and Rex in Wagga Wagga (which is actually out-sourced to another training organisation). The airlines need to directly invest in new pilots, and not simply rely on them to get experience doing often risky and low-value hour building, which would be much better spent in the airline simulator or as a 2nd officer.
Absolutely fantastic and important video Mentour! Been loving and benefiting from your content for years. This video applies to my life exactly. Want to thank you in person someday Petter for being my mentor.
-Theo, a watcher of your videos to a commercial pilot.
Go get more hrs kid. 1500 hrs to be precise
Just fly up and down a bit without a challenge or learning anything until you've grinded the necessary hours. You're probably be a good pilot then. Makes perfect sense...
If that is the attitude, then you have no business in the cockpit.
If you find a rental place that you can get 1000+ hours without having any problems for all that flight time, you’re dreaming. Rental fleets are full of surprises that teach you things.
What could go wrong?? 🤣 🤣 🤣
I only just found out you had this second channel - it's good!
It wasn't the Colgan Air captain's lack of experience that caused the crash: it was the system that allowed him to gain employment that caused it. There needs to be a centralised database detailing the significant events in the pilot's training and career, that potential employers can refer to. In Australia, employers in all industries can require police record checks and working with children checks. Airlines should be able to check the history of potential pilots.
Vetting is the most important process in all fields but most importantly when it comes to aviation. Skill can not be taught and experience does not determine skill. As a heavy machine operator I see first hand how it works. I sit beside operators during certification that have no business near a machine but are passed because finding someone else would be a "hassle". I have trained and tried to assist many. Long story short, I can identify in three minutes whether someone has aptitude and skill or just knowing the moves, until a unforeseen incident and relying on skill or just motion without knowledge.
...and now imagine, you could only hire people who've worked for a couple of years with a battery-powered screwdriver. Surely the experience with that tool and all the habits they developed with it will help them safely operate your machinery? ;)
I flew Medical evacuation missions in the high arctic for many years prior to joining a major canadian airline. To suggest that experience was irrelevant or even regressive is an interesting piece of doublespeak. There are things I learned in that environment that are invaluable - and I take them to work with me every day.
It actually is, when you consider what politicians and the GP consider "experience" and how it is applied overall. What you as a trained and qualified ATP consider experience (flight hours in poor weather conditions, or safe handling in emergencies) is a heck of a lot more valuable than what the desk fliers in Congress and the general public considers experience (raw flight hours in general).
@@Dumbrarere - Ben is EXACTLY correct, it’s low-quality candidates who only wish to meet the bare minimums that are the problem. A better solution would be a 1500 hour requirement with a maximum of 500 hours of dual given which can be counted towards the 1500 hours.
@@bradcrosier1332 Or scrap the 1500 hours requirement altogether, and require 500 hours in IFR conditions and at least five successful simulated emergency landings.
@@Dumbrarere 5 simulated emergency landings? You mean a WEEK of normal flight training?😅
@@Dumbrarere - 5 simulated emergency landings?!? I’ve done that in one simulator session routinely, so no - not even close. 500 hours actual IFR? Okay, I’ll buy off on that - but you’ll have a LOT more that 1500 hours total by the time you hit that mark for 98+% of people.
Here’a another negative aspect of the 1500 hour rule. I help to run a flying club. We have 2 Cessna 150s. We have a relatively open membership (we are not an equity club). Most people join to earn their license and then move on to fly faster or more capable aircraft. Others stay on because our members can fly for much less that anywhere else and are happy to be in a 150.
The problem is that our low rates are attracting people who are looking to build time toward the 1500 hour requirement. We had one such member who monopolized the aircraft, making it hard for other members many of who were just looking to get their 50 or so hours needed to pass their check rides. We had to institute a maximum number of hours per month rule.
I’m also a member of abother flying club where two of our members were on a career track while the other members were casual flyers. The rate at which we had to do maintenance had a negative effect on the availability of the aircraft on any given day. Those members have sold their shares and the monthly usage of the aircraft has dropped dramatically.
It has also driven up the cost of training aircraft. Aircaft that a typical career-oriented pilot wouldn’t fly for an advanced rating, such as the 150, are now seen as cheap ways to build hours. In the last three years the market price of a 150 has almost doubled.
While it can be argued that time in light planes tends to build stick-and-rudder skills, such time does nothing for the skills and experience needed to operate in a moden jet cockpit.
Ah, the classic requirement of 3-5 years of experience for an entry level job!
Can you make a video of how an US commercial pilot with only 250hrs can go to a different country for airlines without needing the 1500hrs?
This would be interesting.
Although some companies tend to be resistant to sponsoring visas for low time pilots, it is a hassle vs value issue. Same reason that export products were traditionally the highest quality tier, the added cost of shipping would be a smaller proportion of the base cost, keeping the product final price somewhat competetive.
And some other companies you just don't want to work for because of pay structure or poor safety culture.
I was thinking of asking this myself. One of the main problems that stops most people from taking the same job in another country is probably language. Yet, it is a fact that the official language of Aviation is English so the average American would not suffer taking a pilot job within a foreign based company. I don't know if pilots are not allowed to fly to the United States territories if they don't meet this law, but there's plenty of the rest of the planet to fly over. And while there are plenty of airlines in the world with poor safety records, there are a great deal more with perfectly fine records, that aren't U.S. carriers, for people to get employment with. So a simple solution to the problem is get experience with other airlines, and come back to the U.S. airlines when you have bigger clout with to bargain your contracts...
Unrealistic. I have multiple European friends from flight school here in the US. They are all looking for a way to stay here because getting a job at an airline there is really hard even if you don't have the 1500 hour rule. They all would rather stay here as flight instructors to get 1500 hours than going to Europe with 250 because they know they won't get a job. You go into most European airlines websites and most of them say are not hiring. Here every single one of them is hiring. Is the 1500 rule annoying? yeah but I prefer getting payed little money as a flight instructor for two years to then get a job guaranteed at the airlines than not having the 1500 rule but looking for a job for years.
@@trighap It's all collective bargaining in the USA, the only gain would be the in the application and interview.
@@SZD06564 You are 100% correct! Finally someone with common sense and knows the REALITY of what’s happening! Thank God for the 1500 hour rule. Without it, as an older person changing my career, I would have not chance in aviation at all!!
As a rotor wing student it is weird to see one of the biggest issues in aviation not apply to me at all.
Not a pilot yet but I agree 100% Awesome content! Great work!
This is very much like the 3-5 years of experience potential employers ask for. In reality six months is all you need.
The difference is that normal employers don't go to jail if they hire someone with not enought experience. Airlines would as a minimum loose their licence if they broke the regulations.
So if you start training in March, you think you’re good to fly an airline by September having never seen a winter?
Great video on a great point, the emotional rule change that could possibly change the whole industry.
It kinda sounds like the F1 Super License, which at the moment is literally standing in the way for a great F2 driver to join F1.
On that same token, Max Verstappen, who did not have the required points when joining F1 is now the current champion.
He will meet the requirements unless he gets a penalty in the F2 race tommorow. Anyway it would be stupid if he had to cancel his F1 contract, because of the superlicence.
As a student pilot, this was the best explanation of the 1500 rule that I’ve ever heard.
Another point on the undergraduate gpa thing. This is entirely unfair as not all degrees are equal. Im working on a degree in physics and the fact that someone who got all A's in a criminal justice will get preferable pick over a C physics student is entirely idiotic. This problem exists in the military too. People who choose stupid easy degrees that require almost no study are getting picked over people in the stem fields that have lower GPAs because we have to learn levels of mathematics that are scarcely comprehendible to and overwhelming majority of the population.
Speaking as Student Nurse. Need 200 hours, and I will say that 200 hours isn’t enough for training… Most nurses don’t give your opportunity to do any work, since they have to monitor you, and it’s on them if you make a mistake. So you become a observer which is just managing the stress.
Where do you need 200 hours?
After your previous video.. it was obvious.. that you might have already put together a rather direct take on this.
(As in what you think of the 1500 hour rule in U.S.A. ... versus how in the European countries there is more reliance on quality over quantity).
Thanks again for these analytical productions with nuanced insights... which even amateurs like us (from outside the aviation industry) can understand.
Cool to see all the LIFT Academy footage. I was a mechanic apprentice there for 30 months. Ik the majority of the people in those shots.
I can’t speak to the value of the rule but it encouraged my CFII to stretch out my flight training and skimp on my ground lessons which I think strongly contributed to my not passing my instrument checkride on my first try
When I got my first job as an FO in 1980 the minimum was 3,000 hours total time. This was in Australia and I firmly believe that the quality of pilot was enhanced by such experience requirements so I disagree with your conclusions.
Hello sir. I am a person who always dreamed about being a commercial pilot since childhood. I live in states now and I’m planning to go to a flight school. But achieving the 1500 hours is the biggest fear in me. I am not financially that stable unless I get a job as an instructor. I was wondering if I can get my pilot license from Europe and fly for airlines there and in future move to states and get a job here.
That's a interesting question does anyone know the answer?
Hours in EASA airlines don’t covert to FAA
@@Micg51 I think they do. It’s the FAA that doesn’t convert to EASA without 14 written tests….
The problem is the cost of training over there.
In theory you could do that.
You would still get your flight hours in the large passenger jets instead of crop dusting or ruining you bank account every day even more.
You just have to work thru the total Bureaucracy and the total paper jungle here.
But it can be done.
The best thing is, if you would move to Europe for a few years, work for an airline for some years here and get your flight hours in a real 737/A320 instead of a Cessna 182.
So you can earn money working, pay your training bills and save some money at the same time for your eventual return to the US some years later.
The English language test shouldn't be a problem as an american.
And you could in theory upgrade quite fast to 737/A320 captain in Europe.
A 19 year old First Officer together with a 26 years old captain in your A320/737 is something you can really see in Europe. 😁
Okay such a pairing on the same flight is not the norm...
But a F/O in their low 20's and/or
a captain in their late 20's is something quite common here in Europe.
Then after a few years you could return to the US and use the saved money from your job here to prepare for the exams to convert
your EASA licence to the FAA one.
In the long term that would in fact make more sense financially than crop dusting. Not talking about the fact that most of your flight hours would be on the large 737/A320 that you really want to fly the whole time, instead of the small Cessna 182.
You just have to work your way thru the big paper jungle and save money for the move to Europe and for flight school here. Some flightschools/airlines also give you a loan that you have to pay back after you have finished training.
So while you pay the money back with your salary every month you will clock flight hours in the A320/737 in the mean time.
It's just the ridiculous paper jungle that makes it so damn difficult, but it could be done if you have the patience for it.
Thanks for focusing on the importance of evidence-based policy making!
Thank you Mentor for making this video
Having a minimum number of flying hours makes sense *if* those hours are experience that's directly relevant to the type of flying done. I find it hard to believe that (after the first few hundred hours) flying a small plane like a Cessna 172 can make you a better jetliner pilot. And if those 1500 hours are accumulated without being in constant training and oversight, it would be very easy to establish bad habits that would have to be unlearnt.
1. The one change they made that was critical was stall recoveries didn’t have a quantifiable recovery altitude. It was subjective.
2. Arguably the best time for an airline is IFR and multi engine.
Except, that’s not what brought down that dash 8, so why should it matter? Plenty of non-fatal accidents happen (usually runway excursions) regardless and have multitudes if factors other than IFR involved. Unstabilized approaches? That gets even the most experienced pilots as we’ve seen, so mere experience isn’t good enough. What does help is SOPs
Hello Captain, thank you for another fantastic video. From my point of view, it's a good picture about the situation we are experiencing , specially about the cost of the initial training. But in my more than modest opinion, there's two variables we should take into account. The first one, the non-understandable "non-written" rule that almost all companyes applies regarding the age of the applicants, they seems reluctant of hiring pilot beyond 35 years if not type-rated. Seems like airlines likes only young, fresh cadets rather than someone who's been flying and working hard, just cause his/her age. And the second one, and perhaps the most important, it's the general refusing by the companies of funding the type rating, letting the candidate pilot with another bank loan. If we could focus energy in those two point, any shortage would strike again, never. And well...UPRT course were introduced few years ago, but it's nothing new. Better said, they removed stalls, incipient spin and upset of the BASIC course. When i did my PPL in 2003, full back stick stalls and spin recovery was basic syllabus, now it's another charge to pay about. Aviaton industry haven't addapt to itself, they didn't addapt to their own changes and their lacks means more money to pay for the student/applicant. Perhaps we should step back and see why some accidents started to happend again, and re-do the syllabus instead. Just let's think about: how's possible a 170 hours cadet becomes an instructor if he just became a pilot?? it's totally opposite what a CFI whould be..again, aviation industry didn't it well. To me, the 1500 hours rule it's not a senseless rule: there''s lots of human aspects that CRM, UPRT, Company SOPs etc could not cover, and it's matureness. It's a 23 years old type-rated able to fly a 737? yes. But let's see what this pilot thinks about his job after 15 years. If your very first job in your life has been flying a 737 you will never know what is waking up at 03:00 AM to download trucks, or going to work hard qith your own hands.. several Captains i know always highlite me the same point: young pilots with no previous experience (no just in flying but ANY job experience) lacks of the "thankfull" feeling of being in the cockpit after 3-4 years. Passing an assessment and knowing the SOPs doenst guarantee a long-therm pilot in the team. Happy flights! PS: just check this video, and let's see how the flight training used to be, and how its should be nowadays. th-cam.com/video/03ppjh8lg_8/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=PeriscopeFilm