Advisory Panel Would Relax Rules for Co-Pilot Experience

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: The Wall Street Journal.

Advisory Panel Would Relax Rules for Co-Pilot Experience

A proposal is likely to rekindle long-running safety debate about mandatory flying hours

By Andy Pasztor

[email protected]

Sept. 2, 2016 5:30 a.m. ET

U.S. airlines would be able to hire new pilots with far less cockpit experience than currently required under a proposal aimed at addressing a staffing shortage that is likely to rekindle a debate over aviation safety. ... Certain military pilots with as little as 500 hours of flying experience would be allowed to become commercial co-pilots, according to people familiar with the details, compared with the mandatory at least 750 hours required today. That is already down sharply from the minimum of 1,500 hours set for typical non-military pilots in 2013.

The proposal comes from a joint industry-labor group created by the Federal Aviation Administration to help it draft new regulations amid worries by the airline industry that there aren’t enough pilots to keep up with demand. None of the recommendations have been released, and further details are expected to remain confidential until top FAA officials decide how to proceed.

Co-pilots, who are sometimes called first officers, without a military background or an academic degree related to aviation would still need at least 1,500 hours of total flight time to be eligible to be hired by carriers, said the people familiar with the panel’s proposals. The committee, which includes representatives of pilots, airlines and passengers, didn’t recommend any changes for requirements to fly as a captain. Captains need 1,500 hours among other requirements, but airlines usually require more flight time for them than federal minimums.

The proposals reflect escalating pressures many commuter carriers face in attracting and keeping enough pilots under existing regulations. Despite increased salaries and the introduction of signing and retention bonuses at some carriers, commuter airlines remain particularly vulnerable to pilot staffing shortfalls.

Read more: http://www.wsj.com/articles/advisory-panel-would-relax-rules-for-co-pilot-experience-1472808602

[dembotoz]

1. i have no experience as a co pilot but i once stayed at a holiday inn express

[Gidney N Cloyd]

2. Pilot shortage? Maybe they should try PAYING more.

[Major Nikon]

3. The main pay problem is with all the other jobs needed to get to that 1,500 hr point

It's extremely difficult to get to 1,500 unless someone is paying you to fly, and most of those commercial flying jobs pay very little and have a lot of demands.

[cpamomfromtexas]

4. Funny how Airlines don't like supply and demand working for "working people"

[haele]

6. Companies all want something for nothing in the new gig economy...

Don't want to pay for the training and maintaining the hours needed to keep specialty skills up; companies want pilots - and doctors, IT security specialists, and other professionals to spend the majority their pretty much flat pay to maintain certification requirements.

If they don't pay enough that a specialist can schedule the practice hours, training, and contemporaneous research to be able to keep doing his or her job at an expected level of quality, then it's pretty obvious that the quality of the actual product they're building their petty financial empires on isn't really a concern to them.
It's "just business". Who cares if the surgeon is overworked and not up to date on the latest information that improves the survivability factor in his patients, or if a plane crashes because the pilot is exhausted and the co-pilot only experienced a catastrophic engine failure in simulation once in the past five years?

Oh, it might be a bit of a publicity problem for a couple months, but if they've saved away enough money, they can buy off enough publicists and lawyers to weather the storm while they promise all sorts of lies to the understaffed regulatory agencies and screw the survivors in court.

Haele

[mrmpa]

7. Bingo............that's what I told my 86 year old mom.......

a week or so ago. It was when the two pilots showed up drunk to fly from London to the States. I told her that the pay is so low that some just don't care.

When I was growing up I had friends whose parents were pilots. Pay was excellent for the time. They lived in unbelievable homes & the kids all got private catholic education.

Most post WWII pilots had been trained by the military, so there wasn't a lot the airlines had to do in regard to training, etc. Now, military trained pilots have millions of dollars of training & the military doesn't want to give them up, so they get promotions which is more money & they can retire in their early to mid 40's with a decent pension.

A non-military pilot has to use their own money to learn to fly and gain the experience the airlines want. The pay they get sucks.

A couple of years ago a plane crashed in New York State, the pilot the paper reported made less than $30,000 a year. The plane if I remember correctly was a regional commuter owned by Delta.

[pangaia]

5. "...Co-pilots, who are sometimes called first officers,.."

Dumb as a rock.
They are first officers. The passengers call them 'co-pilots.

[TheBlackAdder]

8. Staffing shortages? Hmmm. Cut pay by 70%, increase hours by 200%, force congested corridors.