An influential industry committee recommended Thursday that the Federal Aviation Administration eliminate or scale back dozens of safety rules, including one on airline pilot qualifications.

The FAA's Aviation Rulemaking Advisory Committee said the recommendations are a response to an effort by the agency to comply with President Donald Trump's directives to cut government regulations. The committee approved a report containing the recommendations by a vote of 14 to 4 with one abstention.

Pilots unions and safety groups oppose the recommendation on pilot qualifications, saying it would undermine safety. Regional airlines have been trying to roll back the pilot qualifications rule since it was adopted by the FAA in response to a sweeping aviation safety law passed by Congress after the last fatal crash of a U.S. passenger airliner.

Lawmakers said at the time that they were concerned about reports in the wake of the crash of Colgan Flight 3407 in February 2009 near Buffalo, New York, that some rapidly growing regional airlines were hiring first officers with far less experience than pilots at major airlines. All 49 people on board and a man on the ground were killed after the captain responded incorrectly to safety systems, causing the plane to stall.

After the crash, lawmakers increased the minimum number of flight hours first officers must have in order to obtain a license to fly commercial passenger airliners to 1,500 hours, the same as captains, leading to more experienced first officers.

Before that, airlines were allowed to hire first officers with as few as 250 hours of flying experience. Some airlines would move first officers into a captain's seat as soon as they had the minimum 1,500 hours of flying experience.

The report recommends permitting pilots with less than 1,500 hours to qualify for an "air transport" license if they receive academic training from their airline.

Airlines say the current rule is acerbating a pilot shortage that has caused some regional carriers to cancel flights. The problem, they say, is that it can cost prospective pilots as much as they might pay for a four-year college education to acquire the greater flying hours they now need to qualify for an air transport license. As a result, fewer people are willing to pursue careers as pilots.

Faye Malarkey Black, president of the regional airline association, said the proposed changes would incorporate more meaningful education into pilot training than mere flight hours.

"Far from weakening safety, it's one of the most important things we can do right now to advance pilot training," she said.

Airline pilot unions and safety advocates say the problem is regional airlines don't pay high enough entry-level salaries to attract as many pilots as they need.

"UPS and FedEx have good pay and benefits and thousands of highly qualified pilot applicants," the National Air Disaster Foundation, a safety advocacy group, said in a dissenting opinion to the committee's report. "There is only a pilot shortage of pilots able to work for $25,000 a year."

The Air Line Pilots Association International also opposed opposes the change, saying in its dissenting opinion that the pilot supply in the United States remains strong. Chad Balentine, an ALPA representative and member of the committee, said reducing the required entry-level flight hours would "jeopardize safety."

A group representing the families of victims of the Colgan crash said in a statement last week that regional airlines have taken their case to the advisory panel "to bypass the legislative process where they have run into considerable resistance."

In June, the Senate Commerce committee passed a bill that included a provision allowing prospective airline pilots to substitute academic training for flying hours. Opposition to the provision from Democrats has prevented Republicans from bringing the bill to the floor for a vote.

The report also recommends 53 other changes to safety rules, include regulations governing the strength of hinges, emergency exit markings and whether ashtrays should be required in restrooms since smoking isn't allowed on planes.

LINK

This ending the so called pilot shortage.

Siding with Schumer on this one. Republicans on the committee are retards.

It looks like they are coming up with a way to have another R-ATP.

I guess 1000 hours if "professionally trained" at an airline.

Something like that.

It was the US Congress that mandated through legislation an ATP to fly for a 121 carrier. All the regulations are built around that law. Nothing is going to change in the next few years.

Who wants to be the Congressman or Senator trying to get reelected after the first pilot error crash after said elected official is blamed for not erring on the side of safety?

They have already outlined it, well the Regional airline lobby has outlined it and R's on this committee are rubber stamping anything they say.

Something like 300hr TT with 50 hours of sim or 600tt with and 20 hrs sim. Basically 250tt and a wink from your nearest regional.

How could they possibly go that low? The lowest R-ATP is 750, and they wanted 500hrs for military and that failed.

I know that certain airlines are lobbying HEAVILY to get this rule at the very least deminished.

Frankly at this point the place I work will hire any pilot that they can get to fog a mirror if they meet the FAA minimums.  They may not make it through training but they'll give them a chance.  That means extra sim time and possibly well over 100 hours of IOE.  

Prior to these new rules they could be much more selective with who they hired.  And I believe they hired a better pilot even if they only had 1000 hours.  (Which were our minimums up until that point) IOE was typically done under 40 hours.  50 hours  was the limit.  The weak weren't kept around.

I will say the guys coming out of the University Aviation programs are good to go.

YAY!  back to the days of taking off on the wrong runway, stalling a perfectly functioning aircraft, climbing too high and flaming out both engines, and minimum wage for pilots.  It won't help the "shortage" tho.  Maybe they should push for multi crew licensing (like the fancy Europeans have) that would make them a shit ton of money....what's a 777 full of people being stalled into the ground when it comes to profits?

Its so blatant. Merely a few years after the Colgan crash and hearings, we are back to where we started.

Because of money.

Nothing more.

Send a letter to your representatives.

It's funny because it won't help the regional airlines fill pilot seats.  The dirty little secrets of the regionals are in the open, people know that the immense cost to get all the training to work their shit job for shit pay with shit hours in shit bases with the glimmer of hope to "pass thru" to a major (and start all over)  is bullshit for most.  The juice isn't worth the squeeze.  They have to raise the pay it is a basic, simple free enterprise concept they don't want to embrace.  Instead they try and play silly games like "retention bonus" and "congress needs to pass a law"

The highest hourly wage out there right now is $41 for a starting FO. They are only now paying above food stamp wages.

Yet they almost all have at least a 10k bonus, if not way more.

And they still need bodies.

Exactly; The enabling legislation set down the standards, no advisory committee will be able to change the law through federal regulation changes. This is wishful thinking by the RAA. The RAA knows that because of the lack of capacity in the sky and on the airports, the only place for growth is in larger gauge airplanes. Theirs is a business model that is unsustainable.

In simpleton terms: Too many airplanes, not enough runways.

Airline pilot unions and safety advocates say the problem is regional airlines don't pay high enough entry-level salaries to attract as many pilots as they need.




This is the real answer . I used to manage the truck shop for an armored car company in Atlanta. We had a regional pilot working for us part time. He made as much money making $12 an hour working for us as he did flying a regional carrier airplane. He needed the money also to pay flight school debt and knew where the free clinics were in many cities.

I get more than that.

This is the only reason why I have not gone ahead and become a pilot. With a good paying career right now and a family with bills, I could not afford to take out a 150k loan just to earn 40k and a hope to fly for the majors.
Interested to see where this goes.

Three years ago you would have made half of that. I'm very curious to see where this profession goes in another three years.

But you've hit the nail on the head. The amount that you have to spend these days to even start in this profession is cost prohibitive to the average applicant AND there is no guarantee that you will-

1) have what it takes. whether it be hand/eye co-ordination, situational awareness ect
2) won't wash out on some training event, career ended
3) have some medical issue down the line that you may not even be aware of or have no control over, career ended
4) don't have the combination of talent, people skills and pure dumb dumb luck to make in to a Major and the computer algorithm just doesn't seem to shine to you

If you can negotiate the mines fields, then maybe you can get a job at some place decent. Now today.

Again, very curious to see this industry in the nest couple of years

I’m pretty much indifferent on this one.

I really believe that flight hours alone don’t make the pilot.  I was the PIC of a jumbo jet flying around the world at well under 1000 hours.  On the other hand, I’m not sure 1500 hours tooling around in a Cessna 152 makes someone ready for the airlines.  But, I suppose they’d have to make a minimum and it has to be somewhere.  The ironic thing is that the crew that crashed 3407 had well over 1500 hours.  

Either way, I already have 1500 hours and an ATP and I’m already working at the last job I’ll ever work at, so I suppose in the grand scheme of things, I don’t care if they lower the required hours or not.

Next stop, Multi-Crew Pilot license!

If anyone needs to know how we got RJs, here is your post.

The part 121 fatality stats before and after the 1500 hour rule are pretty hard to ignore.  Flight time itself doesn't make the pilot, experience does....how do we measure experience in aviation?  Flight time.  The question about the crew that crashed 3407 is...what additional experiences would they have had they been required to have 1500 hours before they flew for the commuters?  What the regionals were doing was down right abhorrent.  It took .gov intervention to force them to stop (and I'm not a big fan of .gov intervention)

Yay...three pilots can watch an airplane stall together.  At least the airlines can be more profitable.

As a person who saw the regulatory capture that the Colgan family had, it was as much an indictment of the whole system, as just the regional airline industry.

"We fixed it." - Phil Trenary

I know of no career field where rising to the top is guaranteed.

After a strike that lasted several months at Northwest Airlines in the early 1970's, Donald Nyrop, the CEO, did not grown the airline again until the last 180 or so of the furloughed pilots recall rights expired. A University study of those pilots showed that 25 years later that those pilots had out performed economically the pilots who returned to the airline. I don't cite this to make the point that being an airline pilot was not a good career choice. Only to point out that the very traits that got those men (they were all men) to the airline in the first place carried them to success in life in other fields.

You pay your money, take your chances, and hope for a few breaks along the way. Just because you buy some flying lessons, does not guarantee you a job as a B747 or B777 Captain. Or that an MBA guarantees you the position of CEO at any company that hires you.

You're absolutely not wrong.  I don't think there is more of an entitlement mentality in aviation than in any other field, but I do wonder sometimes if it is more visible there.

What does that mean?

Remember that Asiana flight in which 3 pilots watched the aircraft stall itself into San Francisco bay airport?  That's what multi crew means.

Instead of raising pay, the airlines are showing if they whine enough, they can push through regulatory changes to keep their cost of labor in line, and try to restore some negotiating leverage.

Internationally, the mechanism is the MCL, where guy gets very little flight time, and nearly no solo flight time, but lots of sim and observation. Its cheap, and for the airlines, good enough.

The airlines are willing to accept a higher number of fatal accidents to keep pay low and profits higher.

According to the American guy with whom I spoke, who was in a position to know, most majors budget for a hull loss per year.

Awhile back I posted an article quoting the AF Chief of Staff lobbying the FAA and airline execs for this exact thing. Theory being that if the hours requirement is lowered, the airlines will have a larger hiring pool. Thus decreasing demand for ex-mil pilots, and in doing so, help alleviate the AF's pilot shortage. Wonder if that came in to play.

Well, it certainly didn't hurt.

Its not the 1500 hr or experience requirements thats the problem. Its the cost to get thoes hours. 130 bucks a hour starting out for flight training is stupid.

Helicopter training is 2-3x that much, and good jobs for them start at 1500hrs as well..

It is insane.

In 1999, competitive mins for Air Wis were 3500 hours.

Now its 1500hrs and fogging a mirrior

Back in 1989 when I got hired at my first "commuter" I was the low time guy in my class, with just shy of 1800 hours TT.  50% of our class washed out before becoming line qualified.  How things have changed.

I don't believe that total flight time is the best qualifier, but it's a good start.  All thats going to happen if they relax the flight time requirements is the pay and benefits will be driven back down.  I do think they should give more credit for helicopter time, though.  When I worked in recruiting, the best two sim evals I ever saw (in a 707 sim, no less) were rotor guys.  One was Navy CH-46, and the other was CHP.

Airlines are starting to see the light with helicopter guys. Finally.

Modern helicopters are just as (or more) complex than most lighter aircraft, and have modern avionics, so I never really understood what the big deal was.  My training partner on the 73 was a harrier guy.  First person I've ever met with a powered lift rating.

IMG_0337 by Austin Scott, on Flickr

Yea, I had 5 giant MFDs, 2 CDUs, it has a fully coupled autopilot. I can shoot ILS, RNAV, VOR, TACAN, etc approaches.

Its a 777 with 2 rotors

I always would dream about flying for an airline while I was in high school. Cost too much money for me so I got a A&P instead. Been doing it for 12 years. Thinking about taking the first step and going for a private license.

Helo guys were far from an unalloyed good at the places I've worked out. They have their own quality spread.

Im not saying we are good. Im just glad you can actually apply helo time. Above ETL they fly the same. Yet still an airline or two equates helicopter time with FE or WSO time.

Idiots.

Military multiplace aircraft have tiered positional hours requirements.
Makes sense to fleet up from position to position.

But don't abandon it all together.

Instead of 1500 how about 750.

Without exception, the former helicopter pilots I flew with at Northwest were the smoothest pilots we had on the line. Yet, myself, like all other rotor guys were looked down upon by a couple of the pilots assigned to do hiring interviews. Interesting to me was that the one person who was the most condescending, I learned after I was hired came onboard with 1400 hours of C-172 time and less than 250 hours of multi-engine piston experience in her log book.

What is interesting to me is that right now, the three regional airlines my retired buddies are teaching at are all experienceing 35-50% wash out rates with both new hires and Captain upgrades.

It's not just the flight hours folks, it's also the lack of a real world foundation of experience needed to draw upon when a pilot is in the training pipeline.

Jesus

Where is this at? Just curious.

Yes. Experience, work ethic, and leadership all play a factor. If you're weak on one, you better bring it on the others.