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FAA to Consider Lowering Pilot Qualifications, Scaling Back Aviation Safety Rules
Meg Butler September 18, 2017
An “influential industry committee” voted Thursday to recommend that the FAA eliminate or scale back dozens of aviation safety rules, including one on airline pilot qualifications.
The committee says that the recommendations come in response to President Donald Trump’s directives to cut government regulations.
Currently, commercial airline pilots must have 1500 hours’ flight time to get their commercial airline pilot’s license. The committee recommends allowing licensing with less than 1500 “if they receive acceptable academic training from their airline.”
To read more on this story, go to SFGate.
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FAA to Consider Lowering Pilot Qualifications, Scaling Back Aviation Safety Rules
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This is not wholly within the authority of the FAA. The 1,500 hour requirement is within the law establishing the mandate. If the FAA is going to relax the hours, it needs to be preceded by a revision to the underlying law. Secondly, reducing the hours is not necessarily backing down on safety. What needs to happen is an analysis determining training needed to achieve the desired level of competency.
This report is extremely misleading. It only takes 250-hours of flight time to obtain a commercial pilot's license. It takes 1,500-hours to obtain an Air Transport Pilot's ("ATP") license. The proposal is to return to what the law used to be: Captains must be ATPs. First officers must have a commercial license. The change requiring both to have ATPs resulted from the Colgan Air crash, which was irrelevant since both pilots on that flight had ATPs.
There are plenty of pilots available in the US available to work. There is however a shortage of pilots willing to work for 20,000 a year. The RAA wants to expand that pool.