Originally Posted by
acarney
Well I would be concerned if regs were opened up too much, piloting does strike me as one of those things that you really only learn through experience. I guess I kind of look at it like doctors, those guys are putting in massive amounts of training hours before being on their own. Now granted, I do think they participate in the treatment plan with oversight from Sr staff rather then being isolated away just "practicing".
So I guess you could argue then getting someone in the right hand seat faster with far less experience would be beneficial. But then I worry a little about having a single point of failure... if anything happens to that pilot your right seat guy is now really inexperienced.
Maybe more advanced flight systems has helped balance out that risk/reward zone though.
I certainly don't want airfare to get more expensive but I get the crushing level of debt and then bottom of the barrel pay when you enter in...
It shouldn't be about the quantity of experience, it should be about the quality. A single engine piston aircraft is very different than a modern airliner. If someone suggested doctors should spend 4 years on their own working on rodents to "gain experience" before they could could work with humans, people would think they were crazy. Sure there are similarities, and knowing the basics first is good, but otherwise there is not a ton of useful cross over experience that matters.
Bottom of the barrel pay is better than no pay while still spending a ton of money. I get that people are worried about pilots being paid too little, but forcing future pilots to go into a crazy amount of debt just to get a modest increase in starting pay is beyond ridiculous.