Originally Posted by
MSPeconomist
He might be the lone 737 pilot here too. I suspect that pilots rarely blame other pilots unless the other pilot deserves the blame.
ALPA does have a history of supporting self-serving ideas like inexperience caused the Colgan crash, thus the 1500 hour rule in the US. Pointing the blame at a young captain (29 years old) and brand new FO (c.200 hours) is in line with that view - although ab initio programmes put pilots safely into cockpits in the ROW with that experience (and into the USAF/ USN cockpits in the US) Actually, a properly structured ab inititio training programme, with strict entry and wash out criteria, such as BA/ LH/ USAF run, will likely produce better pilots than self financing pilots working their wy up an unstructured process of trying to build hours whereever they can - where as long as they can pay for hours, no-one will wash them out.
There's the romantic view that flying bugsmashers around for a few hundred hours on a wide range of aircraft allows people to 'see the elephant' and do 'real flying' before they get into a real plane - but I am not sure of any real evidence that that is better than an airline internal apprentice system