It’s being dubbed “the 1,500-hour rule.” The official title is "The Airline Safety and Pilot Training Improvement Act of 2009." This law, a congressional reaction to the Colgan crash in February 2009, directs the FAA to conduct rulemaking to modify the minimum requirements for airmen to serve as a right-seat crewmember in airline service. Co-pilot, second in command, or first officer, the law calls for a minimum of 1,500 hours’ flight experience for these air carrier pilots. The rulemaking, on the other hand, may allow for some exceptions. Either way, this requirement could have a significant impact on the industry.
The debate of the legislation’s merits has prompted loud discourse from both sides of the issue. Granted, the insinuation that total hours in a logbook equate to a safer aviator is not always a prudent line of thinking. One needs only to consider the many accidents the major airlines and their highly experienced pilots have experienced. Accidents continue to be a daily occurrence on highways despite drivers’ thousands of hours behind the wheels.
Legislators who fought for the bill said the law’s language explicitly requires 1,500 hours and any modifications must be justified by a resultant increase in safety. With that hint, an FAA advisory committee comprised of industry and government types has proposed that 500 hours may be enough. The legislation seems to allow some leeway in a provision that states that the FAA administrator “may allow specific academic training courses…to be credited toward the total flight hours required.” Roger Cohen, president of the Regional Airline Association, says that academic work is “far more useful in training pilots for modern aircraft” than hours spent “towing banners over the beach.” The committee’s two main pilot groups are divided, however. The Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) backs the committee’s recommendations; the Coalition of Air Line Pilot Associations supports experience over enhanced training.
If the question is truly about safety, the answer may very well be in the quality of training. The armed services have proven that a uniquely talented individual can be taken from zero time to the seat of a tactical jet in fewer than 350 hours if trained as a military aviator from day one. Sometime soon, flight academies, colleges, and universities may need to wake up and train their students to fly RJs and turboprops and not teach them how to become CFIs in Cessna Skyhawks and Piper Seminoles. San Juan College in Farmington, New Mexico, proved that concept for several decades using ab initio training, in which it molded young pilots into first officers for Mesa with just 300 hours.
If the 1,500-hour rule does take effect as written, there are other important ramifications. Under the veneer of safety lie other, less noble factors.
Not surprisingly, a major issue is money. Airlines worry that, if the FAA increases minimums, air carriers will be forced to raise pilot salaries and benefits to attract more experienced fliers—presuming they can find any. With the pilot population declining and the airline way of life now much less attractive, CEOs of air carriers both large and small will need to face the fact that financial and lifestyle conditions will need to improve dramatically to attract flight talent of any sort. It is said that lawmakers who proposed the bill hoped that it could prompt better pilot wages and treatment.
University flight schools are also thought to be concerned. If beginning pilots need to build 1,500 hours of flight time in their logbooks, they may skip those expensive institutions in favor of building experience through hourly instruction at the local aerodrome.
However, that conundrum may turn things around for the schools and become a boon. Collegiate or academy programs might affiliate with a specific carrier, develop a high-grade flight training curriculum that includes advanced levels of simulation devices approved by both the airline and the FAA, and train to that airline’s procedures and policies. And, yes, the airline should foot most of the bill for hardware. Better yet, both the airline and the school should consider recruiting the brightest freshmen and sophomores at the school, enroll them in the advanced airline professional curriculum right after earning the private pilot certificate, provide a scholarship or stipend for at least half the training costs, and guarantee a flying job at $30,000 annually to start in exchange for a seven-year contract.
Wishful thinking? The military and foreign carriers such as Lufthansa have recruited the best of the best, paid for their training, and promised a job at the training’s conclusion. There may come such a day out of necessity, as savvy individuals opt out of aviation as a career path because of initial expense, financial risk, the employment gamble, insensitive management, and an existence that is anything but stable. Otherwise, who will fly the flights?
The 1,500-hour rule just may have more positives than negatives. We can only hope.
