The FAA wants to raise the requirements for serving as a first officer with an airline from 250 hours to 1500 hours (with some special exceptions depending on your training.)  They would also need a type specific rating for the airplane they’re assigned to fly.

This move is supposed to be for safety and, in some ways, it would appear to have merit.  After all, how could more experience before becoming an airline pilot actually hurt anyone, right?

But there is a flaw in this idea that hasn’t really been adequately debated in public.  There hasn’t been a rash of accidents caused by inexperienced 1st officers.  To the contrary, there have been some rather inexperienced captains making mistakes or not even being up to serving as a captain but 1st officer mistakes aren’t being cited as the cause in airliner accidents here or abroad. 

More to the point, there haven’t been a rash of airliner accidents.  Year after year, the airline industry improves on its safety record and that’s a great thing.  It’s also a result of the already incredibly stringent training required at airlines all over.  Flying an airliner is an unforgiving task and if there was an epidemic of inadquate training or just a lack of experience, we would see more airliners crashes. 

I’m all in favor of more safety when its warranted.  In this case, I strongly question whether it is warranted.  In addition, think these new requirements will severely impact airlines with respect to staffing and costs and given the admirable record of the industry, I’m not sure it helps anyone with respect to safety or anything else. 

Make no mistake.  There will be accidents in the future and some will be attributed to pilot error.  That happens.  As a result of Captain Sullenberger and his co-pilot, we have this misinformed idea that there is no substitute for grey hair in the cockpit when it comes to safety.  It is true that what Capt Sullenberger did that day was accomlished in part as a result of his experience.  However, many other younger and nominally less experienced pilots have accomplished equally impressive results in other situations.  

Take a look at the British Airways Flight 38 incident at London Heathrow where in just moments a crew had to belly flop a Boeing 777 short of the runway and did so without fatalities.  It was the First Officer who was flying that aircraft. 

The primary driver in these new requirements is the Colgan Air / Continental Express crash in the Buffalo, NY area and that was a real tragedy.  The First Officer was thought to be severely fatigued (and may or may not have been) but what everyone tends to forget is that it was the Captain who made the real mistakes and that captain was allowed to continue as a captain despite poor performance that had been noted in his records during his career.  In other words, had basic airline policy been followed stringently, it’s unlike he would have flown as a Captain and it is likely that whoever might have flown in his place would have known to push the stick forward to recover from that stall since that’s a rather basic piece of knowledge known to pilots.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax