I recently wrote about Colgan Air Flight 3407's tragic accident. Although Colgan themselves seem to think they're fine and it's good enough to blame their pilots, the FAA has thankfully taken a better approach. As mentioned by the AOPA, the FAA has issued "an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM)" about airline pilot qualifications. As I see it, the document is basically saying, "We know something is wrong and we want to fix it, but we're not 100% sure how to start. Here are some ideas, please let us know what you think."

What an opportunity for us! Whether you hope to fly for a living under the policies that will come out of this, or you just want to make sure you are safe as an airline passenger, this is the best chance you'll ever get to put in your two cents on how airline pilot qualifications should work.

There are all kinds of ideas out there. The AOPA article also mentions a Call to Action released by the FAA. It's an enormous document and hits all kinds of areas. It has some interesting points in it though.

The most interesting part of that white paper to me was a white paper by the ALPA. Starting on page Appendix 9-15, they make several important comments. Overall, they note that life as an airline pilot kind of sucks lately. The pay and working conditions aren't as good, and there is little or no stability/security for airline pilots. As a result, experienced pilots don't want to work for the airlines anymore and fewer young people are pursuing this career path. This is leading airlines to accept pilots with increasingly lower qualifications. None of this leads to better working conditions or safer operations. It's definitely not going to be easy to figure this out.

Some of the FAA's proposals involve requiring an ATP (and the associated 1500 flight hours) for anyone flying an airliner. They realize that few people can afford to accumulate that many flight hours just to get a job as a first officer. They're looking at modifications to commercial pilot certificates requiring fewer than 1500 hours for first officers, but more than just regular commercial pilots. They're also considering giving flight hour credit for academic training at approved aviation colleges.

I think requiring more experience for a first officer is a good idea. I thing it should include specific requirements for training in icing, turbojet ops, flying with a crew, etc (as mentioned in the FAA's NPRM.) I think higher hour requirements are ok, but 1500 is far too many. 750 might even be too high. I'm not sure yet what I think about giving flight time credit for college classes. What does everyone else think about that?

I'm glad to see that the FAA is taking this problem seriously and accepting input from hundreds of thousands of pilots (and potentially millions of passengers.) No matter what rules end up getting written, I think they're sure to help keep airline passengers safer.

In case you're interested in commenting on the FAA's proposal here is the submission information copied directly from the AOPA website:

"Pilots can submit comments online; by mail at Docket Operations, M-30, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, Washington, DC 20590; by fax at 202/493-2251; or by hand-delivery. Comments should be identified by Docket Number FAA-2010-0100. The comment period is open for 60 days."

We'd love it if you post a copy of any thoughts you might have in the comment section below as well.