• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • Contact

Golf Hotel Whiskey

Golf Hotel Whiskey: for pilots and aviation enthusiasts

Raising commercial pilot standards

While the Obama Administration wants to raise user fees for any non-piston aircraft to $100 per flight fee when operating a flight plan in controlled airspace (See Turning the US into Europe with general aviation user fees), the FAA wants to substantially raise the qualification requirements for first officers who fly for US passenger and cargo airlines to 1,500 hours of flight time.

Specifically and under the new proposal, first officers will need to:

  • Hold an Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) certificate rather than just a commercial pilot certificate (the later requires 250 hours of flight time).
  • Have an aircraft type rating – meaning they will need additional training and testing specific to the aircraft they fly.

In addition, the proposal would require pilots to have a minimum of 1,000 flight hours as a pilot in air carrier operations that require an ATP before they can serve as a captain for an US airline plus they will need enhanced training for the ATP certificate (e.g. 50 hours of multi-engine flight experience, complete a new FAA-approved training program etc.)

However, there will be an allowance for pilots who have fewer than 1,500 hours of flight time. Anyone with an aviation degree and 1,000 hours or who has military pilot experience with 750 hours will be able to obtain a “restricted privileges” ATP certificate but they will only be able to serve as a first officer and not as a captain.

Obviously the impact of the proposed FAA rules have not been loss on some of those who oppose the Obama administration’s proposed fee increases as obviously any fee increase will have a tendency to discourage flying – meaning it will be harder for would-be commercial pilots to get the hours necessary to be commercial or cargo pilots. Nevertheless, at least the proposed FAA rules should (in theory) increase safety and perhaps offset any safety loss (as some pilots stop filing flight plans to avoid the $100 user fee) under the Obama Administration’s proposal.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Sthan says

    June 4, 2016 at 21:16

    EASA is full of BS, FAA should not fellow EASA, they will kill the GA, and lower the pilots standards, just like in Europe, EASA pilots are good with papers and pen, but on command of an A/C, when compared to an FAA pilots ahahahah

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Matthew Stibbe
Matthew Stibbe is CEO of Articulate Marketing and Turbine, the easy, online way to deal with office paperwork. He has an FAA CPL/IR and an EASA PPL/IR and sometimes flies a Cirrus SR-22. He also writes about wine at Vincarta and being a better manager at Geek Boss.
Bureaucracy must die eBook
Subscribe via RSS

Recent Posts

  • IATA Airport Abbreviations
  • Upcoming Concorde and Apollo documentaries
  • Lie Back And Think Of England: London To Austin On BA’s New 787 Dreamliner
  • Video: Parachuting from the edge of space
  • Hilarious preflight safety video for GA aircraft
  • San Francisco Airport at night – beautiful time lapse video
  • A practical jetpack (finally) takes off
  • A man in a hot air balloon realises he is lost
  • Pegasus House: The former HQ of the Bristol Aeroplane Company is restored
  • Vintage British aviation posters from the 1920-1930s

Copyright © 2023 Golf Hotel Whiskey. All rights reserved.