The Wall Street Journal is reporting the FAA is considering reducing the number of hours military pilots must have before they can be airline first officers. An industry-labor panel has recommended that military pilots with as little as 500 hours be allowed to slide directly into the right seat of airliners. The current minimum is 750 hours, while non-military pilots must have at least 1,500 hours. The panel didn’t make any recommendations to change the current 1,500-hour minimum for airline captains. The group was convened by the FAA to address growing concerns about a shortage of airline pilots. The WSJ got the information from an unnamed source and the report hasn’t been officially released.
The proposal is bound to revive the debate over just what the initial experience and training requirements for line pilots should be. But since the number of pilots coming from the military has dwindled to less than 25 percent and because most retiring military pilots have more than the current minimums this proposal is unlikely to have much impact. The minimum for all pilots used to be 250 hours but the FAA was ordered by Congress to adopt the current 750-1,500 minimum (depending on background and education) after the 2009 Colgan Air crash in Buffalo.
