Regional discount?
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It doesn’t take much to fly in peace.
If you spend any time contemplating a giant metal tube 36,000 feet in the air, you won’t sit back and relax.
If you spend any time thinking about whether the aircraft was properly maintained, you can’t be peaceful.
And if you think about where the pilots were last night, your nerves might tremble at a touch.
You board a plane and you have faith that everything will be alright.
However, a current concern is that there are not enough pilots. Every commercial airline is looking for more, but training them takes time and most of them require trainee pilots to complete 1,500 hours in the air.
Now Republic Airways has petitioned the Federal Aviation Administration for a waiver to reduce that number. Half.
You may not be familiar with Republic, but it is responsible for regional flights under the auspices of United, Delta and America Airlines.
So when you book a flight with one of those airlines, you can actually be on a Republic plane.
Republic now wants permission through its own restricted Airline Transport Pilot Certificate Program to reduce the number of hours that potential first officers are needed. This, it claims, “will provide the benefits of a military-based path training and a rigorous curriculum and structure.”
The republic relies heavily on its idea of promoting diversity. Specifically, it says it will allow those who do not have the financial means or educational qualifications to become pilots under the current system.
I do think, however, that some customers may have issues with this. If you know that your pilot has only achieved the half-hours that were previously required, panic will inevitably occur.
To which Republic countered that its new training program “will not have any adverse effect on security, and will provide a high level of security.”
However, you may wonder why 1,500 hours became the standard. Is it like the somewhat mythical 10,000 Steps to Maintain Health?
It was introduced in 2013 as a response to the 2009 crash of an aircraft flying for the regional airline Colgan Air. The captain was accused of not exhibiting proper responses and a subsequent investigation revealed that his training may have been inadequate. 50 people died in the accident.
Prior to this rule, qualifications to become a first officer only included having a commercial pilot’s license. It required only 250 hours in the sky.
Currently, many aspiring pilots obtain their qualifications from commercial flight schools. Many become flight instructors to build on their hours. Others fly crop dusters and planes that draw flashy banners behind them.
Republic argues that its training would be more difficult and more suitable for flying commercial aircraft.
Other countries do not have the same stringent regulations as the US. In Europe, for example, commercial pilots can have flight times as low as 200 hours.
But at the heart of the problem is that during the pandemic, airlines offered many older pilots early retirement. 4,400 went away, allowing airlines to receive government funding. Now, as the business grows, they have neither pilots nor pilot instructors to fly more number of flights.
And where do the big airlines keep their pilots? Why, a lot of them come from regional airlines.
Many people think it is unlikely that the FAA will accept Republic’s petition. Flight safety again became a controversial topic after two Boeing 737 MAX planes crashed in 2018 and 2019.
However, some travelers would certainly have expressed deep concern if the Republic was somehow successful. Again, many people expressed deep concern about Max before he returned to the air.
These days, I suspect many don’t even think about it when they’re on Max. They are too busy to think about whether they will reach their destination on time.
