How Much Training Should An Airline Pilot Need?

BY KATE MURPHY

The government requires 1,500 hours of flight time to serve as first officer on an airliner.

Some aviators say the rule is excessive—and doesn’t actually make flying safer.

When boarding a commercial airline flight, most people are more absorbed with finding their seats and space in an overhead bin than wondering whether the pilots have enough experience. Passengers generally assume the people wearing epaulets in the cockpit know what they’re doing. Given the airlines’ overall safety record, that would seem a correct assumption. MIT researchers calculate that your chances of dying on a U.S. carrier are about 1 in 98 million, which means flying is less dangerous than staying at home.

But there’s considerable debate within the aviation community about what it means to be an “experienced enough” airline pilot—particularly as industry data suggests there will be pilot shortages for the next several decades. The arguments, often heated, typically revolve around how many flight hours pilots should have before they can take the controls of an airliner with tens or hundreds of souls on board.

For decades, the minimum flight time to perform the duties of a first officer (aka co-pilot) on an airliner was 250 hours. It was increased to 1,500 hours in 2013, when Congress passed new airline safety legislation in response to the 2009 crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407, which killed all 49 passengers and crew as well as one person on the ground. Even experts aren’t sure where the 1,500hour figure came from, but the common understanding in the aviation community is that since it generally takes 2 to 3 years for pilots to accumulate that much flight time, they would inevitably encounter all sorts of situations and seasons.

But that’s not necessarily the case. You could build most of your time sitting right seat on charter flights with a crusty captain who never, ever lets you touch the controls. A pilot could fly the same planes, on the same routes, in the same fair weather for 1,500 hours, perhaps picking up very bad flying habits in the process.

Critics of the mandate are quick to point out that both of the pilots involved in the 2009 Colgan crash had more than 1,500 hours of flying experience. Experts who study the relationship between flight time and safety generally say there’s no convincing data to support the 1,500hour rule—but concede there’s no irrefutable data to challenge it either. “It’s one of those things that like, let’s say you’re going in for surgery, can your surgeon ever be qualified enough?” says James Higgins, professor of aviation and safety data analysis at the University of North Dakota.

Bryan Turner, 48, a former IT director in Denton, Texas, built most of his time hobby flying cross-country in a variety of airplanes over 10 years before deciding to pivot to a career in aviation in 2023. “I took a year off, and I flew—I have a Piper Comanche 250—400 hours in one year, and got to the magic 1,500,” says Turner, who was hired as first officer at a regional airline in August.

Does he think 1,500 hours is enough experience? Turner says it depends. “Maybe this is me being biased because it’s my story, but I prefer a pilot who’s built the time over a series of years and has flown a bunch of different airframes and had to make some tough decisions,” he says. “I want my pilot to have been scared at some point in his life.”

But few pilots can afford to selffund their flight time the way Turner did. The price tag of even the cheapest single-engine airplane is around $50,000, and the cost of insurance, maintenance and fuel is enough to make your eyes water. Renting a plane for 1,500 hours will run you $250,000 to $450,000. Turner says his final 400 hours cost him around $20,000 in fuel alone.

So aspiring airline pilots typically resort to repetitive jobs on the fringes of aviation—towing advertising banners, doing aerial photography or inspecting pipelines. Eighty-five percent of pilots build time by flight instructing, which means inexperienced pilots are teaching the next generation of pilots. This also creates a conflict of interest when it comes to training student pilots efficiently. It’s not unheard of for student pilots today to fly 100 hours before they are signed off for a solo flight, rather

‘I want my pilot to have been scared at some point in his life.’

BRYAN TURNER Pilot

than the more typical 10-30 hours, so that their instructor can accumulate more flight time.

“There are exceptions, but most instructors I see come in not wanting to teach, not knowing how to teach, not caring about teaching, and not caring about the students,” says Doug Stewart, a master certified flight instructor and FAA-designated pilot examiner based at Columbia County Airport in Hudson, N.Y.

An obvious solution would be to require entry-level airline pilots to have a greater variety of experience to meet their 1,500 hours, including --more night, instrument and solo flying. “Someone could probably come up with an optimized algorithm that would show this kind of flying is more valuable than that kind of flying and deliver a safer pilot with a lot less time,” says James Higgins. “But I think it would be a difficult scientific question, and it would be an even more difficult political one.”

Another possible solution would be to create a system of public and private flight schools that follow the military’s model of careful screening, rigorous training, mission- driven flight time and routine assessment. The FAA already recognizes the value of highly structured training by allowing airlines to hire ex-military pilots with only 750 hours of flying experience.

Colonel James Muniz, a recently retired commander of the U.S. Air Force’s 12th Flying Training Wing at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, says that before he joined the military, he got his private pilot’s license training with an instructor who was a fellow college student. “The quality of training I received as a civilian was nowhere near what I got in the military,” says Muniz, who now flies for a major U.S. carrier.

To pay for flight training and flight time, the Air Line Pilots Association advocates allowing aspiring airline pilots to tap into 529 plans (tax-deferred education savings accounts). Medical students can do it, so why not pilots, who will also have people’s lives in their hands? U.S. airlines could also copy their European counterparts and pay for pilots’ training, including timebuilding, in exchange for work commitments at predetermined salary levels.

Of course, you could argue that pilot training and flight time will become largely irrelevant once fully automated aircraft take to the skies. But that isn’t likely to happen anytime soon, because of both technological and regulatory hurdles, not to mention significant passenger resistance.

And while flight simulators are helpful and increasingly immersive, they still can’t replicate the sensory experience of actual flight time, particularly when things go south. The peculiar and at times disorienting proprioceptive signals you get while flying are largely absent in a simulator, as is genuine fear or panic. When in a simulator, some part of you always knows you’ll walk away.

Long-haul flying is often described as long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of stark terror. In those harrowing moments, Muniz says, “You want a pilot who has been there before”—not in a simulator, “ but with air under his butt.” Kate Murphy is a journalist in Houston and the author of “You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters.”