In the U.S., copilots must have a minimum of 1,500 flight hours. Internationally, it's only 240 hours -- and regulators might decrease or scrap that.
In the final, harrowing seconds of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, the pilots tried desperately to keep their Boeing 737 Max aloft.
While the preliminary accident report in the Ethiopian crash showed the 29-year-old pilot had 8,122 hours of flight time, the 25-year-old first officer had only 361 total hours, having received his commercial airline license three months earlier. Story continuesAfter the Lion Air crash, Boeing had insisted the 737 Max is safe because pilots can follow a procedure to switch off the system, called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS. Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg hinted about six weeks after the Ethiopian crash that pilots did not"completely" follow procedures.
"If these pilots, hard as they tried to save their passengers, did not receive adequate training in the first place, then that is another factor that demands action. That is true no matter where they are flying or where they were trained," wrote one of them, Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., in a commentary for Fox Business last month.
"The U.S. went one way. The rest of the world went the other way," said Michael Wiggins, a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University."Industry pundits argue over the effectiveness of the 1,500-hour rule, but it certainly reduced the number of regional airline captains flying their entire month with 250-hour interns," said Louis Smith, president of FAPA.aero, a pilot job advisory service.
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