I'm not big on "event roundup" analysis pieces so I was determined to avoid that pointless escape for opinion writers to which we all succumb at times. Nope, I was going to find the news from this AirVenture and blow it wide open for all to see.
As a “senior” (age, not necessarily instruction give hours…though they are over the 1K mark at this time) CFI-IA, I could not agree with you more on this.
I’ve seen the changes in the CFI stream over the 37+ years since I started my journey with a gleam in my eye and a Cessna red bag under my arm. Except for a few notable exceptions on the way, the right seaters I’ve flown with were on that ‘get the Hobbs to click off another hour’ track…not that that’s necessarily bad, but for some it was obvious, others not. (for the record, I soloed at exactly 15 hours, less than one month after starting training).
It seems to me that what the FAA did was a pound of prevention for an ounce of cure, specifying that more hours equaled experience to qualify for a rating. Maybe in some cases, they do. But, as an observer of our avocation once opined, you can either have 1000 hours of the same experience repeated over and over or 1000 hours of different experiences. Same quantity, vastly different outcomes and insights.
Does this mean anything will change? Probably not. When was the last time (Basic Med notwithstanding; that was imposed unwillingly on the bureaucracy after decades of foot dragging) the FAA ever rolled back anything? There are active discussion groups about what’s wrong with the training puppy mills (noting the latest news), I know of successful 61 schools turning out competent pilots (full disclosure: I worked for one…and two of my students over the years went on to successful military careers as aviators), and 141 schools so messed up that the local FSDO almost has an office on the property. No one size (or reg track) fits all.
As long as we have the regulatory qualification metrics that are based on reaction to events that can be measured without taking into account the surrounding conditions (corporate policies, expectations, etc), we will get the hours right, but the person holding the hours will not necessarily be as competent as that value should indicate.