You can get a commercial license with 200hrs but in order to earn an Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) rating you need 1500hrs AND a level of proficiency that far exceeds your basic commercial ticket.
Therefore, the argument is to try and force the commuter airlines to seek and hire ATPs as opposed to commercial ticket holders.
Regarding military hours and such, for the Air Force you enter pilot training and it lasts about a year and you graduate with a little over 200hrs in the jet and a heck of a lot of simulator time. At the end of that year you are given wings and — if you wish — take an FAA written exam and receive your commercial, multi-engine land (limited center-line thrust), instrument airplane tickets.
After pining on your wings you have a ten year commitment. . .which has been around since I was in. I graduated pilot training back in 1981 and had a nine-year commitment. The commitment didn't hurt airlines as about half (sometimes more) USAF pilots would bail for the majors. Over 90% of the major's new hires were former military.
For the Air Force you must meet ‘gates,” meaning you have to have so many hours of flying and years on the line in order to receive flight pay. After pilot training you fly and fly and after many years you receive a staff job. Great. Not fun but necessary. Oddly, about the time the pilots are eligible to be assignment outside the cockpit, meeting their first ‘gate,” they also usually are at their 10-yr commitment and either go to the staff or get out. So if you go to the staff (non-flying) you will still receive flight pay as long as you met your gates. . .and there are reasons why.
If pilots stay in, they have to fly for so many years and log so many hours by so much time in. . .in order to receive flight pay while serving in a non-flying staff job. Yes, receiving flight pay while flying a desk sounds odd but there are sound reasons for it. First, aircraft today are very complicated and missions so demanding that if you are on a staff it would be unsafe, very unsafe to require some pilot to log, say, 10hrs a month to receive pay. That low of time and he can't remain safe or mission capable. Second, if you send a guy to the staff, something MOST pilots hate, and tell them you will take away their flight pay while they are riding a gray-steely chair in the basement of the Pentagon, they will leave the Air Force in even greater numbers and this means a huge cost in recruiting and training replacement pilots. Pay a little flight pay is far more cost effective than paying over a million bucks just to train a pilot trainee. . .not to mention the costs associated with flying for years to get really proficient and capable and Mission ready.
What is changing is the airline pay and benefits. As someone pointed out, the golden age of being an airline pilot is pretty much over when it comes to pay and such.
Basically, the “1500 hours” thing will not affect the military pilots that want to get out and fly commercially. They will have made that decision based upon factors beyond what the FAA demands/requires.
The 1500hr requirement will force commuter airlines to require their applicants to be ATP-rated, meaning having polished skill-sets beyond a basic commercial ticket. That will affect safety. While the 1500hrs thing isn't a measure of pilot proficiency or safety, in and of itself, but add an ATP to the 1500hrs and you do improve safety.
1500hrs and still having a basic commercial/instrument ticket is just flying and flying and never really achieving the highest proficiency and capability. In my mind, any pilot with 1500hrs SHOULD be looking to earn that ATP otherwise (again in my mind) he is lazy.
That is my view. Others may have a different opinion.
The real effect of this and the duty rules, is it will cause even more small cities to lose air service, as costs become even more marginal.
Cities that can’t support 300-400 seats a day on any given route are already endangered. Flying even the small 50-seaters has become cost-prohibitive. This just adds more to an already bad situation.
The 90’s “safety” rules already destroyed regional flying, and much of the American small aircraft Industry along with it. The result will be more small cities seeing the end of Commercial service.
And the logical extension of this is to require the fractional companies to comply, next.
IMHO, this has nothing to do with “safety”, and everything to do with creating the environment for Union organization, and the demand for higher wages to counter the loss of hours, just as in the Trucking Industry.
REMEMBER WHO WE ARE DEALING WITH HERE, FOLKS....