26-year-old airline captain and her 19-year-old co-pilot

What achievements are you referring to? One like "Sully" Sullenberger's, an'old' experienced aircraft driver with glider and F-4 Phantom II xx hours or the total lack of experience and achievements as 'younger' crew of the Air France Flight 447 had? After traveling on commercial airliners 2++ million miles over the past 50 years, I still prefer some 'gray haired' crew up front in control of my destiny.

There was a 23 year old DC-8 Captain at UPS years ago...

I'd much rather be flying with the legacies and their 'old crew' rather than the budgets.

In your opinion is this due to seniority rules set by the unions? Or is that the legacies require many more hours to earn Captain status?

Agreed!

Bah!!! You must have never flown in Central Africa!!! Oh, and drug testing? What ever...

You don't seem to comment on the training the military pilots receive compared to these two. Can't be compared.

The problem is, most police are terrible at their collective jobs, let alone cops that are in actuality still going through puberty. With age comes more rational thought...

Why do you hate children and opportunity? ;-P

ATPL only reqired for PIC. Most FOs will have Commercial since the airline otherwise would have to pay for xtra simtime. 2 stripes reflects time in the company. Where I worked you got 2 stripes after 1 yr and 3 solid stripes after 10 yrs as FO.

Excuse spelling... Mobile phone response..

Would the Air France Flight 447 event/crash and the successful 'stick' wet landing by "Sully" Sullenberger not support your conclusion.

Great point and my thoughts jump to tragic Colgan 3407.

Why is everyone hating on these two? Do you think air cadets train on A320's? Of course she knows how to fly a plane. One could even argue that kids now a days would be better equipped to fly glass cockpits that a 60 year old pilot is may not be used to digital information overload. I'm not saying that as a fact but simply putting it out there as a counter argument.

Personally, I think you have to take it on a case by case basis. There are plenty of older pilots who pound back a couple of scotches and go out an fly or are hung over etc. I want a pilot who is fresh and alert not jet lagged or bitching about their shifts, whether that be young or older.

A.K.,

The "class" that you are referring to (worldwide airline Captains) is mainly made up a members that that were hired pre-1995. A more informative statistic would be the percent of women in current new hire classes at the regionals which is the primary source of most new hires at the majors. I'm sure it is less than the approximately 50% of the general population.

To increase the number of women hired, women first need to be attracted to learning to fly and acquiring the requisite experience to move on to an airline career. That is a tough sell, we read about the difficulty of regional airlines finding enough qualified candidates, male or female, to fill classes.

Just curious...what made you decide to drop the "Esq." ?

Typo
450 .. not 350
my apologies

You need 10,000 hours to get good.

At some point, every single pilot has the tickets and the time, but not the experience. And yet, here they are.

That's ok, I don't like flying with nervous passengers ;-)

A320 / spitfire = same same. .

yep...and when those youngsters screwed up and crashed they didn't take anyone with them... many did crash and never made colonel, let alone captain

not sure this is a valid comparison....

" Especially a woman." Really!

UK Aviation authority have similar standards and requirements as in the USA. If she meets the standards and the airline (who have a very good reputation) believes she is capable then promotion should be awarded as it was. The "especially a woman" comment is offensive and certainly old world (try 1930s). Go back to your cave.

I think you should re-read your post, think about it and then come to the same conclusion that every educated man woman and child would conclude. Natural pilots, excellent descision makers, pilots who use common sense, don't panic, follow their training, pilots who actually logged the hours in their logbook, these are the best of the best male or female. AND, you do take something away from someone's accomplishment with your silly, immature and idiotic comments.

So you are saying she lacks the 'right stuff'? Captain Lee Kang Kuk had 9,793 hours of flying experience when he hit the SSFO seawall with Asiana 214. I guess experience isn't necessarily everything. Nor gender.