Again, this is something I didn't really want to get dragged into. If you read the educational stuff in my submission, you'll see that pilot proficiency checks are spot checks. They're like going out to make sure that pilots are following their standard operating procedures and are maintaining current knowledge of their airplane and this kind of stuff.
Right now there are a lot of company check pilots who do that. In fact, I'm ACP-qualified myself. I have done a few check rides, but not many because I do other kinds of work.
I think it's debatable. But whether it's safe to say we don't need to do this any more is something on which I don't really feel qualified to comment. I know my association feels fairly strongly that it's perhaps something for which we have to maintain some kind of visibility. You know, we do monitor rides at lot of times. We did watch other CCPs--company check pilots--doing check rides on their pilots, and then we'd monitor them.
I think for a company we knew and understood, and for which we understood that the principal operating inspectors were doing a good job, perhaps there would be some let under which we wouldn't need to have as many monitors. But for other companies that weren't doing as good a job, maybe we'd want to go in and continue to monitor the CCPs on how they were doing their job.
It's a difficult one for me to answer. I'm not that knowledgeable in that area, but—