Regional Jet 200 ER/LR (CRJ200)
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP); Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Multiengine
Training / Qualification; Situational Awareness
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Flight Crew Became Reoriented
Human Factors; Company Policy
I arrived to the plane and the First Officer assigned to the flight mentioned to me (or rather warned me) that in his entire career at [this airline] he has never flown the CRJ 200 from the right seat. This threw up some red flags as to whether he was qualified. Apparently his career path at this company was never as a CRJ 200 FO (First Officer). I talked with scheduling and they told me that he was qualified. On top of that I talked with the check airman that re-qualified me on the 200 and the base chief pilot. Every one that I talked to agreed he was qualified. Plus my knowledge of common type etc. I agreed.Scheduling suggested that we just swap seats to resolve the issue; but I felt that would create more of an issue putting the less experienced pilot as PIC.I considered the threats. Discussed this issue with the First Officer. I also found out that even though he was never an FO on the 200; he had been a Captain. We decided we could complete the flight safely. But we agreed that we would take as much time as we needed to make sure everything was done correctly. We did have an error in the 14th stage bleeds being off on the after start check - so something was not in the correct position. We corrected it. And consulted the expanded checklist to be sure everything was done properly. I took great care in mitigating the threats and even errors. And we were successful in this flight. Though we left late and took our time we were only 2 minutes late getting to our overnight.The bottom line threats that I see is that the training on the 200 has not been that in-depth. I have not been on that plane for at least 10 years. My First Officer had never flown as a First Officer on the 200. And never received right seat specific training. On top of this we are in a new base having to figure out the communication; taxi instructions etc. In this sort of situation there are a lot of threats - some that have not been discovered yet by the crews in this new base.I was very intentional about setting the tone of full compliance in the flight deck; and doing our tasks slow and diligently. And we successfully worked our way through the task at hand.I have to ask the question is if we multiply the experience I just explained times the number of new pilots coming into the [new] system and figure this will happen many times over the next year - what sort of problems could we expect? Could we expect a plane to take off with the 14th stage bleeds closed in icing conditions? Can we expect that there will be a few Captains that won't be as [proactive] as we were about assuring safety of flight?I am not saying this incident was a terrible problem. But I do foresee a huge threat that exists with the limited amount of training we are being given. I just feel we can do better than this.
CRJ-200 Captain reported concern over the level of training at his company.