Federal aviation regulations prohibit airline pilots from flying beyond the age of 60 years. However, the relation between pilot age and flight safety has not been rigorously assessed using empirical data. From 1987 to 1997, the authors followed a cohort of 3,306 commuter air carrier and air taxi pilots who were aged 45–54 years in 1987. During the follow-up period, the pilots accumulated a total of 12.9 million flight hours and 66 aviation crashes, yielding a rate of 5.1 crashes per million pilot flight hours. Crash risk remained fairly stable as the pilots aged from their late forties to their late fifties. Flight experience, as measured by total flight time at baseline, showed a significant protective effect against the risk of crash involvement. With adjustment for age, pilots who had 5,000–9,999 hours of total flight time at baseline had a 57% lower risk of a crash than their less experienced counterparts (relative risk = 0.43, 95% confidence interval: 0.21, 0.87). The protective effect of flight experience leveled off after total flight time reached 10,000 hours. The lack of an association between pilot age and crash risk may reflect a strong "healthy worker effect" stemming from the rigorous medical standards and periodic physical examinations required for professional pilots.If this study is accurate, it sounds like the knee of the curve is at around 10,000 hours of experience. So I guess we should require pilots to have 10,000 hours before letting them fly people. :-)
Despite your flippant remark, the fact is if these pilots (Colgan crash) had been either properly trained or experienced (and I don't mean hours necessarily, but experience with those conditions, implied with more hours), there would have been no accident, and at least 48 people would still be alive.
Additionally, presumably these pilots would have to get 10,000 hours in the same types of light aircraft as they got the rest of their hours -- at some point there is a point of diminishing returns, the "knee of the curve", which would be far fewer than 10,000 hours, but certainly more than 250 hours.