WASHINGTON — Federal Aviation Administrator Randy Babbitt offered a lukewarm reaction Tuesday to the idea of Congress requiring all new commercial pilots to have 1,500 hours of flight experience, a key goal the families of the victims of Continental Connection Flight 3407 have been pushing.

Asked about the proposed boost in flight hours for new pilots from the current 250, Babbitt said the quality of a pilot’s training is much more important than the amount of time he or she has spent in the cockpit.

The families are pushing a requirement that all pilots have an air transport license, which requires 1,500 hours of experience. The House already has signed on to a version of that requirement; Senate action is pending.

“If Congress says everyone has it, fine,” Babbitt said at an appearance at a Regional Airline Association luncheon. “I’m not opposed to that. But I do think you have to look at some other things.”

Babbitt said he was “more focused” on a pilot-training proposal that the FAA had already advanced. That proposed rule also would require pilots to have 1,500 hours of experience, with at least 750 hours of it in a multi-engine aircraft.

But the airline industry has been pressuring the FAA to abandon that proposal and start over. The Regional Airline Association said the proposal “could perpetuate the myth that some air carriers are not providing an equivalent level of safety in their pilot-training programs.”

Speaking before that group as his agency contemplates a final decision on whether to go forward with that rule, Babbitt soft-pedaled the need for a specific hours requirement and instead stressed that the agency’s proposal would change pilot training in substantive ways.

The proposal would require extensive simulator training that is not now required, along with training in cockpit resource management, multicrew flying and flying in icing conditions.

To prove that the number of flight hours was only part of what makes a pilot prepared to fly passengers, Babbitt cited the 1982 crash of an Air Florida flight in Washington.

The pilots in that crash both had air transport pilot licenses and thus 1,500 hours of experience.

“But they had never seen the icing” that doomed the plane and its 78 passengers shortly after takeoff, when the plane crashed into a bridge during a snowstorm, Babbitt noted.

Pilot error is one of the key factors being examined in the investigation into Flight 3407, which crashed Feb. 12 into a home in Clarence Center, killing 50.

The transcript of the cockpit voice recorder in that flight showed the pilot marveling that he was hired with his level of experience and the co-pilot noting that she had never flown in icing conditions.

That being the case, the families of the crash’s victims have strongly pushed the 1,500-hour training requirement in their many lobbying visits to the Capitol.

Told about Babbitt’s comments Tuesday, Kevin Kuwik, a key member of the families group, said: “If this is any indication of his thinking that Congress doesn’t need to do something about this, well, we disagree with that.”