Flight Instructor Shortage

[V-1]

I dunno, the reason outsourcing to China and India was so "successful" in the computer industry is because the people who are taking the jobs are _living_ in those countries, where a steak dinner costs $2, a house costs $4000 ... and $15k a year makes for a pretty nice standard of living. But there´s no way to do that with piloting, you have to have physical presence in the States, and paying the same prices as everybody else for cost of living. At least until mgmt figures out a way for a 12 year old kid to fly fifteen airplanes at once from a playstation console halfway around the world ...

Good luck finding a steak dinner in India! It can be done, but you can't even get a hamburger in McDonald's there.

Oh yeah, if you were born in India, you'd never leave your parent's house either. There's no need to make the kind of money we expect, because you'd never have a mortgage payment.

One more thing...the average annual wage in India is the rough equivalent of $1000 U.S.D.

Not disagreeing with the spirit of the post...just offering a contribution based on experience.

 

[YaMama]

y, I´ve certainly never been to India, just pulling a few examples out of you-know-where to illustrate my point - and I do get a little tired of hearing all the world´s problems blamed on "foreigners who will work for nothing."

I don´t know if there will ever be pilotless passenger aircraft, but I´d bet somebody a beer that we´ll see single-pilot airliners in our lifetime. Also, who knows when oil production might go into serious decline, and take aviation with it. Those are both much more realistic threats to everybody´s job, imo, than foreign workers.

As for flight schools and CFI wages - I guess it´s partly the fault of the schools, but you also have to put a lot of blame with customers who apparently don´t put any more thought into picking a school/instuctor than to jump at the first one who says the training will cost less than $xx,000. When you consider what´s at stake in this business - starting with all the time and money that inexperienced/incompetent CFIs waste for their clients, you´d think that more people would be willing to invest a little extra in a CFI who knows what they´re doing.

 

[jbDC9]

If the CFI/pilot shortage keeps up the industry will look for cheaper ways to staff US airplanes: foreign labor.

Here in Houston they are hurtin' bad for instructors.

No joke... I think this might explain the CFI/student mix at United Flight Systems at Hooks (DWH) airport. I walk through their offices and there are barely any white dudes to be seen, it's almost all foreigners. Students and instructors, both having a hard time with the English language; man, do they clog up the radio when trying to talk to ATC. Nothing but gibberish... sometimes I wonder how the tower guys/gals deal with it.