I Want to Throw Up...

[100LL... Again!]

Uhh..

I was being sarcastic about the deserving part.

I have 11 years of my life invested in this business, so I think I can tell what shortsighted is.

I made my decision to fly airplanes. Kind of like a marriage, you see: Richer or poorer, etc.

I take pride in low pay? Is that what you're saying?
Whatever.

I'm in my mid 30's and have given more to this profession than you may realize.

Point is, the ONLY repeat ONLY thing that is going to fix the pilot pay issue is a national union or a REAL shortage of pilots.

One way to create this shortage (as I mentioned) would be to significantly raise the standards for each certificate and rating.

Have a type of "Bar Exam" for pilots. The current certification process is way too easy. I've seen worthless pilots go through a certificate mill and come out with a full set of ratings and ZERO skill. They get a couple hundred hours and off they go to a regional.

Think doctors and lawyers get to do something similar?

Pilots huff and snort and paw the ground plenty about how critical and difficult their job is.
The real truth is that it is the system that is so safe. We all know airline pilots who have a reputation for poor skills and decision making, yet they go for years with no real trouble. This proves that it just doesn't seem to matter any more.

By the way, I have figured out who to blame for this whole pay thing: FLIGHT INSTRUCTORS!

They keep making pilots, even now when we don't need any more!

So all you CFIs out there: stop training students, you're helping to lower the bar! These new pilots get offered a low-paying job and accept to get their foot in the door! Why don't they realize that they need to go work at Starbucks and let their skills degrade until a good paying job surfaces. Hey - everybody's gotta take one for the team!

 

[upncoming]

[...] If one feels they deserve a job flying because they'll do it for $25/yr, so be it for them being shortsighted. I truly wish they'd have some self-respect.

I think you've been smelling TOO much JetA. Self-respect? Where's your self-respect (as well as all of the other whiners) when you got yourself into an industry that has a long history of ups and downs in virtually every aspect and then you sit around and complain about how "bad" you have it? Heck, I don't care how many hours AcaTerry has (nor you for that matter), I lost respect for all of you sometime back.

100LL actually hit the nail on the head and said it quite well. This job isn't exactly rocket science (and I can say that 'cause I was one once) and operating an ACARS/EFIS/whatever is less than child's play compared to s/w engineering. Judgement is the key skill to being a pilot, no question. I've often wished that the requirements to get here were more stringent, as 100LL alluded to. It would definitely create a pilot shortage because all of the kids whose parents bank their training, etc. couldn't make it through. And their just some of the ones who wouldn't make it.

100LL here's another radical thought for you: how about we blame all of this on management but in a different respect than everyone else has thus far. We blame management for hiring pilot applicants who "lower the bar" because they aren't very qualified? Managment should insist on at least a Bachelors (and not one of these so-called "aviation degrees" - yeah right), but more likely a masters. Also, 4-5000 hours should be the minimum for a regional F/O to start. Etc, etc. That'd turn some heads...

 

[Ralph]

I agree that raising standards for airline pilots would help to weed out the pool.

Placing the argument over the value of college completely aside, think how much the applicant pool would be drained by requiring a master’s degree to fly under 121.

If a national pilot’s union created such a requirement then the pool of available applicants would drain rapidly and the pay at the airlines would definitely go up. So would the work rules and work environment improve as regional airlines struggled to keep employees. That however is just not going to happen without a strong national union; something that will never develop.

Thinking back to the pre 9-11 hiring boom… Did continental express raise the entry level pay or lower expectations when a pilot shortage began to show? Keep in mind that by pilot shortage I mean a shortage of pilots with 3000 hours of PIC 121 jet time, not a shortage of pilots with enough cash to pay off a 141 commercial pilot school. Obviously express just lowered the hiring minimums to a commercial license and the ability to show up for an interview. In theory a union would prevent this dilution of the market but that obviously did not happen.

What if ALPA (or some national pilot’s union) began to push towards minimum qualifications well above those currently required (which is arguably ‘enough cash’) in many places. Requiring a master’s degree would do that. Requiring that all 121 pilots have 3000 hours of PIC time might help, although I think it is easier to pencil whip flight time than it is to pencil whip a master’s degree. I suppose we could go back to requiring near perfect health and vision and that might also do the trick. Although I really think the only requirement that would stand up to litigation would be an educational one.

Interestingly I also agree with the idea that incompetent pilots do not cause much of a problem. That might account for market differences between computer programmers and pilots. Lousy pilot A gets hired by Big Airlines (his daddy was the chief pilot) and for 99.99999% of the flights this pilot takes it won’t matter. Perhaps once in his career it really will matter that Lousy pilot A is a little slow; and it’s likely that ATC or his co-pilot bailed him out, but for most flights it just won’t matter because most all flights are routine. The bottom line is that this less than swift pilot will fair just fine and Big Airlines won’t care.

Now take Lousy pilot A and try to get him to design a large scale computer system. His incompetence is immediately apparent when the system does not work and its likely he will start to cause his employer a substantial amount of money in the form of lost time and/or lost information.

It’s cost effective to keep a crappy pilot, it’s not cost effective to keep bad engineers and bad system developers.

I love aviation and I plan on giving it a try for a bit longer, but you can bet your butt I have a plan B (a master’s degree in Computer Science) because at best the odds of this career working out for all the reasons outlined on this board are maybe 50/50.

 

[pilotyip]

college degree?

upncoming here we go again a 4 yr degree has nothing to do with flying an airplane. WWII was won by mostly non degreed pilots, their accomplishments are historically documented. Viet Nam Army helos were flown by some of the hottest pilots who ever won thier wings, most without college degrees. It is the content of thier character that determines what the individual will be not their degree.

 

[Ralph]

Go back and read again... I'm not arguing that a degree makes a better pilot. Clearly that is not really the case!

I'm arguing that a degree can be used as a tool for weeding the pilot pool. Just like perfect vision requirements would. Of course some good pilots will be weeded out (so will some bad ones) and in the end you will probably have a pool of pilots that is largely the same as the one we have now except of course it would be much smaller.

We might say that the left over pilots will be better at writing papers, but it seems a stretch to relate paper writing to flying

 

[captnmayday]

well ...

I left a 80K s/w engineering job to fly for 9K in the late 90s and I am still not where I want to be in aviation; However I will not trade aviation for anything else and even if I loose my medical or my job, the office world is the last place I will look for work.

It is all about the personality ... I knew I had to fly since I was 9 but life took its path and I wasted 9 years in the S/W business (and I was good at it too). I will not repeat that but that is just because I know FLYING is Me ... If you do it for the money, image or the chicks you will be disappointed
My 2 cents

 

[Kingairrick]

An idea

Lets give acaterry an FMS that functions perfectly, except....NO SOFTWARE installed. He gets 1 year to work on the code, then he has to fly IFR using only the fms for nav through the rockies at 9500 ft.

Think he'd understand then?

I've never written code, but consider myself pretty computer literate. The software that operates my phone is amazing to me. The patience required to write such stuff is impresssive.

Bottom line is, I'd trust my life to a pilot who had only been flying for 1 year, with a couple hundred hours, in equipment he was qualified in.... I wouldn't fly with that same guy if the aircraft we were flying in required a complex software program to operate (as most do,) and I knew that the programmer who wrote the code was in the business for only 1 year.

Anyone feel the same?

 

[bigD]

Heh - I wouldn't trust my life to a complex software program, regardless of the experience of the programmers.

No complex piece of software is perfect. Ever. Hopefully this principle will keep pilots from losing their jobs to automation anytime in the near future!

 

[Ralph]

Definately, in fact I wonder how much of the cost for equipment like a garmin 430 is software realted. I would bet that most of those development costs are software realted.

And no, I would not trust any navigation or systems unit in an aircraft made by an entry level programmer. Not for a second!

 

[DAL Hopeful]

Gosh people,
get on with it. electric people with big egos who would die in a week without their computers. i wish y2k did what everyone thought it would.

 

[acaTerry]

100LL Again,
Look at the date of registartion, I am no longer at 4500 hours, but that is not the issue.

Your question...just what are you asking me? The psi for the fuel heater pump assembly, fuel pump-filter and FCU or what? This thing has 8 pumps. The two-stage engine driven pump is located on the fwd right side of the accessory section....blah blah blah (don't underestimate me). No matter, playing trivia with you is not the point. The point by asking that guy about the CRJ was to show him his arrogance. Saying that he can train a zero hour pilot to be an airline ready pilot in 6 months was nothing short of ignorant. Those questions were not to humiliate him, just to show him that as a 700 hour CFI , he had no place to make claims he knew nothing about.

Yes, the CRJ IS a dog. That's the joke CRJ = Climb Restricted Jet.

I am not saying that this job is a death defying trap, Einstein. I am saying that it has more serious and time-conscious consequences than programming does, generally speaking. Or perhaps you never got to spend thousands of hours in old rattly turboprops at altitudes where the weather is with you, not beneath you. Or perhaps from your FE panel (I make this assumption on your technical question on the 27) you forgot what it is like. Point is, pilots deserve better than they get. This post was about just that. All you tech kings, I'm sorry if I hurt your little feelings. But having some (not masterful) experience in C, C++ and C# programming I must say that I was more challenged and feel more responsibility as a pilot. Wipe your tears, it is not necessarily against you guys. It's against the jellyfish who will do nothing to improve things. Vote yes to anything. Just give me a jet, I'll be your beeyatch.
You CFI's: no looking down on you here. You guys are earning every darn penny. You are invaluable to this industy, especially in a "future safety of flight" sense. Don't feel that anyone thinks you are lowly or anything. Just please try to keep a zipper on it until you have enough knowledge and experience to give yuor 2 cents on airline issues. And I hope you all make it. But please understand that at 700 hours, as an example, you can't go broadcasting opinions as fact on things you have not experienced yet.
All in all, WILL YOU ALL QUIT CRYING? I raised a valid point: pilots deserve better than they get. If you don't think so, GTF out of the planes and open them up to someone who will make this job liveable again. If you think pilots are getting what they deserve or that there is simply no way to improve it, then you are part of the problem. Show some self respect.

 

[8HourPilot]

So if you fly the airbus, what does that make you....a programmer or a pilot?

Terry, Dude, you make a great point......

 

[acaTerry]

Now THAT'S a good question!!!! I guess both. Now I want 2 paychecks!! In any case, I don't want the bus. I know practically nothing about the things, but from the guys who fly them, they're too unpredictable. But again, I really don't know enough about them to even have an opinion....

 

[climbhappy]

the danger of being misled

if you don't think so, GTF out ..............

AcaTerry,

You just told CFIs to keep a zipper on it til they gey they're type. It really sounds like you mean...until they've flown the line with a bunch of captains with bad attitutudes who spout negative crap about the rampers, this plane, scheduling, ops etc.

and if if we don't agree, open them as you put to someone who will make them liveable again. Who? the PFters

I see two things going on. The demise of Alpa and the need for companies like ACA to go it alone.

if you'll recall in the eighties when the auto industry was in the toilet, union membership declined and was nonexistent.
Pilots will finally wake up and see that Alpa does nothing for them at the regional level. Alpa is the reason the jobs were lost. the majors let it get out of hand. Profit sharing would be a much better way to insure the cyclical nature of this business doesn't let costs get out of hand.

An analyst said during US airways troubles, "Anytime you have a guy with a part time job making six fugures, you're going to have problems.

insults won't cut it. telling CFis to shutup won't cut it. they're entitled to their opinion. and suggesting that leaving the business will make it liveable again is wayout.

Please tell me why I'm wrong

 

[acaTerry]

I did not tell CFI's to keep a zipper on it until they had a type. I said that until they really know what they are talking about, that they should not make claims that they can not back. Such as being able to turn a zero hour student into a proficient airline pilot in 6 months. I know there are ab-initio schools, such as Lufthansa that do this, but they are in a whole different league than our U.S. schools. I know because I have taught at LFT and at U.S. ab-initio schools. The selection process as LFT is much more stringent than our schools, and generally speaking the German kids are better disciplined for this hardcore approach than the average U.S. student (who, by the way, usually prefers the term "customer" rather than student).
No one can argue the importance of a good CFI. But at the same time, a good CFI knows to keep their mouth closed until they KNOW what they are talking about. Opinions aside, how can a CFI make a ridiculous claim on the ability to teach something that they themself have never done? This is where I was after the 700 hour guy. Not because he had 700 hours, but because he was so arrogant in his claim to be able to train someone to a level that he himself is not able to do either. I'll bet he is a good CFI. But he needed to know that his claim was unfounded.
So you see, I have nothing against CFIs. I've given thousands of hours of dual given myself and know firsthand the things they deal with. In fact, I just reinstated this past weekend. Did I just go and do it myself? No way, I took a CFI. And I listened to him. (What is more dangerous than an airline pilot in a light plane?)

Anyway, gotta go. No malice toward CFI's, just the bigmouths who broadcast about things they don't know about.