Looming Pilot Shortage

[avbug]

Give YIP a break, he was saying three years ago that it was coming and he was right on. When flight schools were paying $50K a year and requiring contracts, because they can't keep people...there was definitely a shortage.

I've been hearing about this mystical pilot shortage for many years. Decades, in fact. It's never existed yet. It wasn't here a few months ago, or three years ago. There's been a lot of hiring, but no shortage. Some companies have had difficulty hiring pilots, but as we've discussed ad infinitum, that doesn't imply a shortage. Just a company that experienced pilots don't want to work for.

Pilotyip has been talking about the shortage for some time, and all the while passionately counseling pilots that they don't need a degree. Today we see the bottom part of the cycle, which comes every five years, when jobs are hard to come by. We're seeing an airline a week go under. Corporate departments slowing down. Record fuel prices. Cutbacks across the board, and the looming pilot shortage that forms the basis of this thread has been shown clearly to not exist.

Further, those who would forgo the degree and go after the pilot job, now they may be doubly handicapped without the job, and without the degree. For a man with a masters degree, he's been the missionary of this concept, hawking the need for lack of education among his underlings for quite some time now. Presently, his own company has been chopped in half with numerous no-notice terminations, and yet he still continues to preach the same line, with the same bad information. Now, it's no different, just all the more increadible against the backdrop of the present ruins.

 

[A Squared]

WHen Mesa and thier ilk are offering $40k/year to start with commesurate increases, and offering decent treatment of thier pilots and they are *still* parking airplanes because they just aren't able to fill the front seats, then perhaps we have a pilot shortage. Until then we only have a shortage of pilots who were willing to put up with miserable treatment and poverty (no really, a first year F/O with dependents qualifies for public assistance at many regonals) wages. That is not a shortage by any stretch of the imagination.

When companies are offering actual poverty wages and still getting applicants and filling vacancies, there is no shortage.

When flight schools were paying $50K a year and requiring contracts, because they can't keep people...there was definitely a shortage.

There were *damned* few flight schools offering $50K. I think I heard of one school with a contract to train a foreign carrier's ab-initio students. Other than a very few similar situations, you'd have been very hard pressed to find a run-of-the-mill (no pun intended) flight school paying $50K to it's ordinary flight instructors.

 

[pilotyip]

WHen Mesa and thier ilk are offering $40k/year to start with commesurate increases, .

We were offering close to 40K/yr still had a shortage of higher time applicants.

 

[McNugget]

I've been hearing about this mystical pilot shortage for many years. Decades, in fact. It's never existed yet. It wasn't here a few months ago, or three years ago. There's been a lot of hiring, but no shortage. Some companies have had difficulty hiring pilots, but as we've discussed ad infinitum, that doesn't imply a shortage. Just a company that experienced pilots don't want to work for.

Pilotyip has been talking about the shortage for some time, and all the while passionately counseling pilots that they don't need a degree. Today we see the bottom part of the cycle, which comes every five years, when jobs are hard to come by. We're seeing an airline a week go under. Corporate departments slowing down. Record fuel prices. Cutbacks across the board, and the looming pilot shortage that forms the basis of this thread has been shown clearly to not exist.

Further, those who would forgo the degree and go after the pilot job, now they may be doubly handicapped without the job, and without the degree. For a man with a masters degree, he's been the missionary of this concept, hawking the need for lack of education among his underlings for quite some time now. Presently, his own company has been chopped in half with numerous no-notice terminations, and yet he still continues to preach the same line, with the same bad information. Now, it's no different, just all the more increadible against the backdrop of the present ruins.

Yeah, because that degree was so important to get a job at places like Emory and Kalitta.

 

[avbug]

Yeah, because that degree was so important to get a job at places like Emory and Kalitta.

Perhaps if only to be able to spell "Emory."

 

[Lear Wanna Be]

Perhaps if only to be able to spell "Emory."

Bahwawawawawa!!!! That is the funniest thing I have ever heard you say! Burn! LMAO!!! Maybe he should have stayed in school.

 

[G-force]

No Shortage-look At All The Layoffs!!

There is not going to be a shortage of pilots!!There will be a SHORTAGE of FLYING JOBS!!!

 

[avbug]

Wiggums, we never lower minimums, we just redefine competitive hiring statistics. To establish the quality standard needed in this business we use the well-known medical test know as the "Billricktomfred". That is where you hold a reflective device under a candidate’s nose and if it fogs up, he is viable candidate. Actually we are finding flight time is not the complete indicator of success, there are many other variables to look at to determine if a candidate will be successful.

That was pilotyip three weeks ago regarding hiring at USA Jet. Then again, forty grand isn't generally going to do much to attract "high time" pilots, anyway. Particularly those who don't want to be on call 24/7 with a few minutes show time and only a small base wage.

Again...no pilot shortage. More of a shortage of operators willing to pay properly and treat a pilot as he or she ought to be treated.

Presently it's largely a matter of a job shortage...which is more the norm in aviation than not.

 

[pilotyip]

Pilot shortages are relative. There is not a shortage of applicants at UPS, FedEx, or SWA, there is shortage of applicants at Mesa, Capeair and Ameristar.

 

[avbug]

Again proving the point that there is no shortage of pilots...just good employers.

 

[pilotyip]

and "good employers" is a moving target, 2 years ago NJ was having trouble filling classes, now the view of what is a good employer has changed. And who is to define good employer, when I was unemployed USA Jet looked like a great palce to work, only until I could get a better job, funny thing happened on the way to the better job, I could not find one.

 

[avbug]

Now there's the conundrum. You indicate you couldn't find anything better than USA Jet, yet USA jet has a hard time finding people, and you've repeatedly stated that you had to keep lowering your minimums to get pilots to come work for you.

This doesn't indicate USA Jet was a good employer. In fact, based on your own testimony, just the opposite. With standards being repeatedly lowered, you show that you found it difficult to get pilots at any price, even offering what you thought was a good wage (it wasn't).

Conversely, you felt like it was the best option for you? Or you simply felt comfortable there? Nothing wrong with that. One man's ceiling is another man's floor, and what works for one is just not on for another. However, to suggest that there's some mythical shortage of pilots, simply because your firm couldn't bring them on board with any experience, even by raising the wages, only verifies the obvious; it's not a pilot shortage, but a matter of experienced pilots finding something better.

So far as Netjets, many pilots have found them more than palatable. Two years ago job prospects abounded, and jobs were aplenty, with pilots continuing to flock to Netjets...that their expansion and success meant they couldn't hire enough didn't mean there weren't enough pilots...pilots were hiring everywhere and it was a pilot's market. Lots of jobs. No shortage of pilots. Netjets biggest problem hasn't been that they couldn't get pilots, it's been that they simply can't train them fast enough. I know other firms in the same boat. Netjets, in fact, has been in high demand among pilot applicants for a number of years now, and in particular, since their last contract.

I really don't know many who wouldn't consider Netjets a desireable employer, the schedule(s) desireable schedules, the aircraft desireable aircraft, the experience desireable experience, the pay acceptable or even desireable pay...it's a good job. It was a good job two years ago, too.

You're not seriously suggesting that "on the way to finding a better job" that USA Jet proved the best there was to be found, are you? Again, nothing wrong with being happy where you are, but few, if any, would give any credence to the notion that USA Jet ever offered, or now offers, the best there is to be found.

 

[pilotyip]

The best job I could find

You're not seriously suggesting that "on the way to finding a better job" that USA Jet proved the best there was to be found, are you? Again, nothing wrong with being happy where you are, but few, if any, would give any credence to the notion that USA Jet ever offered, or now offers, the best there is to be found.

That is exactly what I am saying as a man approaching his 60th B'day, I could not find a job that paid more, gave me more personal freedom, or sense of purpose than my job at USA Jet. Therefore it was the best job I could find. So again the defintion of a good employer is in the eyes of the beholder.

 

[avbug]

Last edited by pilotyip : Today at 13:23. Reason: sppling of course I am an airline pilto with a college degree

Well, here we go again. Once more, you keep spouting this tripe about degrees and employment. You've been on and on about the pilot shortage that doesn't exist, and even as your own company, the same one that's been progressively lowering it's standards, has shut out many of it's employees and ditched an entire fleet, you still assert that such a shortage exists...when clearly it does not and never has.

This stance of itself, while incorrect and destructive to whatever credibility you might hope to maintain, is fairly innocuous. Your agenda, pushed for years on end now, to promote lack of education is not nearly so innocent.

Your poor advice to forgo a degree is foolishness at best. While you spout off about how a lack of degree never hurt you...you always conveniently leave out that you hold a masters degree...

Now, as pilots realize that there wasn't a forthcoming shortage (the one you've been actively preaching is coming, is here, and can only get greater...that one), when pilots can use all the credentials in their favor possible for the limited hiring that will go on...any dumb enough to listen to your advice and counsel are only all the more handicapped. None the less, you continue to pound out the bad word.

What this has done for you in the past, and continues to do for you now, is brand you as the guy who hands out bad advice...not just bad, but 180 degrees out of sync. Perhaps the best way to tackle listening to the counsel you dole out is to know in advance that if one does exactly the opposite...one is at a minimum better off than paying attention to or follwing anything you have to say.

You still believe there is a pilot shortage, then?

 

[pilotyip]

Lets disagree

There certainly was a shortage last year and any pilot who could fog a mirror could get a job, my prediction of that was right on. In the last 2-yr. a number of USA Jet pilots were hired at NJ and SWA without degrees based upon their resumes, skills, and content of their character. I am management the degree might make a difference there, it also certainly helped with promotion in the Navy. Let’s just be gentlemen and agree to disagreed. I did not know people read my tag lines. BTW my grandson told me today after flying over to KOSH in the C-47 with me, that he did not want to go to college but wanted to go to a good trade school.

 

[avbug]

BTW my grandson told me today after flying over to KOSH in the C-47 with me, that he did not want to go to college but wanted to go to a good trade school.

You must be so proud. Congratulations. The poison takes another victim...

There certainly was a shortage last year and any pilot who could fog a mirror could get a job, my prediction of that was right on.

There was no "pilot shortage." There was the usual cyclical prosperity in the industry, which occurs nearly like clockwork every five years. It's a ten year cycle, with five years being a high, and five a low. There's no need to "predict" anything, and even a broken watch is correct twice a day. However, there was no shortage. Greater opportunities, as we see every time the cycle goes around, but no shortage.

Again, simply because USA jet had to keep lowering it's standards doesn't imply a shortage. It's not a matter of too few pilots. Just too few good employers.

You've been "predicting" a looming pilot shortage througout this thread...but you're clearly incorrect. Now your backpeddling effort is to suggest that you correctly "predicted" it two years ago...which while incorrect, doesn't change the fact that you're wrong here, too.

There is no pilot shortage. There has been no pilot shortage. For the foreseeable future, there will be no pilot shortage.

The legion of unemployed pilots presently seeking work certainly won't stand as a very good testament to your upcoming predictions now, will they?

 

[pilotyip]

lets just be gentelmen

You must be so proud. Congratulations. The poison takes another victim..

Lets just agree to disagree

 

[avbug]

Trade school is Navy talk for the Academy, there is where he wants to go and I could not be prouder. He has also told if he doesn't get in there he will only go to college if someone else pays for it. His way of accepting a Navy ROTC scholarship.

Pilotyip sent this by PM, but it deserves a public posting. With this explaination, he does indeed have reason to be proud, with respect to his decision to serve.

I can't agree with someone electing only to gain an education if they don't have to pay for it, but that's his problem.

One who is willing and able to attend any of the academies and to serve their country deserves not only a pat on the back, but a standing ovation...even if everyone else foots the bill.

 

[pilotyip]

Oh No

Pilotyip sent this by PM, but it deserves a public posting. With this explaination, he does indeed have reason to be proud, with respect to his decision to serve.

I can't agree with someone electing only to gain an education if they don't have to pay for it, but that's his problem.

One who is willing and able to attend any of the academies and to serve their country deserves not only a pat on the back, but a standing ovation...even if everyone else foots the bill.

My anti-college reputation is being ruined

 

[avbug]

Yeah, I know, but your own humility aside, you have a right to brag. Enjoy it.