Looming Pilot Shortage

[avbug]

It always does. Every five years, same cycle. Top to bottom, five years on a high, five years we hit a low. This is the low, and it's been expected.

There was never a shortage. Perhaps it's clear to everybody now.

 

[pilotyip]

Was to!

Was to, 8 months there ago was a shortage of experienced pilots, that is why I was hiring 500 hour CFI's.

 

[imacdog]

No shortage of experienced pilots, just experienced pilots willing to work for crap wages and working conditions.

 

[Lear Wanna Be]

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. What nobody could foresee was that the price of fuel was going to more than double in less than 2 years. If it isn't obvious, oil relates to everything in our economy. Just ask construction workers how much PVC they are using these days compared to years past. PVC=plastic=Oil=very expensive. Then you throw an election year on top of it all and well, we have a slight "correction in the market" as the experts like to call it.

 

[Junkflyer]

I guess the pilot shortage must have happened when I blinked because I never did see it.

 

[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.