Pilot shortage?????

[Jetjockey]

This whole thread is forgetting the one major historical, and factual law of the airlines... "shrink to profitability".

The airlines will use a pilot shortage to reduce the amount of flight, therefore driving up the cost per seat mile.

That's a cost control measure used by weak management. It does not address the fact that worldwide demand for air travel is up, and pilot demand follows. I agree with the above posters, demand for pilots worldwide is on the up. The question is are you qualified and willing to move overseas for a job?

 

[vetrider]

If he has the seniority to hold the 777 as a captain on the line, I seriously doubt he will be behind 'some AWA 320 guy.'

 

[HA25]

If he has the seniority to hold the 777 as a captain on the line, I seriously doubt he will be behind 'some AWA 320 guy.'

you might doubt what you like, but if a Bankrupt AMR sells American to AWA/USAir, why would you expect any different treatment than when AMR bought TWA? APA is not going to get any better treatment from USALPA than it gave to ALPA back on 2000...

Get some perspective and you'll see the danger is VERY real.

 

[vetrider]

you might doubt what you like, but if a Bankrupt AMR sells American to AWA/USAir, why would you expect any different treatment than when AMR bought TWA? APA is not going to get any better treatment from USALPA than it gave to ALPA back on 2000...

Get some perspective and you'll see the danger is VERY real.

Here's my perspective. I'm a former AWA pilot. Have you heard of the 517 east pilots that Nicolau put at the top of the list before he got to the first AWA 320 guy? Do you know why that was? Now every merger is different, but the AA pilots are in a much better position now than former east pilots ever were. Some 'AWA 320 guy' ahead of an AA 777 captain? I doubt anyone expects that in any case.

 

[atpcliff]

Yesterday got email: ERJ-145/-190 capts wanted in China. $15K/month, a variety of schedules to choose from, after one year opportunity to upgrade to A-320.

cliff
HHN

 

[scubabri]

yay! hope and change!

 

[Penguin46]

Heyas,

I still have friends in the flight training business (really? I have friends?), and this is what they say:

Domestic student starts are way, way down. Those on a "career track" at non-career schools (ERAU, UND, FSI, etc) are practically non-existant. There is still a trickle of activity of folks doing their PPL, or IR, and some fairly good activity if you are a "botique" instructor that does type specific training, such as Cirrus or Beech initial or recurrent.

Despite that, finding CFIs is darn near impossible. This is the way it was explained to me:

Look at the hiring window from 1995-2001, and the one prior to that (1986-1989). LOTS of people being hired by LOTS of operators, with LOTS of turnover. Multiple majors would often pump 100/mo through their training pipelines.

Regionals/commuters, overall, were smaller, and you would think, less able to handle the turnover because the relative percentage of people leaving was high.

Despite this, the regionals/commuters still found all the people they needed with ESSENTIALLY ATP mins. Sure, it may have dipped at bit during peak months, but anything below 1000/100 was pretty darn rare, and 1500 and 200 was the typical norm, with the mature regionals getting much higher mins.

Still plenty of people lining up to do the dirty work for crap money. People either came out of the military, or followed the standard civilian career track in which a CFI was a part of.

Fast forward to 2006-08. Slight recovery, majors start to hire again, but numbers of outfits hiring and the overall numbes were MUCH lower than the previous booms. Regionals were much larger, and in threory, should have been better able to cope, because the overall percentage of turnover was far lower.

Yet despite this, regionals had to lower their minimums to wet commercial ticket levels to fill a comparatively lower number of seats...even at VERY mature outfits with decent (relatively) pay and work rules.

Another aspect of this was a far greater percentage of pilots skipped the CFI route. Why bother if you were going to drop right into the right seat of a Barbie Jet at 300 hours? Thus the complete lack of CFIs these days.

Why?

1) Kids are smart. The media and high school today have conditioned kids to go for the maximum result for minimum effort, and they can read teh intrawebz. They realize the risk/return for this career sucks unless you get really lucky.

2) Information is everywhere. You no longer have to subscribe to FAPA or AIR INC to get the information on what's what, and the information is no longer "sole source" or word of mouth, so you get a MUCH wider range of real world conditions.

3) It's really expensive. In 1990 dollars, you could go zero to hero for about $15k, all in, including room and board. If you apply inflation to that, it should run you about $25k today, but in reality, it's probably closer to $35-$40k, assuming you don't get scammed out of your money along the way.

4) Because kids these days need to see instant gratification, the 1,500 hour rule will probably deter a percentage of the every shrinking pool who do decide blow their hard earned cash. VERY, VERY few kids these days do anything for the "love of it"...everything has a price tag attached.

So here we are: No CFIs, Expensive airplanes, a change in flight/time duty time rules, the 1,500 hour rule.

But my prediction is that there will STILL be no pilot shortage, but there will remain, as always, a shortage of pilots willing to work for crap wages at the regionals or anywhere else.

If the regionals were to offer major like compensation packages, the "shortage" would solve itself, because there are a LOT of pilots sidelined because the job is no longer worth doing. But pay the going rate, and watch those classes fill up.

Cancelling flights because of lack of crews when you are paying them FAR BELOW market wages DOES NOT COUNT as a shortage, just a bad business plan.

When major airlines, who are paying their crews somewhat appropriate compensation (I said somewhat, not optimum), start cancelling flights because their classes go unfilled, then yea, that's a shortage.

But you won't see that.

Nu

Interesting post -
If there is a shortage - the pay will increase to a point (and only to that point) it attracks applicants. Simply a supply and demand equation.