Pilot shortage?????

[Ridgeback]

NEVER!???!!! What if we educated the up and coming pilots to command their righteous earnings. QUOTE]

So Your efforts to demand $40/hr instead of the 20/hr must have been successful considering your at a regional...You are an inspiration

 

[hopalong]

NEVER!???!!! What if we educated the up and coming pilots to command their righteous earnings. QUOTE]

So Your efforts to demand $40/hr instead of the 20/hr must have been successful considering your at a regional...You are an inspiration

I'm Not at a regional.... I, do however remember the days of flight instructing and what we once called commuters, pay crap. I speak at schools and let the potential wannnabe aviators know that it is no joy ride.(pay wise) If you start paying the regionals better, the majors will get more, and the domino effect can take place to level our deserved compensation.

BTW it's you're at a regional, not your. Dummy....

 

[linecheck]

These reports that we are reading set the stage for the single pilot airliner.

Pilot shortage problem solved.

 

[Two Feathers]

I'll go out on a limb and predict a MAJOR pilot shortage from today's numbers over the next 20 years. It will come shortly after shortages in food, fuel and potable water though, that's the only bummer...

 

[NuGuy]

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

 

[atpcliff]

And the 1500 hour rule will never happen. The airlines won't allow it. They'll throw enough money at the problem to make it go away. Mark my words. There will be a so called cutout for certain exceptions to the 1500 hour rule making it null and void. Just like they are doing for the flight time and duty time regs. Apparently cargo and charter pilots are getting thrown under the bus. Money talks, safety and common decency in scheduling pilots walks I suppose.

The ATP requirement is LAW, not a rule and there's nothing the faa can do about it. The airlines already tried and failed to influence the ATP law.

The Flight/Rest/Duty rules are intact. The airlines already tried to change them and failed. And, if the FAA tries too mess with them too much, Congress will simply make a law changing them to what Congress wants. The law says the Flight/Duty/Rest goes into effect before 1 Aug.

 

[pilotyip]

The law says the Flight/Duty/Rest goes into effect before 1 Aug.

Yes with a two year time frame to implement, just like 135 scheduled commuter converting to 121 back in 1996

 

[charlie2]

I think NuGuy says there will never be a pilot shortage just a shortage of pilots pilots willing to work for crappy pay and benies...I agree.

 

[FLYLOW22]

Shortage? She said it was a good size.

 

[pipejockey]

I'm almost sure there will be some loophole that corporate america, in this case the airline industry, will create to allow these flight schools that promise the world but deliver a pile of sh*t, to circumvent the 1500 ATP requirement and allow 800 hour or less kids to continue flooding the market in order to keep cockpits staffed with a body. After all, what corporate america wants, corporate america gets!

For instance, the Obama appointed NMB decided to scrap the current union drive process in which you need a majority of WORKERS to vote yes for a union, not a majority of VOTES. But that wasn't what corporate america wanted so what do they sneak in the FAA reauthorization bill? You guessed it, back to the old archaic way in which if out of a 1,000 employee group, 400 vote FOR a union, and 300 vote AGAINST a union and 300 are so complacent and worthless that they don't vote at all, who wins? Yes, the 300 who voted AGAINST even though 400 voted FOR. If this is not something from the twilight zone, I don't know what is. And how anybody can support this process is absolutely unbelievable.