Originally Posted by
SkyHigh
BenS,
Your whole premise is based on a static future. If things stay the same your projections might hold true but aviation is anything but static. Ask the Comair guys about how their plans are going.
The good news about being a Pizza delivery guy is that he has nothing invested into his career. His job is easily replaceable and he is building job skills that might hold value in plenty of other similar fields.
The pilot blows a small fortune on an under preforming career and then has to deliver pizza after sending a long day as a flight instructor. Pay might go up but you could also be kicked to the curb several times in your career. Add up the cost to get trained and educated to the lost years of low wages only to have to start over again and the whole thing gets depressing very fast.
The main issue is that conditions for pilots are not getting any better. You are basing your projections on the industry as it is today. Ten years from now and you will be selling furniture or worse wishing that you were. There is no profit in paying pilots a fair wage. Pressure is downwards on pay and working conditions.
It might work out but it is an incredible risk for the thin promise of ever earning a return on your investment. An expensive long shot with a dim future.
Skyhigh
Well, I just got back on reserve from my wonderful weekend so I don't feel like arguing much today, but I guess I'll try to stay short and sweet.
The pizza guy, when you said it was a good thing his job is easily replaceable, how is that a good thing? I've worked as a bus boy and being easily replacable is nothing to be proud of. I once worked for a casino restaurant (I live in Las Vegas, so just a normal office there) and one day after working all night they wanted me to come in early in the afternoon and I had asked if I could come in a couple hours later than when they wanted me and my request was met with "there are 100 other people who want your job, so are you sure you can't make it?" Being easily replaceable creates deplorable working conditions, and truely low pay. I was making $7 and hour and my take home was around $500 a paycheck. Tips were the only reason I survived that job. And you say career skills are learned that people take elsewhere? Where else might I ask? Another restaurant job? I've seen people trying to make a career out of being a server, to many they feel like $15k a year is the most they will every make. Sadly, for some, it really is all they will ever make and have to retire on. I've seen that lifestyle, I would never want that lifestyle, nor do I wish it on anyone.
Yet you made it sound like a good thing? A pizza restaurant I once worked for hired and fired pizza drivers very frequently. Most never stayed there more than 2 years, 6 months was average employment time. Buddy, I've seen true poverty, I've seen people working for less than 2 or 3 hundred dollars a week. There is nothing good about that lifestyle, and to think or make it sound good because they have no debt is really, in my opinion, a terrible way to think. I never heard any of the people I worked with say "well, I may only make $1200 a month, but at least I don't have $80,000 in school loans making $50k a year." They (career pizza drivers, servers, etc) sacrifice dearly for not having the life that comes with a skill trade such as being a pilot.
I will always agree with you though, when you say that pay is minimal at the regional level and that there is never ending downward pressure on wages. Pilots do need to continue to do what can be done to fight that pressure. I don't exactly know what the answer is. But I think there is an answer somewhere to fight the never ending pressure to lower a pilots wage, I just wish I knew what it was. And yes, I have laid out statements basing pilot pay, and senior pilot pay, on the way conditions are now. I wish there was more that could be said for stability of the regionals so that someone could be a career regional pilot if they wanted to. I do feel for guys who work for regionals that get shut down and then must go elsewhere and start at the bottom. Obviously, captain off the street isn't something we see today. So to go from senior captain somewhere back to junior fo at another, lower cost, regional has got to be the lowest point in someones career, and that is a pain that I could never relate to. Again, I wish I knew of an answer to that problem, but I don't.
The trouble is, I don't write the rules, I simply must play by them. I do wish that there didn't have to be the kind of things that happen to some people. But as I've said, although there are terrible circumstances at times in this career, I don't think the picture is really much different at other careers. I just think that no matter what I go through in aviation, nothing will ever compare to how I used to get by. I feel that with my debt and low income, I'm still better off than making $5.15 or $7 an hour, working two jobs just to pay rent, or working a graveyard followed by working another job in the morning and getting 6 hours sleep after a 16 hour day to start it all over again, 6 or 7 days a week. I feel that regional pay with the debt I have will always be better than having to spend a career in that past lifestyle with no debt.
But again, just my opinion, I'm sure for many they feel that they could go and make more and be more stable had they persued something outside of aviation. How was that for short? haha...