You and I are agreeing too much lately the one thing that has driven the salaries abroad is the fact that the available pool of pilots lacks experience, over here in the US is totally opposite, due to stagnation after 9/11, the separation of the profession into two distinct classes, regional and mainline and the further delay of age 65, has created a situation where you have many overqualified individuals in the position they hold, the guys that are holding 777 F/O at places like Delta for example, are individuals that hold the qualifications (more than the qualifications actually) to be captains, you have guys with less total time and 10 years younger on average holding wide body command in the expat market, in the regionals for example, 10,000+ hours captains is the common denominator now, you look into any of the regionals that have been around for a while now, Pinnacle, Express Jet, COMAIR and I'll be willing to bet that close to 40% of their captains are at or above 10,000 hours of total time and a good 6,000 hours of jet PIC in all kinds of WX operations and flying into some of the most congested air spaces in the world, that level of experience will have you as 744 captain abroad because of the lack of experienced pilots. In the US we don't only have the largest pool of pilots but also the experience level is too high, there is no other place on earth right now where a start up can find all the qualified and current pilots they want, except here in the US.