Originally Posted by Cubdriver

Unfortunately Sky I think you are right in your assessment. We could truly be witnessing the end of an era right now. We had a good thing in the USA with the Golden Age of General Aviation including superb aircraft made on native soil, a wide ranging economical FBO network, cheap aviation gasoline, spectacular aeronautical scenery along with free flight service stations and full FAA infrastructural support. No more; it is time for all this to fade quietly away and things will become just as they are in Europe where to own or fly a small aircraft is cost prohibitive for the middle class. We'll be grounded, and we may never fly that way again.

The cost of flight training to become an airline plot will increase due to the demise of cheap GA-based flight training. The exorbitant taxes and fees will get rolled into the costs of attending ERAU and similar institutions. This will inevitably drive up the payscales airlines have to pay to attract professional pilot applicants. But it will take a few years. Airlines are not very worried about it, this wonderful source of low-priced pilots. They think there will not be a backlash; for 35 years young pilots have been forced to eat the $50k it took to get them their ratings.

I think the reality that most pilots are vastly underpaid has still not registered with the average American and most people still have no idea the glory days of the American airline pilot are gone. Airlines strongly attract people who still want a crack at the apple, and they can still pay peanuts for talented labor. But eventually the scarcity felt by airlines in the rest of the world feels in regard to pilot supply will arrive on domestic soil. Then payscales will rise. It will be the first time in 50 years they have to pay substantially higher pilot wages.

And by then the Golden Age of GA will be long gone.