Originally Posted by
sinca3
Thanks Timbo....I'm depressed and I wasn't even here!! Just depressed this career isn't what I expected when I got into it and never got to even taste those good ole days.
I hear you, but I think you'd have to go back to the 1960's-70's, prior to deregulation, to find any 'good ole days'. In 1985 we had the B scale, (and everyone back then started as a flight engineer, not a copilot, B scale engineer wages sucked!). The guys hired in 1991 got furloughed in 1993-1996. Then we got POS 96. Then Mo'Ron closed all the little bases. Then Leo started buying 600 RJ's and parking mainline jets. Then the terrorists attacks in 2001. If there were any good ole days in my career, pay wise, it was only from 2001-2004. But the Contract 2000 pay rates only lasted 4 years, and we gave it all back, and a lot more.
Two really good books every airline pilot needs to read; Flying the Line, Vol. 2 (covers deregulation, Frank Lorenzo, up to the year 2000) and the book; Hard Landing, which covers a lot of the industry since deregulation.
I have not found any good books that cover what's happened to this industry since the terrorist attacks of 2001, I got to live it instead, and as we have all seen, it was far worse than most of the stuff that happened in the 1960's-70's.
But the good ole days were never that good in the first place! This industry has been a roller coaster ride since it began. We are in an up cycle right now, it might last 5 years, if we are lucky, but that just means the next down cycle is coming...