Originally Posted by
Typhoonpilot
How do U.S. pilot jobs get lost when the U.S. majors never served the city pairs?
When was the last time a U.S. carrier served:
Karachi
Islamabad
Peshawar
Lahore
Ahmedabad
Cochin
Trivandrum
Calicut
Calcutta
Dar Es Salam
Nairobi
Addis Ababa
or any of a long list of other places?
U.S. carriers fly people from the USA to: Europe, South America, Asia or within the USA. Do Emirates or any of the Middle Eastern carriers do that?
Yes. Yes, they do.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm not concerned about the list of locales not served by U.S. carriers.
What DOES concern me is the picture I see when I pull up FlightAware or FlightRadar24 and filter for EK or UAE call signs. The half dozen or so Emirates flights I see over the U.S. don't represent U.S. pilot jobs. If pilots were leaving major U.S. carriers to fly for them, it might be a different story. On the contrary, the U.S. pilots flying for them are furloughed from U.S. carriers or otherwise unable to find employment, taking foreign jobs as a last resort. U.S. carriers are forced to compete with state-owned airlines operating Ex-Im financed airplanes paying sub-par wages to desperate pilots. That's NOT a level playing field, and I can't help but be frustrated that our own federal government helps tilt it in their favor.
And it's not just Emirates.
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