Originally Posted by
FighterHayabusa
That's funny. There's plenty of engineers working 60 hour weeks, some weekends, and living in fear of being obsoleted by an Indian or Chinese engineer who will work for 1/6th the salary. I bet there's more engineers who would rather be pilots than pilots who would rather be engineers. Truth is engineers AND pilots are suckers making big money for "the man".
Exactly what I was getting at, I was just trying to be nice...
Also, while regional pay is somewhat depressed I believe it to be better than working as a CFI for $8/hr with no health insurance to get five or six thousand hours. Such was the case before the regionals existed. My friend flying the whale for NW had 7500 hours before getting hired in the eighties; he said that was totally normal and competitive for those days. Can you imagine having to go from a warrior to the right seat of a DC9? I'll take the regional any day over five plus years of doing turns around a point.
Let's also remember that five years ago the hiring situation was similar at the regionals. For that matter even two years ago minimums were really high. Which all goes to say that the pilot shortage has been slowly making its way to where it is today. It has been slow and steady and is anything but a temporary shortage in staffing.