Originally Posted by
scottm
... But lowering standards may not be enough to attract this well-informed generation to the cockpit. They read breathless articles about airliners flying themselves, they read that NASA, DARPA, Boeing, Airbus, and just about everyone else with a dog in this fight is working hard to eliminate pilots. ... Kids can read plenty of these stories online, and there are few airline pilots they can talk to that will recommend the profession...
Your thoughts are logical for sure, but not actual in my perception based on reading pilot web boards during the last ten years. Information about the low pay, quality of life, career advancement problems and so on has been around this entire time, and at best has had only a minor effect on pilot training. I still hear that classes are being filled at all but maybe the very lowest bottom feeder airlines and the industry has not seriously raised the pay for regional pilots which illustrates their actual stance on the issue. How an entire generation of internet-savvy student pilots could miss out on this info is perplexing; all I can offer is my own speculation that human nature is so strong that no amount of reason will deter one from becoming a pilot if the dream is compatible with their personal hope for success.