Originally Posted by
NineGturn
I was making perfect sense, and I was sticking to my point. I have no idea what point you were trying to make.
I was simply saying that historical observation does not suggest that the future trend will be any different.
I'm not even sure why you are arguing this point with me. All I said is your statement made me chuckle.
I wondered about you so I read back on some of your posts and your pattern seems to be based on a specific agenda.
- You seem very interested in promoting the growth of flight schools that can churn out large numbers of new airline pilots for cheap.
- You are very interested in maintaining the status quo of big union influence among airline pilots specifically with the regional to major path that has evolved and the seniority system that is required for this path.
- You are interested in encouraging the regional airline route as a good career path for pilots.
Your priorities seem to be against the best interests of pilots as a profession and more in line with either an RAA executive or the owner of a large flight school.
Gloopy, can you explain what you do support? My agenda is very clear in that I support the long term restoration of the piloting profession and an improvement in career opportunities for pilots.
I will learn more by your response....
What do I support? That's a pretty broad question. I like puppies and world peace, although I think soccer is stupid (but so does the rest of America thankfully).
As for promoting the growth of flight schools, its clear that we lack sufficient infrastructure for training new pilots relative to projected demand. Its not necessarily a matter of more schools, but we do/will need more instructors and students going to flight schools. This isn't even debatable.
While we may collectively gain some amount of pricing power from a "shortage" that will be short lived and is not a strategy towards restoration. If we can't get enough new pilots into the system we will all suffer because our entire industry will lose out. Eventually the pressure to allow cabotage as well as further aiding and abetting foreign enemy airlines hell bent on poaching our entire industry out from under us will only increase if we can't find a way to asuage our pilot shortage at least to a reasonable degree.
As for taking the lower cost comments out of context, I think we have way too much 6 figure Bravo Sierra in all our education systems. Way too many flight schools are gravitating to insane all glass hyper expensive fleets/programs when what we need is experience. Its not going to be "cheap" either way, but the issues we face will only get worse if the only solution we throw at it is a 6 figure flight school model on top of a 6 figure bachleors degree. That's asinine, unsustainable and completely out of scale with reality.
The regional path is and always will be a great way to gain time and experience, but there are other great ways too. FWIW I am LOVING watching the dirt bag bottom feeder regionals scramble for pilots and raising compensation. I want thier costs to go up and go up a lot. That takes real pressure off of the bottom end of mainline scope issues, which we also need to address and improve.
Your thinly veiled point is still completely ridiculous though. You think that because there are 76 seat RJ's flying around that ergo soon legacy pilot groups will sign away widebody international FO positions to out of seniority MPL pilots. That is not going to happen. Ever.
Trends can be a useful tool, but its important not to take them out of context. Do you white knuckle your armrests and start screaming "AIRSPEED! STALL! AIRSPEED!" every time the other pilot slows 10 kts? That's the trend, after all.
