Originally Posted by samc
I disagree with most of you about PFT.
1. No training is free- you either pay with time, or with money, either way its money.
2. People who are in a hurry to get to a regional are probably older (mid twenties), moving from one career to flying and want to catch up. Or they are people that incurr debt like every other college student in the country. Now, are all other industries suffering because of college graduates with student loans? Perhaps to some degree but not enough to force wages down to 15K.
3. Doing training in 90 days as opposed to two years doesn't have crap to do with quality of a pilot.
4. Having thousands of instructors running around instead of PFT people only means instruction fees will go down, there will be more students, then more pilots and there will still be pay problems at the regionals.
5. Even if regionals established a hard minimum they're still going to lose X number of pilots to better paying jobs every month. Where's the backfill going to come from? All the CFIs who've been making heaps of money and will only leave their instructing job for a 40K regional salary?
The only solutions I see are time and growth. Either way, good luck.
I would say PFT is the whole problem. Part but not the whole. To me it seems the majors are in dire straights and the regionals (management) is scrambling to A. make profit from it and B. Make sure they keep a job. Regional Management is above their pilots so the "p**sing" waterfall happens to hit us smack dab on our heads. Its raining outside. We need to get John Q. I dont give a da*n Public to see whats going on and if it continues it will start to affect their own saftey. Till then I dont see how it else to start rockin the boat.
If my airline gets some of the xjet flying so be it. I cant help that. Im going to be on probation if I dont fly they let me go. They hire new people. I try to get an interview with someone else but have to explain why I was let go. Would you really hire me? I understand we have to stand up for each other but refusing flights, unless you get the pilot group to do so, is impractical.
And Im 22 please dont tell me that "mid-twenties" is old.