Originally Posted by
RemoveB4Flight
You can call it whatever you would like. Like you say it's a term. The word shortage simple means we don't have enough as we need.
If I don't have enough money to pay my rent, I will have insufficient funds. That does not mean that there aren't funds in someone else's possession or elsewhere in the world or that I can't make changes that would increase my funds, but as far as I would be concerned I would currently have a shortage of funds.
Now you argue that they exist they just are actively flying. Great. But many of the ones you speak of have zero interest in ever returning to the 121 world or even aviation at all no matter what the pay. Some have been burned too many times and are now content with their career in other fields and being home every night with their families. Also some of those guys likely can't come back to the 121 world even if they would like to. Some likely medically and some at an age that wouldn't make any sense to restart from the bottom.
I agree there has for many years been (and still is) a pay shortage. But you're lying to yourself if you don't think the pay shortage created a pilot shortage. It caused people to go into other industries with no intention to return and stunted new pilot interest with low pay and high cost of training.
You sound like you are trying to argue against what I said but then you make my point. First of all much of what you argue is irrelevant. Of course there are many reasons that qualified guys have left or are leaving flying. But there are plenty of guys out there who would love to fly but are not going to do it for 35k. Yes, there are plenty of you out there chasing any carrot you can find to try and build the resume that would get you to a major. But there are many guys out there who would go back to flying if the pay was higher. There are many pilots out there who would leave overseas airlines if the pay here was higher. With higher pay there are plenty of pilots out there. And, if the pay was higher there would be more out there working to become pilots. Until now the airlines were doing everything they could besides raising pay. Now they are having to do that. More pay will equal more pilots. There is no shortage, its just that at todays pay rate A there are X number of pilots, at a pay rate of A+B the number of pilots will increase to X+y. Don't argue with me, just take the money.