Originally Posted by
PurpleToolBox
More so, I still believe we need a national flight academy for air transport pilots, separate from our military academies, similar to the Merchant Marine Academy.
The military and merchant marine schools were created to turn farmboys into highly skilled technical leaders to man vital national security and economic jobs.
The big difference today is that the feedstock, instead of being farm kids with a 3rd grade education, are college grads.
I don't think we really need the merchant marine academies any more. Most of their grads end up serving in the navy anyway.
The service academies are probably still useful because in addition to technical skills, military leaders benefit from a liberal arts education as well, particularly history. Even more important, the academies attempt to instill an innate sense of honor and duty into the students, and that works better at a young age. That core group sets the tone for all the officers commissioned from other sources. The military at least tries to not mirror the society (in same cases different sub-societies) from which it's members come.
I don't think the airline industry "needs" the government to subsidize pilot training just yet. Pilots don't need a deep appreciation for history, etc. Even if it came down to it, airlines would probably be better off doing this...
1) Take control of their regional pilot hiring, either contractually or by bringing it in-house, so as to control the pipeline.
2) Granting scholarships to pilot candidates to attend either 4-year aviation colleges (for HS grads) or designated fast-track pilot schools (college grads).
3) Start those pilots as regional FO's with a set career path to mainline (flow or seniority number).
That would be a lot cheaper than paying the taxes/user fees to establish and maintain another government bureaucracy to generate pilots. It also has two other very big advantages:
- The airlines can control the training standards.
- When times are slow, they can throttle back on scholarships. If you create a federal pilot academy, you're stuck with it, it's probably going to make X number of pilots every year whether you need them or not, and of course the airlines/consumers will be paying for that in perpetuity. Once you create some federal jobs, the employment, comfort, and lucrative pensions of those federal employees will of course over-ride all other considerations...
#2 and #3 are already happening.