Originally Posted by
sweetholyjesus
Childs said prospective pilots need financial assistance. “We need some loan programs for pilots,” he told lawmakers.
This has got to be some sort of joke. How do you support yourself with $25,000/year and pay a huge loan at the same time? Forcing people to live like rats won't bring any more pilots into the industry. If there aren't enough people training to work at your airline, pay for the training yourself. Or, make the wages worthwhile enough to make people want to seek the training on their own.. Begging the taxpayer to bail you out while further punishing pilots is super greedy and shameless. Aren't the airlines making record profits?
Russell "Chip" Childs has the same level of education as many of his pilots, in some cases even less than his pilots. He gets $330,000 in salary alone, plus about $1.4 million in bonuses. Meanwhile, his pilots start at $33,000. But somehow he doesn't understand why people don't want to join his airline and make such little money after paying so much for their education and training?
Let's everyone take a deep breath. I don't agree that loans alone will fix the problem, but access to reasonable financing for flight training IS a problem. If you don't go through an aviation university, you are looking at paying upwards of 7-9% interest in private loans. That is outrageous. While I think pay should be addressed as well, student loans for flight training is one of the biggest barriers of starting flight training.