Originally Posted by maxjet;[url=tel:3424971
3424971]I understand the angst against moving up the retirement age. I hope it gets raised for one simple reason. I would like to get on an airliner, after paying a high price to do so, and ACTUALLY BE ON TIME! I am so sick of hearing about No crew! Yes, I know this is the airlines fault. Yes I know they saw this coming. Neither of those things solves my problem as a consumer. Raising the age, even if only temporary, and for domestic only, gives them 2 years to catch up.
The word is out that being a commercial pilot pays well. Flight schools are filling up. The pipelines will be full in a couple of years. An age increase would allow the majors to stop hiring pilots away from the regionals at such a fast clip, allowing the regionals to catch up to the training gap. This would be a great thing for the industry and the consumer. Obviously a bad thing for the current pilots waiting to move forward.
when they say “no crew” it doesn’t mean crew wasnt assigned to a flight and they just discovered it then. Its a blanket statement for why they’re late. It just means at least one person out of the whole crew is not there at that moment. Maybe scheduling robbed them for another flight. Maybe they were caught up in a thunderstorm on the other side of the country. Maybe they got in late the night before and needed extra rest. Maybe it’s just the flight attendants or one flight attendant. Maybe just the pilots or pilot. When they say “no crew” over the PA they rarely say why there is no crew. 67 or 68 wouldn’t help with the “no crew” situation.
Airlines publish a schedule a few months out and that schedule requires X number of pilots to fly. If an airline publishes a schedule but has less than X pilots. Is the problem a lack of pilots or is it a problem with scheduling too much with too little resources to deliver on the schedule?