Originally Posted by
Margaritaville
This is nothing but more selfishness from the most selfish generation ever. The boomers at the end of their careers planned poorly, wasted their money when they were young, relied on a pension that was underfunded for a decade instead of starting their own investments, and even after they got retirement age raised once to make up for it, they still couldn't make it work so now they want another bite of the apple. No. You made bad life choices, and that's not my problem. Buh bye. Shoo. Good riddance. I can't wait for the working environment in this industry to improve when they leave and take their politics, grouchiness, selfishness, and conspiracy theories with them.
I treat this as a job now. Not a career. I have kids in the corporate world. They do the job, and leave it there. I do the same. Sick calls fix things when my attitude needs improving.
My major point is this: Extending the age limit to 67 won't fix a pilot shortage. Career earnings, logical career path and progression, career stability, and high entry level pay along with high level exit plan will fix it. It will take 20 years of sustained airline profitability to do this.
The gang bang style of airline expansion and growth that management has embarked upon is foolish. Management is driving the pilot shortage. They keep buying airplanes at record rates. Insane. If they were worried about the supply of qualified pilots then they wouldn't have bought so many damn airplanes. The sky is crowded. Terminals are packed. Heck you need to take 3 aspirin ff your going to wait in a TSA line. Airplanes are severely over crowded. Fights and violence on airplanes every day. The traveling public is in a sardine can from check in at the airport to arriving at their destination. Airlines just keep buying planes and adding capacity. Management is trying to "break the shortage of pilots" by ordering so many planes. Tehy are trying to influence the supply/demand side of the labor equation. Their 2 biggest costs are labor and fuel. Not much they can do about fuel costs. So, labor....they want you to work for cheaper and don't care about the difference a 12 year CA makes or a 32 year CA. It's the same damn pay.