Interesting article by Schiff. He's so highly respected in our profession that his words will force the head-in-the-sand types to finally acknowledge that compensation levels are a faint shadow of what they once were, and are continuing to decline.

The "glory days" are gone forever, I'm afraid.

Schiff is dead wrong on one count, however. It's not that the hardships are more daunting than ever on the way to that fat paycheck and job security. It's that the "fat" paycheck at the top levels is a lot less fat than it used to be, and it's getting slimmer all the time. That's really the reality that's closing in all around us. As I've said numerous times, the industry is rapidly heading toward a compensation level where senior mainline captains will make around 100-120K... or about the same as senior big-city policemen. We are well on our way toward becoming a thoroughly blue-collar profession, like computer systems engineers or factory supervisors. The culprit: the cheap fare, which shows no signs of going away, despite what recent reports about high load factors would infer.