Originally Posted by
11atsomto
.........but they can. The reason our buttoxes are not being replaced by the buttoxes of Indonesian twenty somethings are cabotage laws. These are the same things that kept me from getting a 737 gig in Thailand, Vietnam when I had thrice the experience of the people I was training for that specific job.
Do you remember the #denyNAI movement. It wasn't poor pilotage that caused them to fail. We are very lucky that Covid 19 caused NAI to crash and burn and thus the flag of convenience operating model did not threaten us.
Yes cabotage rules are very important to us. There are several flavors, it's nice to have some balanced reciprocity on international routes, but the biggy is of course domestic internal flying.
Although cause vs effect: I tend to suspect that the reason cabotage protections *have* survived is partly because we are in fact harder to replace than deck seamen (ship officers are more like us, which is why it's common to have different nationalities on the bridge and on the deck). If foreign carriers would just have to hire US pilots anyway, what's the point? The US objectively has by far both the largest general aviation and military pilot ecosystems.