Originally Posted by
tank6102
i disagree completely....pay is a mute point when it comes to pilot shortages. every flight school out there is gonna talk up the pay to every uninformed joe schmo who thinks it would be cool to fly an airplane for a living. i saw it every day as a flight instructor...the students would laugh and think i was joking when i told them they would basically live in poverty their first five years at an airline. they are being lied to by the people selling the schools and that will never stop. just like any other profession out there, there will always be the uninformed people that will do this without looking at the facts first.
with a raising of the minimums all you are going to see is a temporary shortage followed by a boom of people with the time. don't get me wrong, i am a low time guy and have no problem with raising the minimums. 1500 hours is more than reasonable to ask of someone to fly a bus around with people's lives in your hands. i do agree that pay needs to go up, i just think there will never be a TRUE shortage of pilots.
(sorry if i offended anyone named joe schmo out there)
I dont disagree that there would be a shortage of fresh newbs out of the flight schools but that doesnt mean that there is a shortage of qualified plilots. There are ALOT of furloughed pilots and alot of highly qualified pilots throughout the country currently, they are just doing other types of lying and the regionals have crap pay, schedules and long upgrades now so those jobs arent sought after by anyone other than freshly minted commercial pilots or second career guys looking to jump into the industry. Also it wouldnt be a bad thing to have more qualified pilots flying for 121 airlines would it?
I do think we will see a shortage of pilots in a few years unless the pay and working conditions are brought back up to attract people to this industry. At DAL we will lose 300+ pilots a year for the next 20 years once the age 65 rule has taken full efect, heck we have 800+ pilots a year for almost 5 years in a row coming up.