Originally Posted by
seaav8tor
Started flying in 1976.
in 1978 deregulation was going to create thousands of new airline jobs.
It did. No shortage.
Wages have been cyclical as pointed out, but, over time have trended down. No shortage to drive the pay trend line back up.
When push comes to shove hiring requirements change. No shortage.
I have been watching this for 33 years. No shortage yet.
If you are waiting for a shortage to make things better, you are going to be waiting a very long time.
How true.
Orville and Wilbur Wright had to flip a coin to decide who was going to fly the first airplane. (true) Before flight was officially invented there were already twice the number of pilots needed. Nothing has changed.
We can never expect a "shortage" to increase our pay. We have to some how convince our union that unity is key to our power and our ability to negotiate.
The leading indicator for the downward trend line in our negotiation results is scope. When we relax scope, the next round of negotiations inevitably is done in an environment where we must compete with our outsourced flying.
Our ability to unionize is key to elevating our profession. We must adopt as a matter of morality common sense that we can't sell one pilot's job to enhance another pilot's without paying the price in the next round of negotiations.
... at my former airline the President lamented there was a "pilot shortage" and several of us corrected him, that there was no "pilot shortage" just a shortage of pilots willing to work for $18,000 a year. He also wondered why survey respondents answered they thought XXX was a good place to get a job, but also responded that more than 80% of them were looking for work elsewhere. The obvious answer was that it was a good place to get some flight time and move on at the first opportunity.
Thus leads to the confusion over a "pilot shortage." There will never be a shortage of pilots for the good jobs, only the bad ones.