Originally Posted by
Bad-Andy
I hate to rain on your (already rainy) parade, but most "third world" wages are double or triple what the US wages are. In fact, US pilots are getting a bad wrap on the int'l contracts for coming in and undercutting the locals (third world as you put it). It's not bad enough they ruined the US Airline industry, now they want to ruin it for the rest of the world too...
Currently third world countries are trying to ramp up their production of pilots and have to offer high wages to attract western pilots in the mean time. Once they develop their own source of cheaply trained and abundant flight crews then I predict that the high wages are going to plunge as they are able to hire locals instead.
I offer as an example the international shipping fleet. At one time those big ships were maned by highly paid western crews. Now it is all third world people who will take a lot of abuse and get paid peanuts because in their home countries their wages go much farther and so they are happy.
In 10 to 15 years 747-400 crews could fly into JFK from New Deli and then stay with the plane for a month before going home at half the wages that a US pilot would want/need.
Skyhigh