Originally Posted by
Bwipilot
The pilot shortage of 2009/2014 is something the pilot mills (thing puppy mills) and job jocks have been pumping to line there own pockets. The only thing that the retirements will help is to get the industry back to a respectable position--if the industry doesn't pump out 2 more pilots for each of the pilots who retire.
I tend to agree with you BWI. Many people think that when this Age 65 retirement finally kicks in, we're suddenly going to have a shortage again. The problem with that logic, in my opinion, is that BEFORE we went to Age 65, there was a huge oversupply of pilots. Age 65 is just making the pilot oversupply situation GROSSLY worse for the next 3 years. When retirements start again in a little less than 3 years, we'll go from the "gross oversupply" we have now to a mere huge "oversupply" of pilots. I won't believe there is a pilot shortage until entry level wages for flight instructors and regional airline pilots
persistently remain high enough to cover the tremendous financial investment we're forced to make. 20 bucks an hour (i.e. annual salaries in the 20K range) is not anywhere near that required figure IMO.
Originally Posted by
Giggity
This needs to go to every major U.S. periodical pronto!! Well done. Thank you for eloquently summarizing the ills of the airline profession. You should make a brochure and put this at every Riddle, UND, flight school, etc.
A quick add note for the military section: "As a military pilot, be ready to spend MANY MANY hours doing menial non-flying queep."
I just got a PM from a guy who wrote a narrative about becoming a military pilot but I haven't had a change to read it yet. If you could expand upon that last sentence a little bit for me, I'll add that information. I've heard it before, but I wasn't familiar enough with the details to put it on the website.