Pathways to a flying career
 

Hello everyone! It's been a while!

I am just amazed at the number of pathways that are available to a person these days to a flying career. I can remember when I joined APC back in 2006, there were some who were adamant about the route that one should take is Part 61 and "paying your dues" and not circumventing "the process" in terms of getting your ratings and building your time. Seems as though that school of thought has gone by way of the dinosaur...LOL! Based upon my observations, the shortage is real and airlines are doing anything to attract potentials. Hell, I saw an advertisement from a newspaper back in the early 60's where United Airlines was advertising entry pilot position. All you needed was a private pilot's license. That's right....A PRIVATE PILOT'S LICENSE. Go figure. Imho, I don't think things will get that desperate, but will get pretty damn close. jmo.

To those taking advantage of whatever pathway that's available to you to get you to your goal....all the best! Do what is going to work for you.


atp

Very encouraging to hear. This is the beginning of a new era of aviation, and I am going to be a part of it.

There isn no pilot shortage. There never was.

Paying your dues is not old fashioned, nor is experience. I've met several first officers who couldn't understand geographical coordinates, and more than a few who couldn't navigate off a magenta line.

The collective skill level and experience base is slowly slipping into the toilet with a generation of those who never had to work to get there, who bypassed the traditional lines of experience, and puts many in airline seats squarely int he same boat as foreign countries; a sad state of affairs. Pilots who have never experienced an actual emergency, who don't really know weather or ice or contingency, who know only what they've seen in a simulator, who come from one job or no job with no background, nothing but a fresh ticket and the same narrow path.

So far as hiring; that movement in the industry, and hiring takes place, does not equate to a pilot shortage. There is not.

19,686 pilots are scheduled to retire in the next 10 years across Delta, American, and United alone. That’s not a shortage?

No, it's not a shortage.

If I have ten dollars in my pocket and plan on spending it, it's not a problem when I have ten to put back, and if I have a thousand and spend ten, without ten to put back it's still not a shortage. It's a drop in the bucket.

The "pilot shortage" has been a myth used to sell flight training and placement services for years, a daring of the kit darby lie, and still popular. After 09/11 a third of the flight schools in the country rolled nipple-skyward, and still no pilot shortage. We're on the heels today of a slow down and training backlog, and delays caused by "lack of crews" aren't due to a "pilot shortage," either. We don't have one. Don't equate future retirement to a shortage, and don't mistake present hiring for a pilot shortage. We've seen this material before.

When the furloughs begin and the curtain climbers who dragged themselves out of the soup for their shiny jet job, having patted themselves on the back so much it gave them a bruise on their shoulder as they congratulated themselves on their seniority numbers, the same will the children who howl the loudest about the unfair nature of it all. It's not a shortage. It's just seems that way to those who haven't been around long enough to know.

Have regionals always been giving 6 figure bonuses?

Have you ever seen a protracted shutdown like you saw during the pandemic? What you saw before, or thought you saw, is mitigated by recent events. We haven't experienced a mass exodus; we're experiencing a slow process of re-tooling: training, maintenance, and returning to the previous world, but it's not instantaneous. We're also experiencing a temporary push for travel, a rebound from travel restrictions and being cooped up. There's movement. Don't expect it to last, and it's not a shortage. It's a lag in operations playing catch up, and there's hiring in progress.

It's not what you imagine it to be, if you believe it's a pilot shortage.