Bustin

I can't argue with you there. In terms of home and family life, the current pay structure and work rules in aviation hardly make it worth it. And your point about dentists is about to be lived out in the airline world. When the pendulum swings back and the airlines are looking for pilots again it's going to be an issue. Before the economy crashed regionals were already having a hard time finding qualified pilots. This, of course, should eventually work in our favor to improve pay and QOL to draw more interest, and pilots, back into the industry.

SkyHigh

Bustin,

A pilot shortage might result in improved conditions for pilots. However during the regional boom when companies were having a hard time finding pilots instead of raising wages to attract more people they just lowered minimums.

I expect that if there is a true shortage companies will start their own cadet programs and hire people with zero flight time and pay them nothing over raising wages to draw sidelined pilots with experience.

Skyhigh

Bustin

You're right there. The cadet programs will be their only option outside of raising pay once the new minimum hours rule goes into effect, if it ever does. I would imagine unionized pilot groups would have the ability to influence whether or not the company is able to do that. I guess we'll find out.

Hacker15e

For the first time in a long time, I agree wholeheartedly with SkyHigh.

Until someone has been a professional aviator long enough for it to "just be a job", they really don't know the entire depth and breadth of how flying applies to their life. Younger and less experienced pilots tend to have the romantic view, and older more experienced pilots tend to have the pragmatic view -- that's just how it is because one has to find their own way in life in order to determine what is important to them. I certainly identify with feelings and beliefs like Foxy is talking about, because I used to be that way, too. But, then I grew up. I saw the world. I did a lot of really cool flying. Finally, I realized that flying is just something you do, and it is not the end-all, be-all of the human experience.

To anyone who hasn't gotten to the point yet where the flying they do to put food on the table and a roof over the head (not the flying done for recreation - that's a different story all together), then you are indeed a lucky person. The vast, vast majority of professional pilots feel that way about their avocation at some point.

I love aviation as much as anyone, and it has been a significant part of my life since I was born. It is not, however, definitive of my personal identity, nor is it anything remotely close to a religion.

SkyHigh

I have never seen unions do anything to protect lower rung pilots. It is all about insuring that captains get theres and everyone else can fight for themselves.

Skyhigh

SkyHigh

Amen Brother.

Foxy

People differ. I can guarantee you, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I have no capacity to view aviation as "just a job". I know several professional aviators with whom I speak on a regular basis who share my viewpoint completely. One of them is a bush pilot in Alaska, flying beavers--He has been doing it for many years. Another is a flight instructor who's been doing it for a long while himself. Yet another is a friend of mine who left a tech job to do flight instruction full time, long ago. We are all on exactly the same wavelength. I have friends of mine who work for the airlines, and friends of mine who work for fractionals who do, however, share your viewpoint--so some of it likely depends on the type of flying and how one is treated. Perhaps it's also just the person. None of the people to whom I refer have ever wanted to fly for the airlines. (Well, except the long-time flight instructor, who discovered that he really enjoyed flight instruction)

I can assure you that I've grown up as much as I ever will. :>
In this day and age, however, it's hard to become an 'experienced' pilot unless one is being paid to do it, or one is independently wealthy; thus you certainly have the advantage of me in experience--All I can guarantee is that I know myself, and I have the experiences of others with similar mindsets to draw on.

For me, it is enough; I cannot speak for others.

And some always do, which is the point I'm trying to get at; whether it's nurture or nature.

I am never X. I'm always a pilot who happens to be X.

Definitive of my personal identity. Certainly my religion, or a significant part thereof.

~Fox

CrimsonEclipse

I've heard of "dreams", "passions", which really translate to cheap pilots. Those pilots can eat glory and status.

I cannot.

I've also seen "pilot shortages" 3 times in my career. Each time I read that the conditions would get better etc, etc. There is a stack of resumes on each desk 12" thick that need to be address and a few mergers and bankruptcies to be completed before any real hiring starts.

But by all means, pay for your type rides for the sniff of an interview, just like your friend's-mother's-neighbor's-accountant's-pool boy did just last week. Now he's making $215,000 year on a 747 with 1 week on 4 weeks off.

Oh, and I.T. has a truck load of "work from home" (remote) jobs. I don't even need pants!

CE

Hacker15e

Hah, we'll check back in a decade from now and see what you think.

EVERY "dream" job becomes "just a job" at some point for the people doing it. Rock stars...porn stars...pro athletes....name a job, and eventually there is a point where it is strictly work.

Foxy

Perhaps not so much as puppy-mill pilots with mountains of debt and the expectation of riches down the road "if they just work hard."

Or perhaps both types are allowing themselves to be screwed over for slave wages and a job with decreasing responsibility, increasing automation, surveillance, hassle and strife.

As long as pilots are at each others' throats, management will continue screwing them all.

Doing a great job so far*.

I do not believe in an 'upcoming pilot shortage'. I don't believe in past pilot shortages. I believe in, as I said before, risk management determining that cheaper, less experienced labor with increasing levels of automation results in acceptable increases in profit/risk ratio.

In the news, the general public always hears about 'greedy pilots' who want 'more money', but they never hear about long commutes, duty days, reduced rest... and as long as pilots are fighting to keep their heads above water by stepping on the shoulders of those beneath them, they're doomed, as a group. This is where the unions could have helped...but entirely failed.

Did you read what the general public had to say about the spirit strike? The management's spin was predictable but effective; union response to management was an 'also ran'.

This isn't a corporate america problem--It's a public america problem. This is an example of the 'unrestricted free market solves all the world's problems' sort of viewpoint in action, there being no such thing as an unrestricted market. If airline management could hire H1Bs, you bet they would, instantly. If they could institute indentured servitude, like China's factories, you'd see it happen instantaneously.

The only way to fix it, in my view, is through serious long-term strategizing... of a sort of which the pilot unions seem incapable. The public must be engaged. More than superficially. The fickle mob must be directed to your side. These are people who feel sorry for, and freely give money to, celebrities who have bad things happen to them. These are the people who step over homeless in the street. These are the people who, sometimes, do both in the same day--and these are the people you need on your side, if you want to ever restore aviation as a career to any sort of prominence.

Management won't ever listen to you unless forced. Why would they? They appear, from this outsider's perspective, to be insulated from any sort of immediate repercussion by A> The provisions of the RLA, B> pilots' need to put food on the table, their loyalty to their company, and their fear of gaining a negative reputation, C> Their insulation from economic failure of the company with gratuitous severance packages and the willingness of corporations to hire failed executives on a whim, and finally D> the general public's antipathy towards those who, in perceived hard economic times, evince any sense of entitlement, or who are perceived to already be well off.

Why do you think there's a 12" stack of resumes on the desk of any hiring manager in aviation?

I do my level best to support you, my friends; I write about, talk with anyone who will listen about, and try my best to get the word out about airline pilot pay, to try and improve public perception. Invariably, when I tell people about pilot pay, the response is shock. Sometimes they respond about their neighbor/friend/landlord who is a united CA making $1,000,000,000/year, and all I can do is disabuse them of the notion that that's common.

The key is that you have to get the message out... otherwise, in the mind of the public whose support you need you will remain 'greedy pilots', who make $60/hr ($125k/year, right?), work four days a month in a jetson-esque cockpit, and are always trying to get more money.

I did once go down to an internet datacenter in San Jose wearing nothing but my pajamas and a flannel robe, and I do work from home more often than not... just like the aforementioned United CA. I've paid my dues in computers... unfortunately, the current aviation industry seems to be all dues.

Working on his CFI,

~Fox
* - I don't mean to offer offense; there's a line from an old song: "When the poor hunt the poor across mountain and moor, the rich man can keep them in chains." It's pertinent.