jonnyjetprop

By the accents on the radio, the answer is few.

Thedude

Hopefully we are starting to see the regionals come full circle and jobs return to mainline from which they came.

hurricanechaser

I'm not sure about a shortage of Major Airline pilots or guys with ATP's. But I will tell you that based on my experience there is a SHORTAGE OF FLIGHT INSTRUCTORS out there. Many have given up and found other areas of employment, or have moved onto the regionals finally. I say this because I have refused more than 3 job offers in the past couple of months for a flight instructor position because I am already gainfully employed.

Let's talk more about the shortage of flight instructors and what impact that is going to have.

PeezDog

I'm not to sure if I'm buying the whole shortage thing either. I'll believe it when I see it. Being only 4 years into my career, I'm still a newbie compared to a lot of you that have been around for a long time. So when lots of guys that have been around a lot longer than me are telling me that, through their experience, there is no and never will be a pilot shortage, that has some weight with me. Its my personal opinion that something will be done to mitigate the need for pilots and it will just be an "increase" in demand for pilots. Just like a lot of you are saying.

As for scope, that's not my fight right now, even though it affects me. However, it seems that you, the major pilots, are not going to give up much more on scope. The United contract will probably take years to hash out because they want to outsource everything and the pilots aren't going to let it happen. I do believe that they will eventually agree on 70-76 seats at some point, just my opinion.

As for the claims about airlines running to the government to allow cabotage in order to keep commerce going, I think is a little extreme. If they want to keep commerce running, they wouldn't even think about this. I'm pretty sure that, that would cause a huge riot in the US, and huge amounts of pilots will walk of the job, or make the transportation of goods and people, very very slow. So they would just be shooting themselves in the foot because they ****ed of every single pilot who has direct control over their airplanes. I don't think the government nor the people would be very happy if this were to happen either. Would be a disaster. I think we have the leverage there.

So in my short time as a pilot, and from what I have read and heard from others about the history of this industry, this is just part of the cycle. It has been and all ways will be the same story over and over and over again.

slough

If the US was the only market for aviation the pilot shortage would be easy to disprove, but the demands of foreign markets will make the next twenty years different than the last 20. Just looking at the amount of orders the airplane manufactures have in the books for the next decade raises some red flags at how they are going to staff that many airliners.

iadfo

Bingo! That is exactly how it will play out, the worst thing the majors will have to do is hire someone with little to no PIC time, but the regionals will feed pilots to the majors and they will not be able to replace them.

amcflyboy

Funny you mention Wharton or Harvard...Danny Webster College (aka ITT) closed their aviation program last year when the bean counters made the conclusion that the airlines were NOT going to be hiring anymore. They based this of off historical data!

I told my friend who works in their IT department that they're in for the biggest "shock and awe" of their lifetime!

RogAir

"As for the claims about airlines running to the government to allow cabotage in order to keep commerce going, I think is a little extreme. If they want to keep commerce running, they wouldn't even think about this. I'm pretty sure that, that would cause a huge riot in the US, and huge amounts of pilots will walk of the job, or make the transportation of goods and people, very very slow. So they would just be shooting themselves in the foot because they ****ed of every single pilot who has direct control over their airplanes. I don't think the government nor the people would be very happy if this were to happen either. Would be a disaster. I think we have the leverage there. "


A "National Outrage" is not where the leverage in Cabotage exists. The leverage is the fact that the RLA does not apply to foreign carriers. If cabotage rules were to be lifted, and foreign carriers took over the US markets, the President would lose control of the US aviation market. He can't order Aero Mexico pilots back to work if they go on strike and shut down a large part of the US system.

atpcliff

Hi!

Latin America is short of pilots.
Africa is short of pilots.
The ME is short of pilots.
Asia is short of pilots.
Europe definitely does not have any big excess numbers of pilots.
...
Australia DOES has excess pilots, but Asia is sucking them up, big time.

So, for Cabotage to occur, where would the pilots to fly those planes come from? A report I read in USA Today said air travel to/from/within Asia will increase by 20x what it is now.

Bottom line...US carriers will NOT find people overseas to fly their planes, and the only way foreign carriers could take over US flying is by employing US pilots to fly the routes, as they don't have enough of their own pilots even today, and tmo will be much worse.

Lately:
I was just called for a job that I had dropped my resume at in Apr, 2009. Can we say, "desperate"?

Atlas, which I believe is a very good US job, just lowered their mins from 2500 TT/1000 TurbineTT to 2000 TT/500 turbine. This was the second time they have lowered mins since hiring began in 2010.

UPS started recalls last month.

Heard that Emirates will NOT be able to staff their -777 flying by 2014...and that was BEFORE they announced purchasing 50 more -777s.

Heard that KAL will not meet pilot hiring goals set for 2011.

T&Cs (salaries and benefits) are going up and up and up in Asia and the ME, as the current pilot shortage gets worse and worse.

cliff
SYD

skybluewater

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