tallpilot

It isn't about getting rid of air travel. It is about making it even more of a tax donkey than it already is. The radial few you speak of have deep seated beliefs about saving Gaia. The cynical puppet-masters actually running the show see it as just one more way to make things more expensive for the peasant class (transferring what little they have left upward) while increasing government control and further entrenching large corporations at the expense of new entrants.

rickair7777

I know that, you know that. Doesn't mean they won't "encourage" a few airlines to fail. They might not even have to do anything, doing nothing might accomplish the objective.

Once the industry were to settle out at a new, lower, baseline then they simply slap down hard carbon caps to end all future growth. Easy Peasy, Everybody stays home and tends to their gardens.

dhc8guru

The another real concern with all the airlines beyond the obvious, is minimizing furloughs and also how long those who are on furlough are out. If the cuts are deep and long
when this all turns around years from now, they could be facing Regional FO starting pay needing to be $100k a year because no one will touch this career with a 200 foot cattle prod. Something they can't afford to happen.
There is massive speculation the antiquated hierarchy and disparity in pay between senior and junior pilots will have to change in order for this career will survive.
Who knows, how this will all play out. Either way its going to both sad and historical come October.

Rahlifer

Mortuary services will always be needed and don’t really care about stock market swings. It’s rather morbid, but something I’ve thought about if I do lose my flying career.

firefighterplt

Let’s say they restart hiring in 2-3 years. Let’s say they want an ATP and 2500TT just to warm a right seat. Let’s say the bonuses are gone and the wages straight suck.

You will still have guys lined up down the street for those jobs. Between those with SJS and those who consider flying to be all they know, they will take those jobs.

As things slowly ramp up and the barriers to entry slowly return to ‘normal’, people will be so far removed from this catastrophe that they’ll throw their hat in the ring. The kids who were 17 when C19 hit will have absolutely no recollection of how it affected the industry, and will be eager to sit in the right seat of an RJ at 23.

Hate to say it, but this won’t change a damn thing at the bottom—there’s always fresh blood that’ll fly for damn near free.

TransWorld

There are industries called non-cyclical business. Companies that make diapers, toilet paper, deliver food to grocery stores, even a lot of computer search engines, product delivery (Amazon).

i cannot resist the old joke. Funeral homes are non-cyclical, because people are just dying to get it. 😟

dhc8guru

I partially agree...yes there were people lined up to be pilots. But nowhere near what they needed. I believe it was ALPA stated that although there is was a shortage, there were also several hundred thousands of available pilots and pay was an issue. I believe the next shortage will require even more pay or paid primary training.
If I get furloughed again, its game over for me and this career. I've been down this road before and after a 15 year hiatus, I know a career not flying related is just as good or even better in some respects. Even if I don't get furloughed, the chances are high its gonna be a pretty sh!tty job for a long time.

Peter Peterlini

Fully agree. This job has its downsides — cyclicality, outdated seniority-based hierarchy, and time away from family — but at the end of the day the core task (flying a high performance aircraft) is something that folks with means actually pay to do. So people will put up with all this mess in order to try to break into this career. There will never be a pilot shortage, in the sense that so many of us hope for.

VegasChris

I could see this happening. The clock just doesn't stop for old pilots that are about to turn 65.

I think it depends on how much smaller the airlines are going to be coming out of this and how small they stay.

Will demand come back to what it was pre-covid in a short amount of time?

Will the airlines flatten out demand by raising seat prices or will they keep prices low and offer more seats on more aircraft?

These are questions nobody knows the answers to.

Until march of this year I was ready to leave my current career where I am topped out making 130k annually with overtime that has a defined benefit pension to go to the airlines and be making the same or more money annually within 5 years and eventually much more when I get to a legacy or wherever I ended up.

Now- I am not so sure about leaving my stable job to gamble on a career in aviation. I have about 80k invested in the switch- so I definitely want to work to make that back one way or another- 121 flying might not be the express lane I was looking for if the hiring and bonuses are gone. After that- who knows. Maybe I can ride the wave, but right now it doesn't make sense to invest more just to get to the very front of the wave that might eventually come 2-3 years from now.

I hope regionals are forced to pay more, but for the next 12-18 months I see the opposite. Unless demand changes-

LoneStar32

yeah no, there was a decade of horrible pay and work rules in the 00s and there were still people waiting in line for that flashy Regional job. It took over 5 years of prosperity before the the first Regional closed due to lack of pilots (or so they claimed; Great Lakes) and pay started to go up. And even at that those Regionals that offered a living wage still had no problem filling classes.

This is not going to change anything either. Pay is not going to go up for a long time and we won't see a "new hire bonus" for for a long long time either as there will be pilots lined out the door ready to come back. We may never see a hiring market like we saw in 2019 again. This is the new reality as they like to say.