ALPA says there is no pilot shortage
 

would you please just get off it

Somebody is blowing smoke up my rear end.

Because it's a pay\benefits shortage. Right in the article: Majors have no issues hiring, regionals do. Wonder why.

This is correct. RAA wants the address the front end of the regional pilot pipeline without considering the back end — ie. why so many leave, and not always for a major air carrier.

SonicFlyer believes very strongly that we need to lower the standards and allow the pilot labor market to be flooded with new applicants. One look at Mesa's new TA shows why that is not a good idea.

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Alpa is right. The pilot hiring market is competitive for the first time in forever, and the trash at RAA, their stooges, and management doesn’t like it.

“Whaddya mean? You’re quitting? How could you do this to us?”

So analysts, airline management, Boeing , are all wrong and ALPA is right?
BS.

Not saying that analysts, airline management, Boeing or whoever else is wrong. They do have a pilot shortage but it's not because the pilots don't exist, it's because they aren't paying them. If a major carrier absorbed its regional and paid those pilots LCC rates or higher then attrition would stop instantaneously and applications would go through the roof. They refuse to do that so "pilot shortage".

Look at the number of ATPs issued in the last 10 years and you'll see your answer.

I guess it's cheaper to train people to fly a few hundred hours and watch them leave to an LCC and then park jets in the desert instead.

You obviously are just buying the ALPA propaganda line. First those numbers are not complete. How many are even interested in an airline carreer? How many of those ATPs are current? How many are medicaled out? ALPA posted numbers that look very incomplete in my opinion. The FAA has acknowledged a pilot shortage. ALPA is the outlier in this.

There is acute/immediate shortage of pilots with a year or more in a jet because regionals stopped hiring and majors offered early outs. Both of those actions caused this.

That’s not the same a chronic shortage due to high barriers of entry.

If this was really a pilot shortage and not a pay shortage, then why would AA bump their regional WOs' pay rates significantly? That action won't make more pilots.

Raising the WO rates will attract more pilots to join the airline. 22yr old gets out of college and has 1000 hours and joins a WO since they will be paying $90+/hr his FIRST YEAR. That is good money for a kid who is just getting into the industry and won't have to scrape by on the regional wages of the past. Don't forget the bonuses.

I m curious now about what the other regionals do.

A shortage of pilots at a particular price point does not represent a scarcity of pilots at any price point.

Have we already forgotten the thousands of pilots who left the career early two years ago, along with the likely thousands of others who abandoned training because of those circumstances?

Economics 101. There is a certain amount of elasticity, but it is not infinite. If you boost wages a bunch, in the short term, you get more pilots to hire.

But if you boost wages to ridiculously high rates, at least in the short term, you reach a point of diminishing return. Many people who have a pilots license do not want or can not get a position flying a part 121, no matter how hire the rate is.

It takes time to get more interested, and get qualified, to add to the pool.

Remember after the lost decade, pilots on the sidelines in their 40s and 50s came back. That pool started drying up, after a couple of years. It was not infinite. Same with the pool they are now going after. It is elastic, but not infinitely elastic, no matter how high the pay goes. The only debate is how elastic the pool of pilots is. Stated differently, how deep is the pool, before the interested and hire-able end of the pool runs dry.

Join or choose to close up shop

Law of supply and demand. Amazing how that works.

This is where unions lose all credibility by being absurd.

Should they push for better pay, work rules, and safety? Absolutely.

But when they say things like this they look completely out of touch with reality.

If you believe the current situation isn't because of mismanagement, I dunno what to tell you. Airlines have been aware of the pending shortage for decades.... Yet they failed to prepare and to pay up to make the jobs appealing to new entrants.

This X1000!

since you’re on the outside of the airline world, I’ll tell you first hand: these issues are almost entirely because of operational mismanagement.

That's only one factor. The over burdensome regulatory environment, specifically the 1500 hour rule, put forth by Obama is another large factor.

THANKS Obama.

I mean I prefer having less deadly crashes with that 1500 hour rule. If you don’t I guess that’s cool too.

Correlation doesn't equal causation. I really wish they still mandated a logic class freshman year of college.

Agree in general, but we stopped having fatal hull losses while the rest of the world did not. Big coincidence.

I'll take it at face value, until somebody can prove that wet commercials are safer than ATP's.

So have you ever had to fly with an inexperienced pilot in a jet before? What's your actual experience?

This has been explained multiple times, the 1500 hour rule had nothing to do with safety, it had to do with Obama giving a political favor to the unions. The Part 117 rest rules and training emphasis on stall prevention and recovery that came out of Colgan were absolutely 100% safety related and a good thing. But the 1500 hour rule had nothing to do with safety. Anyone who can think their way out of a wet paper sack can understand this.

I'm fine with you wanting proof that the 1500 hour rule enhanced safety. I personally believe it did, but you're right you should be able to back up claims with proof.

However, now that we have the rule nobody needs to prove that it enhances safety. If you are making the claim that the 1500 hour rule does not increase safety, it is now incumbent on you to prove your claim is correct.

Just saying that the two are unrelated without evidence is as equally specious an argument as saying that the two are related. If you want to change part of the status quo, of which the effects of the whole are known, then prove that part in particular is unnecessary.

And by the way, you are correct that correlation is not sufficient to show causation. Correlation is necessary for causation, however, and it follows logically that requiring more experience prior to an airline job would enhance safety a priori. I firmly believe your argument in the negative has a higher burden of proof.

Can't prove a negative. -- https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof

No one can show that it has improved safety either.

I'm a CFI, ATP, and experienced 121 PIC with 10K. I don't need studies to know the difference between 250 hours, 500 hours, and 1500 hours. BTDT, seen it in action.

Just like I don't need a study to tell me that reducing student driver hours from 50 to 5 would be a bad idea.

No my logical fallacy is personal experience and common sense.

Exactly, anecdotal, which is not what should be used when making policy.

Obama didn't create a 1500 hr rule. 1500 hours for an ATP has been required for decades. If anything, he reduced the amount of hours required for an ATP.

I don't make policy. I'm just telling you why I agree with the policy.

All age and experience requirements are something called a “legal fiction.” Is EVERY 16 year old mature enough to get a drivers license? He// no. Some 30 year olds aren’t mature enough for a driver’s license. But you need to establish a standard somewhere and it needs to be a standard that is both understandable and enforceable in the real world. I’ve flown with military pilots who were 400 hour O-2s that were perfectly competent to fly an F-15 in combat. And I once instructed (briefly) a 35 year old doctor with twice that many hours who was on his second V-tail Beech and sort of expected me to be in the right seat giving him instrument instruction when he crashed his third because his attitude made him unteachable.

Any standard you make is going to under correct for some and over correct for others. Might as well mak it something easy for the non flying bureaucrats to administer.

I see where your brain is shorting now, maybe I can translate to something easier for you to understand!

Example:
Bertrand declares that a teapot is, at this very moment, in orbit around the Sun between the Earth and Mars, and that because no one can prove him wrong, his claim is therefore a valid one.

Reality:
Sonic Flyer declares that the 1500 hour rule has no effect on safety, and that because no one can prove him wrong, his claim is therefore a valid one.

You are the one arguing. We aren't proposing to make the 1500 hour rule. It is already made. There is no argument.
You are arguing we should amend the qualifications, therefore you need to prove your argument.

I'm not sure I can make this any more simple, but in the likely event you still don't comprehend I will see if I can make it even more simple for you