Ugh....I just watched that....and im ashamed to say I recognize one of the students in the video...hes an FO here at Whisky

Sadly.....I dont think we are ever gonna get back to the way things used to be. There are still too many Kids out there who are willing to do ANYTHING it takes to get into a Airline.

 

Why?

The unions allowed it to happen. Had ALPA fought to keep the flying in house, life would have been better. But instead they allowed a 2 tier system to develop. No problem, the military guys could jump ahead in line and go direct to mainline, while the CFI's (like me) got to fly 19 seat turboprops. Of course, they never saw the RJ's coming.

We allow it. Why are you flying now for peanuts? Because it's an entry level job. You need the experience to move up. Of course, that's if a job is still there when you get there and will it be the job you thought it would be.

The government allowed it. Big business has fronted governments that have rolled over labor. The RLA has become a joke and the NLRB allowed it to happen. But most pilots still vote the same folks into office.

The public wants it. Go ask 100 passengers about the life of a pilot. You'll still hear the great stories of the 70's and 80's. The fact the job hasn't been like that in years doesn't matter. The story is still good. As long as the fares are cheap and the accident rate is low, who cares.

 

Those days are long gone. The old days of doing a few years at a regional and moving to a major are history. Management loves to continue this myth since it keeps a steady supply of idiots, I mean new pilots, comming through the door. All of them with the same idea of doing a few years and going to a major. Management thrives off of this dream, because the new pilots don't know the reality, and will work for peanuts, and accept miserable working conditions. More importantly, they will accept new concessions as needed, since they will only be here a few years right?.... what they all have lost sight of is that majors are shrinking, not expanding... the only expanding going on is at regionals, getting scope concessions to aquire larger and larger airplanes.... on the same crappy pay scales, with the same crappy QOL issues. There will not be enough new jobs at majors for anything but a trickle of people to go from regional to major... and all the managements know it. They play off your stupid dreams and use you; period. Regional jobs have become career positions.... they have not attained career payscales and benefit programs yet, but the length of time most will spend at one is nothing short of a career.

So, the sooner the pilots begin treating their "regional" job as a career the better things will become.

Look, now we even have major's furloughing their staff and subcontracting almost all of their flying to a regional carrier... (Midwest-RAH) The old days of walking across a picket line are gone... now they just come fly your airplanes, or bring their own to replace your's with, and come and fly your routes.... all subcontracted by your airline of course.

Way to go RAH.... the BIGGEST bar lowering in decades.

 

Its seems nieve to me to think that the media or congress,or the public for that matter would care about our salaries, and we are not the only underpaid overworked members of the working class. The sad truth is that no one besides us give a rats a## about our plight. Anyone who thinks otherwise probably missed a grade somewhere along the line.

 

I'm not confusing anything. When it comes to the economics (call them communisim or socialism), there is strong government intervention (some to the point of actually planning every transaction of the economy). And, you can move to the Scandanavian countries where the personal income tax rate is > 50% (and that is verified: Tax rates around the world - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) You can spread lies about high standard of living, but it is just a lie. They have very little personal choice with their own money/wealth. We are the richest country in the world with the highest standard of living. Our 'poor' have amenities that the wealthy in many 3rd world countries do not have. Our 'poor' have amenities that many average people in industrialized nations do not have. So, I don't know where you get the standard of living statistics, but I do not consider high standard of living = give all my money to the gov't and let them hopefully take care of me. Some people claim we have lower standard of living because we don't have socialized health care, so there are people that don't have health insurance. I would argue the opposite. We have a higher standard of living because we DO NOT have socialized health care. Anyway, move there if you want to experiment with giving away all your money every year, but please leave the USA alone for now so you have a place to come back to when you realize how bad it actually is over there.

 

So, you are basically saying that government intervention has caused the problems with labor because the government is regulating the ability of labor to affect the market forces by working/not working. Your solution is that we need more regulation to overcome the regulation that is already screwing up the process. I just hope that maybe you (and many others) will see that your arguements for regulation are ignorant. The candidate in your signature, btw, would love to regulate all industry and shift to a more socialized economy. Just be careful what you ask for.

 

How can you claim that you are underpaid? What pay do you deserve? You deserve the exact amount that the airline can hire people to do your job. Right now, they could actually lower wages and benefits at your airline, and I would bet they would keep getting plenty of 'qualified' applicants. You don't deserve anything. You have the right to work wherever will hire you. If you do not agree with how much pilots are being paid, you are welcome to work for a different industry. Stop with the F'ing Marxism on here. We are a free country. Wages and prices are set by the market. The market shows that pilots will work for shi**y wages.

 

Amen thats the main problem untill the lowest paying airlines go to the resume inbox and it says ZERO "you have no new suckers" they will continue to pay crap.

 

To quote an certain airline CEO:
"As long as I have a stack of resumes on my desk, pilots are overpaid."

 

I think Key Bank and Sallie Mae realized their errors before this past month, but it was too late. With enough people defaulting on loans, and government reform to prevent bailouts for high risk actitivites, I'm thinking it's going to be real hard to get that "$40K loan" (BTW, I'd bet its double that now days, I know guys who spent over $100K).

On the other hand, if you think this will make things better for us, think twice. If people can't get loans for education and housing, it's going to hurt the economy real bad, and flying/vacations are among of the first things people cut out of their budget when times get hard.