All this talk about the problem? HERE IT IS..
 

This thread was posted on "the other forum" OCTOBER 20th, 2007 by seaav8tor. Read and learn:

Expectations, and how to save $5 on an airline ticket “When I fly, I always take Delta… That’s because they pay their pilots the most money… You don’t want to fly with unhappy pilots.”

Johnny Carson, Tonight Show monologue, 1981



Traversing race, culture, gender, education level and socio-economic standing is the desire to be happy. It is the most powerful force buried at the center of the human soul. An individual’s “happiness” is directly linked to how life unfolds relative to expectations. Hopes and dreams in a mate, family, friends, social standing, or a career are just a few areas that can fall short, meet, or exceed expectations.

Tragic irony of high expectations is the possibility they will not be met hence a greater risk of an unhappy life. Throughout life expectations are created and destroyed. Over the course of a lifetime a common pattern emerges where expectations follow a trace akin to a bell curve. Zero at birth, peaking mid-life, and diminishing as one passes the “mid-life crisis”. With this knowledge one might conclude the key to happiness at any point along the curve is to simply lower your expectations. Unfortunately expectations are often set as a result of something external to or as a result of something the individual did or did not accomplish. Print, video, and other environmental exposure are powerful influences. Performance in academics, sports, social life, college and graduate school play an important part of setting expectations. Success indexes life’s expectation curve higher while failure drives it lower. A driven, successful, highly capable person who has climbed the ladder to Chief of Neurosurgery at Massachusetts General will have radically higher expectations than a person who flunked out of high school, smoked dope for three years before setting a lifetime career goal to become a forklift driver at the city garbage dump.

Business leaders recognize it’s essential in a market-based enterprise to have happy employees. “Best man or woman for the job” does not imply the one who has the highest level of capability but rather the person whose capabilities and expectations most closely match the duties, responsibilities, and compensation the job has to offer. Management must balance the need for competence against cost. When a business cannot meet employee and customer expectations balanced against revenue, it will fail. When an entire industry finds itself in this situation, the entire industry will fail.

In the airline industry an unprecedented percentage of unit revenue and unit expense is outside control of management. In 1978 pricing power was wiped out with passage of the Airline Deregulation Act. During the 1990’s the Internet matured making it almost impossible to gain a revenue advantage over a competitor. Awash in red ink it was no surprise the chainsaw was wielded at labor in an attempt to reduce costs following the Dot-com bust of 2000 and the events surrounding September 11, 2001. It was the perfect storm. Luckily the airlines had resources in place to deal with the tragedy. For the last 35 years a Washington D.C. based think tank funded by the airlines, Airline Industrial Relations Conference, has existed to achieve one objective: Control airline personnel cost. How well have they done? In a word, phenomenal. I will illustrate the fruits of their labor with their crowning achievement................. Airline pilots


In terms of inflation adjusted dollars, Airline pilots today earn less than half of what they did 35 years ago. The unit of work can be measured by flight hours, duty hours, hours away from home, Revenue Passenger Miles, Available Seat Miles, or most importantly, revenue generated per pilot.


Industry hyperbole: Pilots are paid way too much. Look at the hourly wage. Look at how little they work. Seems like a whole lot of money to pay someone for a part time hobby.

In reality if consideration is given to opportunity cost, time value of money, true number of hours required to become and work as a commercial pilot, risk in terms of not completing a career for any number of reasons, including getting killed; The economic justification is not substantiated to become a commercial pilot even if the career goal is attained.

Industry belief: There is not now nor will there ever be a shortage of people willing to work as pilots at any wage.

True fact. Nor will there ever be a shortage of people willing to be Professional Ball players, or Firefighters or CEOs at any wage. The question is this: Will the industry be able to attract and retain the level of competence required at any wage? The answer is no. At the current Federal minimum wage you would not be able to consistently find competent Professional Ball players, Firefighters, CEOs or Airline pilots.

Industry stance: Pilots don’t get paid minimum wage and planes are not falling out of the sky.

The current national manpower pool of airline pilots came in with substantially higher career expectations, thus capability than what will be the next generation airline pilots. Airlines now operate on borrowed time during the transition. It will take years, perhaps a decade for current pilots to retire and or leave the profession in significant numbers before the damage to safety will be acknowledged.

Industry opinion: Statistically we are enjoying an era of unprecedented airline safety. There will always be some level of risk to flying.

A time bomb is being built as airlines focus on lower expectation pilots. As the industry continues the “race to the bottom” airline leadership will confront a pilot labor pool decimated to such an extent that safe, reliable air transportation will no longer be feasible within the cost structure they created. As the next generation pilots take command we will see much more of what is now just the tip of an alarming iceberg: Unthinkable missteps by incompetent pilots resulting in massive loss of life and substantial hull losses. Recent events such as the Helios 737 crash, the West Caribbean MD-82 crash, the American Airbus A300 crash, the Northwest Pinnacle CRJ crash and the Delta Comair CRJ crash are examples are inexcusable errors that should have never happened. Safe air travel was built by minimizing identifiable risk. The industry has become complacent with the current level of safety and is willing to accept increased risk in an effort to reduce personnel costs.

Industry objective: Replace human capability with technology. Over the last 35 years the modern airliner has been loaded with safety features in an attempt to idiot-proof flying. If we can teach Homer Simpson to run a nuclear power plant we can now teach his twin brother to fly a jet plane.

Flying is a dynamic environment requiring considerable judgment and intervention beyond the capability of technology. Members of the Airline Industrial Relations Conference need to dispatch with the NTSB Go Team so they could see first hand the true fruits of their labor. The severed body parts and blood splattered airplane wreckage. The stench of burned human flesh and charred remains at the crash site of Delta Comair 5191 in Lexington, Kentucky. They should be required to console the loved ones of those who were killed. Only Airline Industrial Relations Conference members would attempt to quantify why such a hull loss is acceptable. Air Conference members should be held accountable for manslaughter, or if they fully understand what they have done, murder. Safety of the flying public needs to take priority over trying to staff airline cockpits with the cheapest human resources the industry can find. The Simpson’s is just a cartoon.

Interviewing people from every walk of life for three decades he understood what made people tick. If he were alive today, Johnny Carson would not be flying Delta or any other airline. He would not be able to find any well-paid happy pilots. The leaders of the airline industry have won and the flying public has lost. And it was all for what? $5.

Maybe in 10 years or so we'll see the highest demand for pilots anyone has ever seen due to all the retirees and lack of pilots in training. Keeping my fingers crossed until that time comes.

That belief is likely the brain child of the aforementioned organization. Last go-around it was the so called vietnam era bull.....Now it's the age 65'ers. I hope I'm wrong on this one but doubt it.

Excellent post J4000.....skyhigh would be so proud.

All that can already be seen today by the trained eye, and I know I'm not the only one that notices. Seems it's just a little too un-PC to say anything though. Thanks for posting...

I'm not trying to blow sunshine up anybody's... well, the point is that the Vietnam and Age 65ers are one in the same. They were allowed another 5 years because of age 65, greatly worsening the hiring crisis we're in right now.

Did a "pilot shortage" exist 2 years ago?

Has there ever been a true "pilot shortage?"

Some say there is a real helicopter pilot shortage right now. I don't buy it but that's me.

Think about it just look at the data.

I think maybe there was a shortage. Anyone with a CFI could get a job within a day. Airlines hiring people with under 300 hours. I think there was a shortage on entry level regionals jobs and instructors.

Yep..........

The problem is that if there really is a shortage of pilots 5 or 10 years from now, the airline CEO's will all be up on Capital Hill pushing for cabotage. They'll be saying stuff like, "nobody wants to be a pilot in the U.S. so let Chinese pilots fly from Chicago to Des Moines," or "let our Star Alliance/One World/whatever alliance parter fly from LA to Denver." A shortage in the future might be a double edged sword for us.

there def isnt. we fly helicopters at my flight school and one of our helicopter instructors has like 1600 tt with 1200 pic (which is pretty competitive) but there is nothing out there. I think it goes one in the same with airplanes....

Expectations
 

An individual’s “happiness” is directly linked to how life unfolds relative to expectations.

It is my belief that most pilots expect to make a good living soon after graduating from college and blowing a fortune on their education and training. If they didn't they why would anyone put themselves into this situation? Why go 100K in debt for the reality of 20K per year?

Once word gets out that things are not so great at the airlines perhaps the tide will change. You guys should be paying for me to travel the country giving speeches to colleges and flight schools. :)

As for myself I expected that my sacrifices and investment into my aviation career would result in a better lifestyle then if I had just stayed working at a gas station. Some here would claim it blasphemous to suggest that there be a financial incentive to a flying career. To me however it is essential. Eventually financial forces will conspire to ruin even the most fun career if you can not pay your bills.

In addition; I also have been saying for years now that automation is taking over for happy and experienced pilots.

Skyhigh

That has to rank as one of the 10 best posts I've ever read on APC (the post that started this thread). Very well done.

Hmmm...you might be on to something here. Looking for a business partner? 50/50? Ok fine, 60/40 and that's final....ok 70/30.

Oh Absolutely. And this ties back to the concept of optimism bias. It is everybody's expectation that they will be statistical outliers. That's why optimism bias is so scary. It's not so much that these folks don't outright know that you make food stamp wages for the responsibility of carrying people's lives in your hands, it's that they do it in spite of that knowledge because they BELIEVE that they will not fall under the statistical median. They recognize there's negative returns on a high debt load for a 20K job when the opportunity cost is another job for the same pay and none of the required training costs. The problem is of course, they ALL think they will NOT be statistics. They won't be stuck with a 20K job and high debt, hell no, they're different. They're special, they're unique, they're strong. Meh, they're optimism biased..... As such, none of them plan for that possibility, as to do so is to philosophically quit before you start (cue: the "attitude" crowd). Which is why this industry is hosed.

As to how that ties to expectations, these so called "benchmarks" are also socially flawed. That is to say, pilots, just like college freshmen, develop and set their expectations on the outcome of the statistical outlier. If they had set their expectations on the median (the economically common sensical thing to do) they would, at the most, exceed their expectations (great!) and at the least, met them as a majority (good for the majority). Or even better, quantified that what the median outcome provides is not good enough for them and pursued something else altogether! The amount of discontents would actually be the minority. But instead we all go for broke and when our common sense tells us we can't even afford to shoot for broke, we sign a promissory note and keep on clickin' our heels. No wonder the industry is hosed.

As to the "do it for love not money" crowd, pure chaff. That horse has been beaten to death. Simple hierarchy of needs establishes you're inherently incapable of being happy when you're hungry. You can't be happy and sick, you can't be happy and beaten by the weather and elements with no shelter. Nobody is suggesting with a straight face to fulfill your self-actualization needs without safety and basic tenements fulfilled first. Which is why being a starving artist is no different than being an unhappy dentist racking up the overtime so he can pursue his passion on the weekends, from a happiness perspective. The difference is that you don't see the dentist telling the kids and wife "screw you guys, I'm gonna go dance! for a living even if it puts y'all out"...that is of course unless he's a career changer regional pilot....

Pilots are not the only starving artists out there. Musicians, sports players, artists, certain teachers and instructors, volunteer firefighters, they're all faced with the realities of not being able to substantiate a median living as a median worker in these fields. They gotta suck up the red pill too, what then makes pilots so special that they need to put the lives of other people at risk for the lopsided fulfillment of their broke-a## dreams?

The madness has to end, the flying public (if they could get a clue) should force an outcry to close up shop on the regional feed. Close the student loan racket and make the industry the utility it has bottomed itself out to be. Senior pilots can finish out their stint and go away (I don't expect much empathy from the top seniority crowd, they ARE the statistical outlier) and let the industry re-regulate itself. Many people would be locked out, but those that do enter would be able to substantiate a median livelihood, who knows maybe the new equilibrium point would be a little higher for the new guy. But the present system is broken for good.

10 years? That would bennefit somebody that is around 12 years old right now. Are you willing to wait 10 years and hope it gets better?

While just looking around in the old files I found this interesting few posts. I find it funny and sad to see how close to correct these folks were about people just saying screw it... I will just go find a better paying job.