The truth about the "pilot shortage"
09-09-2014, 10:15 AM
#1
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Joined APC: Mar 2011
Posts: 55
The truth about the "pilot shortage"
Short and simple little video courtesy of Lee Moak and ALPA..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHKa...ature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHKa...ature=youtu.be
09-09-2014, 02:35 PM
#6
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Joined APC: Dec 2013
Posts: 208
And aren't the pilots of PDT now looking at a TA that would further cap the earning potential of future pilots at that airline and continue the whipsaw??? And Moak will allow that to go to that pilot group for a vote? Lee Moak and the rest of ALPA regional representation is a joke. It outright criminal!
09-09-2014, 03:20 PM
#8
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Joined APC: Jun 2014
Position: 737 FO
Posts: 360
There are several fallacies in the video, even though it is slickly done and will make the public at least shrug their shoulders, assuming they bother to watch it all.
In no particular order:
The cost of learning how to fly is much more expensive now than in it was in the hey day of general aviation, especially when you consider the purchasing power of a dollar now vs. then. Middle income real-wages have been dropping since in the 1980s. Fuel is more expensive. What does this mean? It means that not only is it too expensive for the prospective professional pilot to try and get an education for the sake of a career, but it's also more expensive for the average person to want to learn how to fly. There has always been a segment of the pilot group that came from this "I like this more than I thought I would" part of the population.
Further, a shrinking population of active and new pilots increases the costs for everyone--including the potential aviation college student. How? Simple: fewer pilots equals fewer new planes, new radios, new everything, so there are no economies of scale. In the long run, this is the greatest threat to a thriving population of pilots, because it is the hardest one to fix.
Second, Moak hammers on the issue of new-hire pay, and it's abysmally low, especially at the regionals. But so is UPS (which he doesn't mention--because the second year pay at UPS is so high). Most of the public see through the first year pay as a time to essentially be an apprentice. We aren't the only industry that does this. The union does a horrible job of really laying out how the regional FO pay stagnates after a few years. Mr. Sharpie should've drawn a table showing the pay of those various professions not just at Year One, but at Year Five or Six. They don't talk about RJ captain pay, because RJ captain pay--by every measure--exceeds the median US income of around $50,000 a year, not including the benefits and schedule. The schedule, you say? Yes, the schedule. Say what you want about commuting and "only getting 10-12 days off every month," but we still get far more time off than the average American. That does little to make us a sympathetic cause with our neighbors, especially when our insurance is (almost always) better, we have flight benefits, etc. In fact, being able to commute like we do is a privilege, not a right, and when you start telling people you can live in Orlando and work in Detroit, you lose them.
ALPA also does little to talk about wage stagnation for two more reasons: seniority and negotiating prowess. Let's start with seniority. The need to start over in pay every time you switch companies is at the root of many of the problems. Even if we as pilots agreed to a system where we could enter a pay scale at a new company based on experience, and then bid according to seniority, the airlines would never go along with it....even though they'd be turning people away in droves.
Low pay for the regionals means that ALPA, which likes to present itself as a great negotiator of CBA's, has actually failed. It also means that they need to acknowledge their own complicity in allowing this system to develop in the first place.
In the video, we watch Mr. Sharpie draw a series of pilots and do some math that says that there are 150,000 'potential pilots' and 72,000 'jobs' in the US. This by its very nature emphasizes the problem: companies can keep wages low because they have a larger pool of applicants to choose from, and those applicants understand that the small number of jobs means they need to work for less. So they do. Put another way: pilots are a dime a dozen, and while ALPA is not solely responsible for this, they helped allow that to happen.
Mr. Sharpie also tries to convince us that the number of ATP-holding pilots is going up, so we obviously have pilots in the US. What Mr. Sharpie doesn't say is that the number of ATP-wielding airmen has increased because the new rules say all airline new-hires must have ATPs. Very clever.
Moak misses another grand opportunity to make a point. The US is the go-to place for pilots from around the world to train, because we have a regulatory-friendly GA system, and in spite of its costs here, it's cheaper than it is overseas. What Moak and Mr. Sharpie should have pointed out is that a large percentage (if he had the actual numbers, that would be even better) of the pilots getting certified in this country have no intention of staying here. That would make the point that Americans are recognizing that the airlines are not the career path they were once thought to be.
The pilot shortage is indeed real, but it's only partially because of pay. It's real because of the long-term costs of becoming a pilot. The cost of learning to fly professionally is staggering. The cost of loans--quickly becoming the largest source of non-mortgage debt for many families--only compounds the problem. Increasing pay would help, but that doesn't address the other bumps in the road. The fact that there is no sure-fire way to make it to the majors makes parents think twice before encouraging their kids to do this, especially since we all agree that that there probably shouldn't be a sure-fire way to the majors, since we need to weed out the chaff.
Moak is not running for re-election as ALPA president, so the Mr. Sharpie video is not a campaign commercial for him. It is, however, produced by a union whose main job, in the eyes of its members, is to increase pay. That alone means we need to take it with a grain of salt. Embrace the facts that are clear, but be sure not to confuse the facts that are mentioned with the ones that are not.
In no particular order:
The cost of learning how to fly is much more expensive now than in it was in the hey day of general aviation, especially when you consider the purchasing power of a dollar now vs. then. Middle income real-wages have been dropping since in the 1980s. Fuel is more expensive. What does this mean? It means that not only is it too expensive for the prospective professional pilot to try and get an education for the sake of a career, but it's also more expensive for the average person to want to learn how to fly. There has always been a segment of the pilot group that came from this "I like this more than I thought I would" part of the population.
Further, a shrinking population of active and new pilots increases the costs for everyone--including the potential aviation college student. How? Simple: fewer pilots equals fewer new planes, new radios, new everything, so there are no economies of scale. In the long run, this is the greatest threat to a thriving population of pilots, because it is the hardest one to fix.
Second, Moak hammers on the issue of new-hire pay, and it's abysmally low, especially at the regionals. But so is UPS (which he doesn't mention--because the second year pay at UPS is so high). Most of the public see through the first year pay as a time to essentially be an apprentice. We aren't the only industry that does this. The union does a horrible job of really laying out how the regional FO pay stagnates after a few years. Mr. Sharpie should've drawn a table showing the pay of those various professions not just at Year One, but at Year Five or Six. They don't talk about RJ captain pay, because RJ captain pay--by every measure--exceeds the median US income of around $50,000 a year, not including the benefits and schedule. The schedule, you say? Yes, the schedule. Say what you want about commuting and "only getting 10-12 days off every month," but we still get far more time off than the average American. That does little to make us a sympathetic cause with our neighbors, especially when our insurance is (almost always) better, we have flight benefits, etc. In fact, being able to commute like we do is a privilege, not a right, and when you start telling people you can live in Orlando and work in Detroit, you lose them.
ALPA also does little to talk about wage stagnation for two more reasons: seniority and negotiating prowess. Let's start with seniority. The need to start over in pay every time you switch companies is at the root of many of the problems. Even if we as pilots agreed to a system where we could enter a pay scale at a new company based on experience, and then bid according to seniority, the airlines would never go along with it....even though they'd be turning people away in droves.
Low pay for the regionals means that ALPA, which likes to present itself as a great negotiator of CBA's, has actually failed. It also means that they need to acknowledge their own complicity in allowing this system to develop in the first place.
In the video, we watch Mr. Sharpie draw a series of pilots and do some math that says that there are 150,000 'potential pilots' and 72,000 'jobs' in the US. This by its very nature emphasizes the problem: companies can keep wages low because they have a larger pool of applicants to choose from, and those applicants understand that the small number of jobs means they need to work for less. So they do. Put another way: pilots are a dime a dozen, and while ALPA is not solely responsible for this, they helped allow that to happen.
Mr. Sharpie also tries to convince us that the number of ATP-holding pilots is going up, so we obviously have pilots in the US. What Mr. Sharpie doesn't say is that the number of ATP-wielding airmen has increased because the new rules say all airline new-hires must have ATPs. Very clever.
Moak misses another grand opportunity to make a point. The US is the go-to place for pilots from around the world to train, because we have a regulatory-friendly GA system, and in spite of its costs here, it's cheaper than it is overseas. What Moak and Mr. Sharpie should have pointed out is that a large percentage (if he had the actual numbers, that would be even better) of the pilots getting certified in this country have no intention of staying here. That would make the point that Americans are recognizing that the airlines are not the career path they were once thought to be.
The pilot shortage is indeed real, but it's only partially because of pay. It's real because of the long-term costs of becoming a pilot. The cost of learning to fly professionally is staggering. The cost of loans--quickly becoming the largest source of non-mortgage debt for many families--only compounds the problem. Increasing pay would help, but that doesn't address the other bumps in the road. The fact that there is no sure-fire way to make it to the majors makes parents think twice before encouraging their kids to do this, especially since we all agree that that there probably shouldn't be a sure-fire way to the majors, since we need to weed out the chaff.
Moak is not running for re-election as ALPA president, so the Mr. Sharpie video is not a campaign commercial for him. It is, however, produced by a union whose main job, in the eyes of its members, is to increase pay. That alone means we need to take it with a grain of salt. Embrace the facts that are clear, but be sure not to confuse the facts that are mentioned with the ones that are not.
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