Wow...over 6000 posts. Is this your job?

 

The supply is going to increase, one way or another. Airline managements are throwing their clout around and that will only intensify. If it gets bad enough, they will have an easy time persuading Congress/FAA to lower the mins, create an MPL and worst of all, cabotage and/or start dumping money off Uncle Sugar's printing press to cover it.

There's going to be money thrown at flight schools either way. I'd rather that money be constrained by the free market (as close to such a thing as we have anyway) than dumped into mega euro style puppy mills full of endentured servants with massive training bonds. The flight training/recruiting infrastructure will see increases, no matter what. Sitting this one out and hoping we win big with bidding power as an insufficient and ever shrinking supply of pilots commands neverending, exponential financial gains may sound good to you but it will quickly backfire if it ever gets to that point.

I want the 1500 hour rule to stay, and I don't want an MPL or anything like it. I'd prefer we keep an experienced based system rather than some brainiac chosen one system that only focuses on right of passage bookwork trivia and synthetic training flying all glass wonder boxes through pink squares in the sky.

We need more at the foundation level. Despite your rediculous implied hyperbole, that doesn't mean flooding the market with billions of wet ink ATP's. No one is suggesting that. A realistic system that turns out a reasonable number of 1500+ hour ATP's is the only thing that's going to keep MPL and the EK's of the world from poaching our industry merchant marine style. We need a supply solution before it gets to truly crisis proportions or rest assured they will find solutions that won't be good for us. They are already working on them and have many millions to spend getting their way on the Hill.

 

I agree, but as a pilot that's not my concern nor my problem. It's management's problem. It's in my best interest as a pilot that there is a labor shortage. It's likely that eventually they will find a way to increase labor supply but like I said, unless I am investing in flight schools (and I'm not saying I haven't thought seriously about doing just that) it's not the concern of your day to day line pilot or student with line pilot aspirations.

Again, so what, why would you care? Unless you are hoping this will happen or are being paid to endorse such ideas among run of the mill airline pilots.

Bidding power? What bidding power? What does that even mean? As long as pilots are bound by seniority lists we have very little power to bid on our salary, job or pay.

I like flying through pink boxes personally...it's kind of cool! The fact is that flying an airliner is getting pretty easy these days and the cockpits are becoming idiot proof. These guys don't need round dial skills and probably never will. But as I said, as a pilot today, you shouldn't care about that and should only concerned about how well you can market your skills today. This is what most pilots should worry about.

The real problem is that airlines are trying to lock out the higher paying jobs by using the seniority system to create barriers for entry. You think the seniority system protects your job but unless you are the number one captain at a major airline or you can barely pass a checkride and hang on to your number, the seniority system is keeping you down.

You suggested that...earlier.

Again, as pilots it's not our problem to help management increase labor supply or even be concerned with it.

Like what!? I know what you said but short of increasing the labor supply as you suggested, what can they do? The fact is what you think will help pilots the most (increasing the labor supply) will actually serve to hurt pilots the most.

The problem is pilots have been so severely indoctrinated and brainwashed to believe the seniority system helps them they can't see that a true labor shortage would actually serve to help pilots because the very thing that needs to happen to fix the labor shortage (taking down the seniority system) and driving up the price of pilots (read: higher starting pay) is exactly what scares pilots the most....it's bizarre.

Yep...and the unions are playing and paying right along side them.

 

So the shortage, that you admit will encourage and enable cabotage (among other ills) should be ignored by us. This shortage is always good because we can command higher wages. Except that we can't because of seniority lists. So you advocate a stratedgy whereby the end result is cabotage, MPL's, lower minimums and increased pilot supply, and to truly make it rain, you advocate the end of unions and seniority lists because we'd all be better off being independant contractors bidding for one another's jobs because in that environment wages only and always go up.

Oh, I almost forgot...and pilot skills and experience are relics of the past and are not needed anymore. Flying is easy and pilots are just button pushers. Got it. Spoken like a country club MBA if ever there was one.

Then you ink the waters with accusations that others are management shills. At this point I think you're just trolling. Which is fine, because while its usually easy to spot a troll trying to get a rise out of people, you've elevated the ruse to a pseudo-intellectual art form and I have to give you credit for that.

 

Never said that!

Yes, I did say this....Seniority system pretty well stifles the normal effects of free market. This is why pilot pay (on average) is so low. This is why even non union airlines always implement a seniority list structure even in the absence of a union because seniority lists benefit management more than pilots by effectively eliminating the need of airlines to offer market pay.

Nope! Never said any of that!

Almost right...you are starting to get it now. We don't need to eliminate unions or seniority, we need to restructure them to make them work for pilot employees (not as independent contractors) rather than making them work for management as they do now.

What are you talking about? Is that what you believe? I didn't say that at all. I did say that modern airliners are becoming easier to fly and management is exploiting this fact by using lower experienced pilots than were used in the past.

Training is actually more thorough and comprehensive than it used to be which is another reason lower time pilots are able to work as airline pilots these days. I'm not saying this is a good thing, only that it is the reality and the trend.

You, on the other hand, were complaining that the cost of initial pilot training was too high and there should be an easier path for pilots to learn and that somebody other than pilots should pay for it so they can afford it....that's what you said, not me.

I'm not going to sit here and let you twist your own statements around to hide who you are. You are speaking from the position of advocacy for the regional airline interests and for the interests of large flight schools.

I'm doing just the opposite. I'm calling you out. I think you are a professional troll who spends his time very carefully trying to sway the opinions of pilots for the interests of the Regional Airline Association and the interests of large flight schools. I also think someone is probably paying you to be here.

 

What about those people that have been laid off/furloughed/displaced because the fleet/base they were on was going away and the company didn't want to pay for the training and relocation costs of a seniority based displacement? I'd say a seniority system would have protected them.

 

Does anyone know where the industry is actually at (versus how we feel) in terms of shoring up its regional pilot feed and or altering the ATP law? I understand there have been some impassioned posts here recently, but what wheels are in really motion?

I can think of few bullet points of substantiated things on pilot supply changes to maybe get this back on track;

Flow throughs at Envoy/ Piedmont

Bonuses at Endeavor, Gojets, Expressjet, RAH

Commuter clause at Commutair

CQFO at TSA

Great Lakes part 135 exemption

RAA testimony before Congress, this secret squirrel Riddle conference, the GAO report

Envoy sponsoring CFIs

This list is obviously not exhaustive nor perfect. I don't claim to know what is coming down the pike, as I am just a worker bee. The only *rumor* I hear is that the FAA may be softening on the idea of airlines providing their own seasoning via increased sims and check airmen supervision in exchange for lower hour pilots.

 

I don't think seniority stifles the free market. Its the grossly disparate longevity based pay scales. It's the lighted carrot pot of gold at the end of the rainbow tunnel. Everybody has to take a first year pay hit to change companies. If they could make roughly the same, then many more would jump from company to company.

Using RAH's payscale, a second year f/o makes $31/hour. The lowest paid captain is making $65/hour. That's over twice as much. They could be flying with a captain making $116/hour. That is 3.75 times as much. Even a topped out f/o is only making between 32% and 58% of the captain they are flying with. I've always heard that f/o payscales are based on 60-70% of the captain payscale. And that's true, year by year. But no first officers at RAH are making 70% (or even 60%) of the guy sitting next to them.

 

If we eliminated the pilot seniority system, we would still not have a free market economy due to government regulation of the airline industry.

"A free market economy is a market-based economy where prices for goods and services are set freely by the forces of supply and demand and are allowed to reach their point of equilibrium without intervention by government policy, and it typically entails support for highly competitive markets and private ownership of productive enterprises"

 

A real free market would destroy our career. There would be an airline that would pay pilots $20,000 a year to fly a 777 and they will have no problem finding pilots qualified enough to not crash the planes enough for the free market to notice.

And before someone says, "You can't find a 777 pilot who can safely fly the plane for $20,000 a year" just look at the regionals. They used to hire pilots with 250 hours and upgrade them at 2-3,000 and it took a generation before the public demanded the government to step in and raise the minimums. If it wasn't for the government, the general public would may have continued to demand more experience pilots, but they wouldn't pay for it.