I have never had a former student from any aviation college tell me what they owed in student loans. What I have been told in the past was something like $930 to $1200 dollars was being paid a month to pay off these loans. These figures are about 7 years old.
I told them that those amounts are more than what I paid in mortgage for my first three homes in California.

 

That's what I did (engineering) and the end total was a bit more than that for the flying certs, but not a lot. No loans for flight training, I paid as I went.

These flight cadets with $150 college loans are a funny breed in my view. The real goal seems to be prestige rather than a reasonable paying job.

 

"power washed"

 

You're missing the point. There is actually no pilot shortage, only a shortage of new blood that can be conned into working for entry level wages. There is a very large pool of experienced and qualified pilots who work in other careers that pay better and just fly on the side. Those people would be motivated to become an airline pilot if the pay was reasonable.

There is also a large number of experienced airline captains who walk away from the career every year because they either can't or don't want to work for their specific company anymore and are unwilling to start their entire career over from the bottom to change companies in the same job.

Changing companies laterally while retaining the benefits of professional experience is something that every other professional is able to do except airline pilots. In other industries it happens all the time. There are a large number of valid reasons someone may wish to change companies within the same job capacity.

 

I don't believe mainline carriers are having any problem staffing their airplanes. Remember, they can hire co pilots with the same minimums as any regional airline if they choose to. There is absolutely no reason a major airline pilot must have large jet PIC experience to be a copilot on a 737 or A320.

What will likely happen is the majors will simply take back the flying from the B scale salary regionals they contract to and be forced to expand their own staffing. Which means they will find a different creative way to reduce labor costs.

 

Again, ad nauseum, mainline/legacy/etc carriers will never have a shortage of able bodied, qualified, applicants.

Regionals, yes. Entry level freight dog jobs, rust bucket Navajos and Barons, yes. Also, we are in Year-7 of a bull stockmarket (arguably started mid-2008), it is time for another crash. When it does, all this "planned hiring" etc etc will stop.

 

Depends on the state... Illinois has some outrageously high in state tuition. Also, $ 35k for ratings is getting harder & harder to find. I'd say $45K is a lot more typical , even at the Mom and pop FBO's.

But still a lot less than the $200,000 + program at the university where I used to instruct.

The bottom line is that it is getting harder and harder to graduate from college without incurring a massive amount of debt.

 

I believe the current Bull market began on 3/9/09. Yes, it has been several years, but it is not uncommon for them to last 8 years (longest was 9 and change if I remember correctly).

Since the 1870's however, the bull markets have far outweighed the bear, both in duration and in net gains. Sorry, but the bulls always outweigh the bears, and each subsequent bear market is better than the previous.

 

Your tinfoil hat is leaking.



When was the last crash pre-9/11?

 

Except, throughout those periods there has never been a continuous govt. stimulus program where the govt. is giving money to banks to buy stocks. P/E ratios are avg. 17, while the historic avg is 10. There will either have to be more stimulus or the mkt will crash. Our true economic growth is minuscule. What the media is telling you are faniciful numbers cooked up by the govt. Birth-Death model. I say chances are good for more stimulus of some type since it is election yr. and the other countries are doing the same. But it will crash at some point. Endless stimulus will cause too much inflation and that will also halt any growth.