Quote:
Originally Posted by The Dominican
It is a cyclical business, and it was very nice that after the downturn of 9/11 many American pilots found jobs on the expat market.
This is another really good point. We flood the world with American pilots. This was particularly true before 1991, but it's still very easy to find American pilots. We can't begrudge other pilots for doing the same thing we do, so fair is fair.
I also think this observation is great for pointing out the damage that can be done when a country opens itself up to too many foreign pilots. There are countries that have become utterly dependent on foreign pilots. Their training pipelines haven't been developed. Availability of foreign crews removes the incentive for them to get their pilot training pipelines up and improved to acceptable standards. Doing so would take decades and a liberalization of airspace, changes in taxation, etc. The result is less GA and fewer mid-level flying jobs. This means fewer jobs in the short term and a strangulation of their aviation industry in the long term. When a local power-broker decides to buy some new jets, they're still stuck hiring from outside the country. Eventually this even leads to bizarre cultural-technical effects. There are countries where the government air wing, royal flight, etc. will only hire Western aviators, for example.
This was why the Chicago convention of 1947 was a thing. Smart people saw, when aviation was exploding after the Second World War some system was required to keep local aviation alive.
Of course the factors that kill small aviation in parts of the world aren't just limited to the pilot market. The amount of state support for some airlines over others, preferential fuel pricing, political dynasties, corruption all play very large or larger roles than the market for pilots. I'm ignoring all of these because we're focused on pilot hiring practices here, but we need to acknowledge the variables we're not considering. I'm also ignoring the military pipeline for pilots here. Globally, air forces are flying fewer airplanes with more capability and greater expense. Even Sub-Saharan nations get their hands on Su-27s, etc. This all means fewer pilots needed and less pilot production from military air arms. We all live in a world where we're used to reading Stripes articles about us needing as many Air Force, Marine and Navy pilots as we can get. It's easy to think that we have a big air force. Today we have a little over 5000 planes flying. In 1959 the Air Force Alone had nearly 21000 planes active in their inventory. That's a lot less pilot training going on. This has played out in Air Forces, Air Wings, Fleet Air Arms, etc. across the world.
Years before I came to Atlas, I made my money flying airplanes and being a weird guy in other parts of the world. The experience was wonderful, but this was one facet of my presence that made me think our net impact was close to zero.