If you let me, I would like to share my opinionas well. I have been more than 20 years in the business. If I have learnt onething, is that the market is changing all the time. Of course, we tend toremember only the “good” part of the “good old days”, however I think ingeneral, things are not permanently deteriorating. Salaries have gone up anddown worldwide depending on crew availability and owner’s demands. One thinghas remained stable and true since I started flying: the great majority of BusinessJets owners, no matter how rich they are, always considered the airplanes assomething “nice to have” as opposed to an absolute “must have”… These airplanescreate cost for them. And of course, they hire people to keep those generatedcosts under control, or to even reduce them… Aircraft Management companies likeJet Aviation, do not dictate the conditions. Customers dictate. The days whenJet Aviation owned a fleet of small jets for charters are long in the past. Iam quite sure that they do not hire their own crews anymore, just like everyother aircraft management company.
I think our big enemy here are the outrageouslyexpensive training costs generated by CAE and Flight Safety. How can youexplain that they charge nearly USD 100k for GLF type ratings, whereas theycharge 20 to 30 k for Boeing and Airbus Type Ratings? And they are alwaysoverbooked! These totally unreasonable training costs are what makes ouraircraft owners look into new ways to finance their ever increasing costs.This, and the few pilot colleagues who jump from job to job ruining our reputationas professional pilots, are the major reasons why owners start to ask forpilots to pay for their type ratings. I may be wrong here, forgetting to factorin other aspects, however this is my humble opinion on this topic so far. Hopeif helps to bring in a slightly different perspective.
I wish smooth skies to everyone!