Since the 1980s, the class of billionaires, bankers, and owners has declared a war on workers all across the world, including airline pilots. Time to wake up.
Precisely right, JHR. Our capitalistic world saw a shift away from ethics and towards the unabashed love of money. That began in the states circa 1975, and was popularized (and normalized) across mass media. Business schools across the US slowly dropped requirements for ethics courses so that today, such study barely gets a few hours of indoctrination per student.
More like the real money has gone to the customers, fares are a fraction of what they were in the “golden age”.
Galaxy Flyer, I don't argue that fare wars were not part of the shift, but "real money" going to customers is a bit simplistic and one sided. If by "real money" you mean small sums were given to millions of paying customers in the form of lowered fares, I cannot disagree.
However at the same time, comparatively little of that "real money" in the form of substantial increases in pay, training, and benefits trickled down from on high, with most of it being the actual "real money" we should be speaking of, that which went towards corporate profits and the shareholders, and into the pockets of upper management.
Our industry has never been full of high profit margin enterprises, but the income differences between those paper pushers on high and the folks that actually do the work is and has been since the 1980s, dichotomous.
Put succinctly, unfettered greed has gone from a shameful pursuit to one to be (apparently) proud of.