Paying a Fee to a apply for a job, has been around for as long as I been flying. Its closing on thirty years now. This sort of stuff comes up more during down times in the industry. There is two ways to do this, one pay the fee, its just the cost of doing business, and two is pure bull**** and the hell with it. I fall with the second . I look at it this way, if a 1000 pilots pay the fee its 45000. Thats a lot of money just to put a stack of resume's in the round file. I don't belive you should have to pay a fee just to apply for a job, its that simple. Either you are looking for pilots or you are not. Now if you choose to pay the fee, I don't have a problem with it. I think there are better things to do with 45 dollars but that is for you to decide, not me. I seen down turns before, and I'm sure that I will be alive to see a couple of more. Think about this if nobody applied, the fee would be drop in a NY second.