bug smasher, it is indeed an employers market right now, no argument from me on that score, but I most certainly do not mean that when aforementioned pilots have acquired sufficient command time. Ergo your assumption is wrong.
A great number of pilots at EK went there with plenty of command time, hence my post on another thread about the DEC's being a smack in the mouth to these people, (particularly EK's rule to exclude the B757 from the wide-body category - a bone of contention for many). For a lot of people it is the only game in town right now, but the risk remains for EK to screw this up over the longer term. But that said, airline management always was a cold blooded reptilian beast (especially in that part of the world, Gulf Air is a prime precident), so I wouldn't hold my breath on them getting this one right necessarily.
As for the situation back home for these guys, well, it was a pretty good rule of thumb that if you hadn't made it into a US major by the time you were thirty five, you could pretty much kiss that career path good bye (different in other countries). However, consider the demographics: we are going to see a couple of years before the furlough lists are depleted, meanwhile, the Vietnam era trained guys are retiring at a steady pace, thanks to the age rules remaining in place. At that point, where are the major carriers going to get their pilots ? The military is a much reduced source as we all know, are they really going to deplete their own regional feeders of pilots at that point ? Airlines are concerned about having a gap in the experience base, sufficient to do something about it. UAL's position of having their furloughed guys fly with the regionals and having their salaries topped up by $20 per hour is a good example of trying to keep these highly qualified individuals form drifting off into other spheres.
You could say we are in a similar situation to the mid seventies when US furloughs were also in vogue, the huge difference between then and now is that civil aviation is bigger, the military isn't the source it once was and civil trained pilots are on the decrease too. So whats that say about the conventional "thirty-five or forget it" rule ? Of course, only time will tell, but I know of one certain JFK operation that sounds like a pregnancy test that is hiring guys in their late forties.
Last edited by skibeagle; 26th October 2003 at 18:29.