Originally Posted by
krismiler
Think of a pyramid with Australia having a large number of pilots in smaller aircraft at the bottom and a small number in airliners at the top, in many countries that gets inverted.
Sort of, but in truth there’s probably more pilots in airliners here as well compared to smaller GA aircraft. The GA sector has declined considerably over time, and there’s no way airlines would meet their crewing requirements even if they vacuumed all suitable pilots out of GA.
And it’s not as if this is a thing that’s just happened recently. QF, Q-Link, VA, VARA, Rex, JQ, Ansett, Cobham, Maroomba, Airnorth, Sharp, Skippers, O’Connors, MacAir, are just some of the airlines in this country I can remember, past and present, who have put well selected and trained low houred pilots into Turboprops and Jets. They started doing this not recently, but over 50 years ago.