Originally Posted by
boofhead
I don't know where you sit in the system, but I have had 30 years as an airline captain and am now involved in Part 135 management. I can assure you that there is a shortage of qualified pilots. I advertise hard and rarely get someone who meets my most basic needs, and usually someone else with deeper pockets poaches him before I can even start his training or he will have some shortfall such as no multi turbine time but I will take him and train him and when he has 250 hours multi turbine he leaves to a better job. Usually to the freight companies where he can fly a 747. The stats are clear; the number of pilots in this country have dropped by a large amount at the same time as the airlines need more, creating a vacuum which cannot be filled by legislation. It needs qualified, experienced and trained people at all seat positions and there is simply no supply. Why is that? Poor planning of course, not seeing this threat coming, of course, greed at the top maybe, complacency, whatever, but you have to realise it will take 8 to 10 years to create a SIC and 12 to 15 to create a PIC for the airline level. Those pilots who took those jobs used to have to prove themselves by flying small airplanes, in the bush or whatever, building time that counted, and getting ratings or quals that had a connection to what the employers wanted. Because of the shortage, if a person can climb the stairs to the HR department without collapsing he is qualified. I know guys who I would not employ to wash my car being given jobs as SIC on second-level and regional airlines, or even some in the top airlines merely because they had the required 1500 hours. Or even came close, with promises to put them in company sponsored jobs to build their time. The airlines are desperate and they will pay whatever they need, which is way more than I can pay at my level.
Nothing is being done to fix this problem. It will only get worse and the entire industry is in peril.
There is no work ethic any longer as the liberals have done their best to build the entitlement society, but the biggest hit has been the 1500 hour rule. A rule that had nothing to do with reality, was not driven by the Colgan accident as claimed in fact it makes the causes of the Colgan accident more prevalent. I can only conclude that, as it is usually done in this country, some special interests paid to have it pushed through. And it is supported by ALPA. Look no further.
Now a young'un who wants a career is faced with years more training, years more flying as a CFI or bush pilot in rough conditions, huge increases in debt, merely to have an ability to knock on a regional airline's door and ask for a low paying job as a SIC. No guarantees, no real career prospects, a risk that might not pay off. Why would anyone want to do that? So the youngsters are staying away in droves. There are not enough driven wannabe pilots out there to make it up, as the FAA itself will tell you. It was a crazy idea and it is predictably ruining this industry.
Those of you who are already at the top of course don't know or care, and you seem unable to look ahead to 5 years down the road when your airline too will be reducing flights, losing big money and going into at least Chapter 11. Many bigger airlines will fail as the smaller ones are doing already and suddenly there will be plenty of pilots available for me as they struggle to find jobs to pay back their huge financial liabilities but I fear it will be too late. My jobs will have gone way before that. At the lower end of the scale I am already hurting. I don't know how much longer small operators like ours can last. Probably not 5 years. And it is not due to salaries, it is due to the fact that there are simply no qualified pilots looking for work. So long as they can go directly to the bigger outfits why waste their time?
That must inevitably reduce the standards and it must lead to an uptick in incidents and accidents and it has already caused the loss of many lower-level aviation businesses including Part 135 and airports, and even mechanics are now in short supply.