Originally Posted by
Vortex Hoop
Is this a reference to a pilot shortage? Is there one these days even with loads of people willing to pay to fly?
Nah, that's a reference to the lorry driver shortage that supposedly exists, apparently with the fairly low current unemployment at a national level, the idea of paying a four-figure sum to get a HGV licence hasn't appealed to many. Or so I have heard, I may be wrong.
As I've said a few times on here, the secret to good T&Cs is to a large extent, supply and demand. It's one of the reasons the railway world is well-paid in the UK, the unions (and actually most of the train companies themselves) would never allow a situation to develop where people were allowed to buy their way in. All training is employer-funded and that means there is very rarely a surplus of staff, after all, why, as an employer, pay to train more people than you actually need. No surplus means that the threat of cheaper staff cannot be used to drive down T&Cs, in fact poaching has driven them up. It also helps that the railway market seems to be more stable than aviation, it's not as susceptible to the sort of economic shocks the airline industry has used as a wedge to leverage in things like P2F.
I believe the whole training cost debate is centered around employer and employee expectations. It's now normal for pilots to pay for their own training, so airlines expect not to pay it and trainees expect to pay it. On the railways in the UK, employees paying for their own training has never happened, therefore employers are much less likely to see it as reasonable. Any company that introduced it would probably attract very few good applicants since they'd only apply to places where their training was still paid for.