Originally Posted by
calypso
I think that is a common misconception by those not familiar with this industry. An airline is not Mcdonalds. Even if the labour market is awash with pilots you still need to recruit them, select them and train them. That takes plenty of time and money. All crew have to undergo an OCC course which takes a minimum of 5 sims and 2 weeks of different courses, after that you need to put them through line training. For all of that you will need an army of Examiners, Sim instructors, Line trainers and ground trainers. Even with a fully oiled training system running at full capacity hiring the thousands of pilots needed to run a 120 aircraft fleet will take over a year and cost many tens of millions. If your training department has been dismantled or much diminished you will need to first hire and train the trainers which will take considerably longer and cost even more.
Recruitment of pilots cannot be rushed for many logistical and regulatory reasons but putting that to the side taking the "wrong" sort will cost the company even more in the medium to long run with potentially decades of additional training, additional operational costs, damaged equipment, avoidable delays, avoidable cancelations , poor customer service, etc etc. Not to mention that if you mess up your hiring at macdonalds you end up with a burnt burger in an airline you can end up with a big hole in the ground. Given the numbers involved recruiting some bad apples is probably unavoidable so the question is how many and how bad, how much do I rush the recruitment so the risk is still manageable. Bad as that is recruiting a bad trainer can give you dozens of bad apples. How many trainers are you willing to just push through untested?
So finding pilots won't be "hard" but finding the right pilots and getting to the point where they are available to fly the line will be a lengthy and costly process that will require a very significant logistical and operational effort.
I'm really sorry but that's all wishful thinking. There are so many high quality experienced Captains coming on the market right now. No expat jobs to go to. British Pilots, no longer able to work in Europe. The market value of Pilots (particularly British) has collapsed.