I’m playing devils advocate here so please don’t shoot the messenger.
There has been a lot of talk about supply and demand here and the supply side of things is what is causing the increased salary for truck drivers.
I am just not seeing the supply side of things in the major airlines being an issue at the moment. QF mainline will never have an issue attracting suitably qualified pilots. In fact if the numbers are to be believed, when applications recently opened they received 1000s upon 1000s of people wanting to join. By all accounts, JQ isn’t having any issues with the number of people applying there.
And with Virgin, the redundant pilot list has provided VA with a long list of suitably qualified pilots to fill the void as expansion exploded post COVID. Now whilst that list may be close to exhausted, the most recent bid import shows those higher up are considering their options and again bidding. When the next rounds of commands come out - it will be interesting to see how many come from those still inactive. When Virgin recently advertised externally (again if the numbers were to be believed) they had a significant number of applicants. And from a VA perspective there might be a lot of people talking about leaving, but when push comes to shove the numbers leaving aren’t all that significant in the scheme of things. Until numbers leaving has a significant impact on the ongoing operation, then it’s unlikely the Company is going to be rushing to throw money at the problem.
Now things might be slightly different at the next tier operators. By all accounts there are definite crewing issues at NJS. Cobham is also having crewing issues, especially in regards to their government contract work. Rex allegedly lost 10% of Saab fleet pilots in one week about a month ago - but that hasn’t appeared to have materialised in any sort of significant cancelation rate on their turbo prop operations.
Seems to me that pilots are always waiting for the supply issues to try and drive up wages. If you aren’t being paid what you’re worth (and that’s very arguably the case at JQ and VA), then when it comes to EA negotiating time you need to be prepared to take action which may have a short term financial impact to yourself. Unfortunately from what I have seen - a cohesive pilot group doesn’t look particularly likely