It's a really interesting set of circumstances what's going on across the pond at the moment.
Despite the eureka feelings and starry eyes, there's no doubt that the next 12 months from these pay deals is the absolute peak of the airline market in the U.S. You cannot have salaries like this and not get an insane influx of people training (ie. people are seeing these compensation figures and starting training now in the U.S., If you start training now and get into an airline in 3-5 years, you'll have mountains of people alongside going for jobs) I don't think these figures are sustainable.
I do however firmly believe that there is (and has been for years) a massive imbalance between Europe and the U.S. in terms of comp. At the very least I do believe we can make some assumptions:
- The U.S. comp figures are peaking and in a few years this may cause other issues for the airlines
- European airlines will have to rethink their compensation once the COVID-induced hole begins to hit (it hasn't yet!). ie. Most people getting into airlines now are integrated folks who started just before/as COVID hit and got delayed, modular students are probably still those who started pre-COVID. (My rationale here is just the length of time modular takes and the 6 or so months COVID put a halt to things for).
So I do think Europe is yet to see the "crisis" of a pilot shortage as in the U.S - (some of you may laugh at that, and understandably so with how under-staffed some airlines are!). Look at Aer Lingus - they had insane amounts of applicants for their recent DEFO scheme - it just shows that airlines with relatively good compensation and lifestyle have their pick of the European job market.
It is largely accepted that we lag the U.S. aviation market in Europe by a few years (financial crisis, COVID recovery, shortages etc.), but the U.S. shortage is much more profound because of the 1500hrs. That said, I firmly believe Europe hit rock bottom in terms of comp over the last decade and that we'll start to see an uptick as the U.S. resets the bar for how airline staff should be paid. We can all agree we won't get near where the Delta/American pay deal got to, but I do think we'll see strong rises over the next few years (provided we don't see a big economic downturn
)