That’s partially true however @randon is 100% correct. Unions are only as strong as their local labour laws. In Europe we have too many countries and jurisdictions to ever have a strong collective union across the continent. For instance The Netherlands ,that have incredible labour laws ,has a highly effective union for its KLM pilots compared to the U.K. where labour laws are much weaker. Same counts for France/Germany compared with for instance Poland.
Hell has to freeze over twice before any management in Europe ever considers improvements like in th U.S. It’s completely contrary to the European management philosophy. In Europe management philosphy is cheap tickets and driving down personnel costs and conditions as much as possible to the point where technically cadets pay to fly for certain low cost carriers.
For the next 20 years we’re also going to keep this major surplus of pilots. We’re the continent with the most amount of pilots per available registered a/c, I think Oz is a close second. Hell ,we can solve North Americas pilot shortage and still have enough jockeys for our own. And let’s not even get in to 1500hours cause in Europe 500TT gets you in a seat quicker than a 10000 hour driver, and that’s facts(talk to Ryanair recruiters and you’ll see).
We’re speaking of two different aviation sectors. The U.S. , besides their huge leisure travel, also has a massive business commuting sector across the states while we mostly do leisure traveling across EU cities. In the U.S. there’s also far less regulations on the aviation sector while in Europe we have the sector overregulated and Brussels thrives on piling more environmental and fiscal pressure on aviation. So we’re talking two sectors going in opposite directions.
So yes, US and Europe is more like apples and plastic cups, two totally different worlds. One where aviation is a pride of a nation and is cherished and protected while in the other it’s a mere business that should be cheaper, regulated and reduced which automatically leads to lesser conditions.
p.s. I obviously also know what the U.S. industry has been through in these last 25 years but at least there’s much more improvements now, something that we won’t see on this side of the pond.
Not being pessimistic just realistic.
Last edited by Posterviolet; 24th May 2023 at 20:41.