SASless,
What you say is definately true for people that work in the fields picking oranges, but for pilots its the other way around completely, the reason is that being a pilot in the US is almost "blue collar" work in many instances, anybody with a good loan and determination can become a pilot and there are thousands of people becoming pilots everyday, usually supply equals demand, and pilot pay is usually not the best amongst profesional workers in the US.
In Latin America people that become pilots are either very rich to be able to pay their training or military which are always the lesser part of the pilot pool, either way pilot supply is very limited, jobs are well paid, equipment is usually new or almost new, for example offshore pilots over here work 14 on 14 off, get airfare home every 14 days, go to FlightSafety at least once a year and fly brand new 412's, the money is comparable to what their counterparts make, and they stay in good hotels not trailers, so why move?
Actually the recent trend has been to bring US operators to do such things as fight fires because they are much cheaper, they bring old UH1's that over here nobody wants to fly do the work for less money than the local companies which operate to a different standard, sort of like the Russians in Spain.
Last edited by BlenderPilot; 30th Jun 2005 at 01:13.