He's sad but he had become a slight part of the fabric here.
Fact is jobs are abounding at the moment. I expect a slight hiatus and then after 6 months we will be back to ful throttle hiring.
It seems to work like this. There is a recession/Sept11th event and pilots are out of work. It takes a good year for the exerienced and talented ones to find work. Then for maybe two years things progress at glacial pace as the airlines settle into their restructured state. Then a trickle of recruitment begins - experience levels are quite high.
We then reach the current phase where a great many airlines have not recruited lavishly but have expanded and are thus at breaking point and NEED crews yesterday. There being a wide and deep reservoir of legally qualified people out there they have little difficulty in opening the taps. Hence certain well known British airlines are recruiting dozens every month through various schemes which place a significant burden of risk and expenditure by the individual recruit.
This will ease the situation and recruitment will slow (this is where we are about now). Many Wannabes hovering on the edges of training will now commit as hiring seems good. In about a year from now there will be a glut of people about to finish training with low hours.
About two years from now recruiting will be at full throttle again as the whole industry expands - not just the low cost carriers plus Virgin.
If you started training 12 - 18 months ago you may have timed it just right to enter the industry now/6months ago. If you start today you may well catch the glut. If you start in a years time you may just hit the sweet spot.
All this of course is no more than a horoscope written by me. But this does have the air of 1997 about it at the moment. Which is very similar to the situation in 1987. Beyond that I am too young to remember or have been interested. History repeats itself and I can't overstress how important it is that you acquaint yourself with how the industrys hiring cycle has worked before.
Many Wannabes don't and doom themselves to be a victim of past mistakes.
Cheers
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