Some very 'glass half empty' views here. If you need to make yourselves feel glum fill your boots...I don't feel that need.
The proposed MCP licence is merely an idea as far as I can tell. 'Pilots' who graduate from that licence course, if and when it happens, will be near useless in the real world without a heavy additional training burden...will airlines be prepared to shoulder that burden? I doubt it.
Will private individuals chose this training route without a guaranteed job at the end to offset the huge expense involved to end up with a 'licence' which won't even let them fly a C206 on their own if the fabled airline job doesn't eventuate? I don't think so.
What % of airline management pilots will feel able to embrace the concept of the licence and actually risk the pitfalls of hiring such an individual? Unless the answer is "Lots" no one will risk the capital expenditure to set up the first school.
Where is the requirement really? I don't see it this side of exhausting the market of 300-500 hour CPLs...despite the rhetoric they would be cheaper to train and you can just stop recruiting them when the demand drops...not so easy to just 'switch off' the infrastructure required for the MCC course.
Less people are choosing 'pilot' as a job because of perceived better conditions of employment in any number of other jobs. Military air is a fraction of the size it was up until the 70s and is contributing less pilots to the overall pool...most of that smaller pool are busy bombing people at present too...many mil pilots furloughed from the airlines and back in the saddle and not available to the airlines. All the ex mil pilots from that big training period in the 60s and 70s are now hitting 60 and retiring.
Yes I think the falling experience levels is what drives the general 'dumbing down' of our job by Boeing and Airbus' increased reliance on technology but, unlike train drivers, there is a very real limit to that which can be achieved in a vehicle not sitting on rails.
It seems as if we may be approaching a bit of a 'perfect storm' pilot numbers wise. China and India in the mix for the first time..even if their growth halves it will still require more pilots than they can train...they'll just be short 8000 instead of 11000. The US market expanding and recalling furloughed pilots, EK wanting to double their fleet size by 2012 (How many furloughed yanks will go home?), KA back in expansion mode on behalf of their new owners, CX, who also continue to recruit.
JQ recruiting like crazy, QF recruiting in a measured way, SQ short of 100s of captains, VN recruiting, Ryanair, BA having a hard time keeping up with retirements, Orient Thai
...it goes on and on.
The minimum time to take a cadet from interview to LHS jet is 8-10 years. A proposed MCC grad would be no different.
Cadets and particularly MCP licence holders wil never be more than a small % overall. An MCP graduate, if one ever exists, will never be more of a threat, and probably much less of a threat, than someone graduating a normal school with a CPL and ATPL subjects passed. A bare CPL is nearly useless...a MCP licence on it's own will be truly useless.
Around the world 1000s of pilots are hitting 60 and retiring. For most that is a shame as they are still top of their game...for many it's 5 years past the top of theirs..for a few it's more like 10
For the first time ever the age 60 rule looks like it will be revised upwards in such a manner as to negate the efforts of the few countries who really are head in the sand over the issue...France and the US.
Taking a very broad view it is not unrealistic to suggest industry growth may actually be constrained by available, qualified and
experienced warm bodies to occupy the forward facing window seats.
I am actually beginning to think the industry
NEEDS to pause and take a deep breath...actually stop expanding at the current rate because to keep doing so looks very much like a potential train wreck in the making at some point in the not so distant future.
When you operate into London, Dubai, HK, BKK, Frankfurt and any number of US ports you begin to realise what a fine line we run safety wise. Boeing and Airbus technology cannot replace experience to a great enough extent to make an arrival into one of the above ports at peak hour much less risky than it is. If you haven't flown outside Australia try to imagine Sydney with double the traffic and a sky full of tired pilots (many of whom don't have english as a first language) at the end of a longhaul...then turn the weather on.
When you add airport congestion, the lack of infrastructure spending (1960s/70s ATC technology in most parts of the world..even the US) + reduced ATC numbers/experience around the world caused by the eternal beancounter mantra of 'increased productivity' (less people working a lot harder and burning out) to that 'perfect storm' I mentioned above it's not hard to see a problem brewing that only experience can mitigate against...and even then not all the time.
Experienced ATCOs are retiring or changing jobs for less stressful, better paid ones at a scary rate too.
Engineers are in shorter supply than pilots and the beancounters are still hammering them worse than us.
Now we can have tired pilots flying aircraft with more MEL items into extremely busy airports staffed by too few ATCOs, tired too, and working with outdated technology...wanna add minimally experienced pilots to that mix.
There is going to be some very big money on offer to pilots with the right experience.
I don't think beancounters are capable of taking that breather voluntarily...maybe the only thing that can save us from 'too much of a good thing' is $150/barrel oil.
I think we live in very interesting times.