Every few months somebody comes up with pilot shortage. In a sense I guess it is a bit of wishfull thinking, more then anything else. I strongly believe that there will never ever, ever, be a lack of pilots, because there are just to many walking around without a job. Every handling agent I talk to seems to have a cpl these days. Everyone who brings me the loadsheet seems to pop the question: how do I get in your company. We are talking about 4000 unemployed fully licensed pilots in my country alone. Offcourse they are lowtimers, and that doesn't seem to count.
If you would put experience in 3 groups:
- lowtime <200 hours, no airline experience
- medium commuter experience, or jet job, 1000\2000 hours fo
- hightime pic 5000 hours jet experience
Now the hightime guys are always in demand. They were even in demand right after sept11. The lowtime are never in demand and never will. No pilot shortage there. In the words of my manager: I kick a rock and there are 10 lowtimers crawling from underneath it!
The real winners are the medium experience guys. I have seen myself in the last year go from not interesting c.v., to invitations from mayor airlines which I would never have dreamed off. But people are still paying for typeratings, even those with experience. And salaries are still generally crap, not speaking of the working hours. So I wonder how desperate the companies really are. If pilots are in such short supply, then they should lurk us with nice jobs, good salaries and fine working conditions. I have not seen that as yet......