Unfortunately the abuse won't stop, well not that I can see for a number of reasons:
- becoming a pilot these days is a process of self selection. Any tom dick or harriette can wake up and decide that they will become a pilot. Put in some work and hey presto, same licence as we all have no matter whether you have the aptitude to stick at the job in the long term. Go to the CAA in Gatwick if you don't believe me and sit and watch all the wannabes coming in each day to get their licences signed off. My guess is 10 a day on average.
- it is cheaper than ever to become a pilot in real terms which makes it more accessible
- cash is easier to get hold of. Just depends how much risk you are willing to take and if your wallet can hold all of the free credit cards that lenders are willing to offer you
- type ratings are easily accessible and if done at a school with so called "contacts" then you can find yourself into the RHS of a jet relatively easily. Usual caveats apply of course and you will still need to pass the entry tests/interviews.
- cockpit automation and reliability of aircraft. In the eyes of the public the jets just fly themselves around and we are seen to do nothing in getting them from A to B. Most people I think assume we do Cat 3 autolands day in and day out and have no idea that we actually do still handfly for parts of the flight! Management listen to this hearsay and duly dumb down our pay and conditions.
- the likes of FR have taken cost cutting to a new dimension. Other carriers cite FR as their model and main competitor even when this is not the case in order to reduce costs. This is cited at pay reviews and flows down through the whole business model. Cost cutting itself in my opinion is the easy way to make profit in a business. The harsh reality for airlines and the CEO is that it is much harder to actually go out and generate revenues and profit at the same time. Much easier for a CEO to come in and slash and burn and then move on after a few years when they realise that there is actually a job to be done in growing the business.
Previously you couldn't get near a jet with 200 hours unless you had jumped through various hoops at the integrated schools and were in the top 5-10% of your class. The airlines would cite "training risk" as the big factor in declining most applications from low houred/old timers/those that didn't fit their mould whatever that was. Nowadays with the accessibility of self funded type ratings the airlines are more likely to say oh well if they are useless at least we wouldn't have spent a whole lot of our training budget on them. Pay for it yourself line training programmes go further to give wannabes the much needed commercial experience.
All in all I don't see it getting any better. If anything all we can do is to hope that we can try and hold onto the terms and conditions that we have at present.