Erin Brockovich:
The good news is that we as pilots are now the hot new commodity. We will be writing our own cheques. Just stay safe and healthy and the rest will unfold.
Wrong!
As usual, you're only looking at one aspect of the economics - the demand for pilots.
The other aspects are:
1. High demand for air travel by public;
2. Lowish cost of pilots;
Change one aspect and
you will change the others. You are advocating significant pay rises for pilots but for that to happen, the money to fund the pay rises has to come from somewhere.
The only place the money can come from is the travelling public, but increase the ticket price and
you will lower demand for air travel, which in turn means less passengers (lower load factors).
Lower load factors means
less flights and less pilots. This is a basic economic reality that applies to all products and markets. Raise fares enough and the pilot "shortage" will reverse to become a surplus.
But just how much can fares be raised before the decrease in load factors becomes significant? I would suggest that, with the effort that goes into yield management by todays airlines, they are already at the optimum balance between fares/load factors/capacity/frequencies/revenue, etc.
Bear in mind the nature of air travel. Air travel has for over 50 years been on a singleminded quest to achieve ever more cheaper and safer travel for the people of the world. The economics of commercial aviation today has nothing to do with John Howard but everything to do with that singleminded obsession.
For the first few decades the technological improvements alone were enough to keep the fares coming down, but these days the technological improvements aren't enough to satisfy the voracious beast - pilot salaries must now be sacrificed.
How will the beast feel about returning air fares to the levels of 10 or 20 years ago?