Irwin Stelzer was boastfully denying that the US would even enter a recession. When it did he claimed it would be fleeting and at most technical. Now that everyone knows its going to be deep and serious he's claiming it'll be over by Christmas. The man is a professional cheerleader for the US economic/political system. He's cried wolf so much that a lot of people have stopped listening to him.
An alternative economist who has called every single facet of this crisis and recession and is therefore worth listening to (perhaps) is Nouriel Roubini.
And now is only the time to train if you are a cast iron idiot with absolutely no knowledge of aviation history.
In the 1991 recession we only saw the major airline bankruptcys a year or two years later. It takes a while for the profit to slump, the costs to remain, the reserves to be used up and finally the receiver called in. The EU today estimates the most severe contraction in GDP in the UK since WW2 of 2.6%. I think this is underplaying it. However, if it is 2.6% of GDP contraction in 2009 then the commercial aviation sector will experience AT LEAST triple that figure as its essentially a Fast Moving Consumer Good/Discretionary Spending item.
Losing 7.8% of the aviation business in the UK would be the same as losing how many airliners? Given EZY and RYR would have about 160 aircraft each, BA 280, the Charters 100, the others 100 or so. And then maybe the same the year after.
Sorry. I don't know many pilots who aren't just a little bit to quite worried about their employment situation going into this storm. That anyone wants to spend £70k of their own money to sit at the bottom of all their CV's is astounding.
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