Pilot Positive;
Good, observant post. Your comments reflect the current state of affairs accurately and point the way to address these problems for those coming into the profession's leadership positions.
To conquer, one must first discourage and intimidate one's 'enemy' and destroy all vestige of self-respect. Here, the 'enemy' was a group of highly-skilled, highly-experienced, well-remunerated specialists.
But, because the marketing of automation was so effective and airline managements both credulous and needing to save costs everywhere, pilots began to be characterized as 'expensive resources' in automated machines that 'flew themselves'.
The impetus behind this very thread is a precise example of such thinking. It is abundantly clear that those who think that pilots are unnecessary and are therefore expensive appendages do not know what they are talking about. Unfortunately, such notions catch on in others who do not comprehend what they are hearing.
When the leaders of the airline industry began, intentionally I think, to desecrate the profession of Airline Pilot beginning in earnest in the late 80's and early 90's, I wondered how such leaders would continue to come to terms with aviation's first principles - that incompetency, lack of address and parsimony kill people and in the long run reduce the credibility of the industry.
We should not make the mistake of believing that Buffalo was, along with at least five other fatals we can point to, just another accident.
The 'expectancy factor' - a sense of demanding or entitlement, is real enough. While it can't be examined here, one wonders if that sense is at least partially a result of young people observing what corporations, and certainly the airlines themselves, have done to their parents?
Young people who are smart and who would otherwise make excellent pilots are choosing other professions; they began doing that more than a dozen years ago and the reasons for this are abundantly clear.
While the "way up" was never perfect, (military, corporate, bush, instructing), it provided sufficient experience for young people who chose aviation as a life. the industry was forced to find a quick solution to rapidly dwindling numbers.
The 'marketing of the MPL' - the 'licensing of inexperience', was initiated and endorsed early on, in my opinion without close examination as to the reasons, by ICAO, IATA and pilot associations alike. That pilot associations permitted this to happen is unacceptable; while excessive wage outliers perhaps had to be addressed, it is a fact today that the industry cannot afford to pay the kind of wages that drive young people away and make those who do come and survive, sacrifice flight safety just to fly commercially.
There is no long-term percentage in hiring inexperience for complex, demanding airline work on high-performance equipment simply because it is cheap. One doesn't become a pilot by spending 200+hrs in a simulator and doing a few dozen flight legs in their first-ever airplane, usually an A320.
I have no doubt that the young people who do choose commercial aviation as a profession are keen, capable and very nice people. In fact my entire note here is not addressed to such earnest and very welcome entrants. It should be obvious to anyone who has followed this discourse for a length of time that it is the process, not the entrants, to which I address these comments.
While it would take a similar study as that which addressed the issues raised by de-regulation, there is enough evidence in experience to think that airline executive leaderships did this intentionally in order to cheapen the profession for 'lo-cost' operations, instigating a race-to-the-bottom.
"Lo-cost" can be done if done intelligently, but it cannot be done on the backs of a skilled and experienced workforce.
Something always gives when such short-sighted priorities are at work. The terrible wages and conditions which now fail to encourage and entice new entrants to the profession need to change.
No airline in trouble ever survived on employee give-backs and no airline went broke solely by paying its employees too much.
The lessson bears repeating: it is not hard to teach someone "How-to" in terms of manipulating the controls to fly an airplane. 9/11 tragically proved that.
It is the sixth-sense that comes through experience in every profession and one can only obtain that by living long enough, aviation's unique challenge to the neophyte, and his or her passengers.
But the airline leaderships do not, or will not, recognize this and instead treat pilots as expensive liabilities instead of assets which can lead to profit. Clearly the industry has gone too far in destroying its 'enemy'.
TRon;
Also interesting comments. I think there is a great deal in what you say that is positive; you point to an important distinction and also a perennial problem of aviation: "When is one's experience not enough?" To emphasize, I do not point fingers at new entrants. If I were in their shoes I would be leaping at the opportunity as I'm sure many here would. The key is in knowing what one doesn't know; to me that gap and the opportunity to narrow the gap is reduced by the present forces at work.
PJ2