Pilot Positive writes:
The issue of PTF will, in the long term, effect overall standards of safety and quite possibly the quality of future commanders...not good in an increasingly populated aircraft environment.
... and also not good when said commanders retire from the line and take up jobs at FAA, NTSB, various framers, et al - or become lobbyists.
Just what we need - duffers with "years of experience" who feel that cost is more important than safety.
I don't think that all pilots who come in via a P2F scenario are bad, but logically one can assume that there will be more ineptitude delivered through this door than through the classic "work your way up" path.
PJ2 writes:
No airline in trouble ever survived on employee give-backs and no airline went broke solely by paying its employees too much.
Probably not 100% true when stated as an absolute (
no airline) but certainly true in general flavor.
What has killed many airlines is that they failed to realize their strengths, and in many cases simply ignored doing what they're best at just to compete on price alone.
Gone are the days when you make a choice based on your perception of how you are treated, what you are fed inflight, your perception of how an airline maintains their fleet...
It's all the same now, basically.
Thank all the college Marketing majors for this one, those idiots waving their customer surveys and market research ephemera around as if they are the Word From Above.
Such is the story of US legacy lines - they have completely missed those of us in the "middle" of the market, willing to pay a reasonable amount more for a trip provided there is a readily distinguishable difference between "el cheapo" and the "classic legacy" price.
WN is one of the last "big" carriers to "keep Kosher" - they're doing now pretty much what they have been doing for many years, and, oddly, they now seem to be much more comfortable (for lack of a better word) than many legacies.
Let me throw something out as food for thought...
Now that we have made the pilot little more than a common employee, why not eliminate him/her?
I don't agree with decimating cabin crew any further than has already happened... But in a decade or two, will we really be losing that much?