Interesting argument remoak. You state that conditions will improve because experience is valuable. You criticise my statement about observations of cadet courses, yet it is simply the same argument logically applied to lack of experience. That is, if experience is valuable and worth paying for, providing a product that is inexperienced will attract less pay. I thought it was a pretty simple observation back then.
Not quite. I am saying that good, incident-free experience is valuable as a stand-alone commodity. Conditions improve or deteriorate with market forces - so when pilots are in short supply, their nominal value rises. If you try and apply the argument in reverse, you would arrive at the conclusion that when there is a surplus of pilots, they have no value. This is clearly not the case - the pilot has no value to the airline
at that particular time, but may well have immense value six months later. Possibly a slightly obscure point...
Anyway, I would agree with you that a pilot with a bare type rating and no experience has very little value and could expect to be paid very little. The same pilot, with experience, is worth a lot more. The value lies in the experience, not the type rating.
This is not an unusual concept. Ask anyone who has ever undertaken an apprenticeship, it is basically exactly the same model as what Jetstar are offering. New apprentices earn very, very little. They know they are paying for their experience and qualifications via salary sacrifice, but they ALSO know that, in the long run, they will make it back up in spades. Ask any plumber or engineer if their pay and conditions improved as their experience grew. As I said, the concept is not new. It is just new to pilots (well, in Australia and NZ at any rate).
Hopefully those lessons will be put to good use in the upcoming action by QF pilots.
And hopefully Julia has less balls than Bob...
My guess is that the Qantas pilots will fold. Long memories and all that.
Granted, conditions are much more likely to improve if there is a skill shortage, but only if we manage ourselves well, oil does not run out and the USA does not implode in a debt and borrowing sinkhole dragging the whole world with it.
Maybe. As I mentioned earlier, in 1988 I saw my salary increase by 37%. I didn't ask for it, the airline offered it in an attempt to hold onto their pilot workforce, which was rapidly haemorraging away as the bigger airlines went into a hiring frenzy. We had a pilot workforce of about 650, and in one single week had 39 resignations. Union activity was completely unnecessary, we just told the company what we wanted, and we got it.
Two years later, 600 UK pilots were unemployed and conditions were under pressure (although they never really got any worse).
Five years after that, it was boom time again. Salaries and conditions went up. Airlines struggled to find crews. Guys that had been scraping a living in Bandeirantes suddenly found themselves flying 767s... and so on.
Unfortunately, most of the people jumping up and down on PhoenixNZ's head are simply trying to protect their own interests. Nobody gives a toss about his career, it's all about some nebulous benefit for his elders and betters. Most of these same people would have jumped at such an opportunity when they were younger and inexperienced. Such is the fundamentally selfish and self-centred nature of most pilots.
One day, Australia and NZ will wake up and realise that the world has fundamentally changed, and along with it the standard career path for young pilots. Nobody outside these shores believes that the only path to an airline career is many years in GA.
Time to move on...