Originally Posted by
RAT 5
Sadly the only thing that causes real change in commercial aviation is a smoking hole with lots of dead bodies.
You mention this at the same time as speculating that airline bean counters will cut training standards which might lead to this. Even if it did, and it has in recent years in a rather major airline, it will be the XAA's who demand an improvement in training standards and not the internal bean counters. They have already run cost/risk assessment scenarios whereby they believe what size and number of 'mis-haps' they can sustain. It will all be down to the XAA's to demand change, but they seem to act retrospectively rather than proactively.
In the US the Regulator didn't demand change, public opinion did. The politicians saw they had to
Do Something so they passed legislation that
required the FAA to make an ATPL a requirement for acting as a crew member of an airliner. The FAA didn't want to change the rules, and the airlines sure as hell opposed change but they got over ruled.
The result is the supply of starry eyed 250 wannabes with SJS who are willing to work for peanuts is now totally and completely eliminated. This has already caused the "better" operators to poach crew from the crap operators who are now parking airplanes because they don't have enough pilots. Signing bonus's are now routine and better T & C 's for all, are inevitable.
But like I said earlier until an EU airline has it's "Colgan" nothing will change.......