RAA: "Universities and flight academies should be good partners, but they fall
into the trap of supporting the belief that the problem is about low entry
level pay."
Trap? Belief? They are just unbelievably stupid...It has
everything to do with low entry level pay.
I spent a year in between jobs when the last recession hit. The only companies hiring pilots were some regional airlines. I exceeded their experience requirements literally tenfold in every category. There were thousands of other equally well qualified pilots in the unemployment lines. Did we take the regional airline jobs? Hell no. We could easily have been direct entry captains. I would have loved to fly anything and regional airline flying is certainly not "beneath me". But the simple fact was that the meager unemployment compensation was higher than regional airline pilot pay.
There are plenty of highly experienced pilots on the market, but regional airlines want the least qualified simply because they know they can "pay" them in flying experience rather than money. Now they want to exploit the new ATP regulation exactly for that purpose, probably in order to drive wages further down. I just wish they would be honest about it.