Originally Posted by
Lookleft
...... Airlines are not the only industry that are experiencing loss of staff morale and a declining job satisfaction rating however this is a forum for those in the industry.So this is the repository of airline industry complaints. As you say you are a non-pilot and occasional passenger so please tell us what is wonderful about your occupation and how we can access it.
The grass of another occupation often looks greener.
The problem with flying is that it has turned from a vocation where it was enjoyable into a job. Strangely, I think a lot of that has to do with the move to more automation. Someone who could fly manually and accurately for several hours then land using minimum aids and no automation in marginal weather had their skills tested. And that leads to a sense of satisfaction in the job - doing something that not many others can do. It also led to a level of respect from management as they could not do what their crews could do. The same for air traffic control minimal aids poor radar with no labelled displays or decision support tools.
However, now we have aircraft that are
sold as easy to fly and easy to train crews on. No long training and on job training required, take a youngster who has paid for a couple of hundred hours training on a single piston, move them to a twin for another couple of hundred hours and you can have someone who can 'fly' (read operate the automatics) the aircraft as accurately if not more accurately than the skilled manual pilot. You do not earn respect from management for being a system operator.
"Give us six months and we can have several more just like you..... "
So the job satisfaction is reducing as it is being 'deskilled' and made boring, the management feel that being the pilot is 'easy' and they are being held to ransom by claims for large salaries. Most of the management would not know what they were looking at in the cockpit but know their way around a company account sheet in their sleep - so have zero understanding of the crew's job and really don't see it as important for them to know.
And that is where we are now.
In the future it will get worse unless something is sorted out, I can imagine the arguments by the MBA managers now: "
The company balance sheet will look immeasurably better if pilots are completely automated out. Have some reserve remote pilots on the ground somewhere cheap like Chennai who can take over if something goes iffy with the automation otherwise no crew required."
Any arguments, however valid from an operational point of view, will be discarded as whingeing Luddite pilots attempting to stop progress to protect their jobs. Remember, a director or CEO of an airline who has active pilot experience is a rarity these days. They literally do not understand flying and they believe all they are told by airframe marketing about aircraft flying themselves.