ShotOne wrote:
At the core is the seemingly inexhaustible supply of "flying lemmings" ready to sign anything and work for nothing just to get a seat at the controls. Until that dries up, we can name-call O'Leary etc until we're blue in the face but nothing will change.
It's not just the inexhaustible supply of "flying lemmings" as you call them; but rather the alarming and sad lack of oversight by the regulators and authorities. They let AOC holders get away with forcing pilots into zero-time pseudo self-employed/entrepreneurial external workforce contracts, or worse, charging for the 'priviledge' to crew their aircraft ('pay to fly' - P2F).
This lack of oversight (or let's call it putting the blinds on, if not outright corruption) occurs in broad daylight under the pretext that such 'employment' tactics are beyond the scope of regulators and authorities assigned with supervising air-safety.
I profoundly disagree. Knowledge of who an operator places at the pointy end, how they get there and how an operator ensures their relative wellbeing ('a happy pilot is a good pilot') is crucial in determining whether or not an operator can be entrusted with the high responsibility of engaging in commercial air transport. When an operator refuses to employ their own flight crew (with the exception of temporary contractors required to cope with new aircraft arrivals/seasonal peaks), train and pay them adequately, this either points to financial instablility, or social irresponsibility and recklessness on the part of the management, both which have to establish disqualifying criteria for holding an AOC.
We have to target regulators and authorities to make these practices stop, there's no point targeting the lemmings, they'll always exist as long as flying holds the fascination it does.