When Things Improve

[pipertommy]

I`m thinking, obviously 9/11 was a crap time for looking for a flying job. But things picked up after that and recruitment gained a good pace.

So once this economical situation has passed, which it will, recruitment will probably happen at a good pace once again? Even if it is a good couple of years!!

I just wonder how long exactly???????

[737Rookie]

So once this economical situation has passed, which it will

it HAS passed.....

[pipertommy]

Thought it would be a good one :E

[BerksFlyer]

I'm hedging my bets on it being 2011/2012 before things to start picking up again. We will just have to wait and see.

[JB007]

If the UK industry remains as is...i'd also say 2011/12...but maybe we'll have a better idea if everyone makes it through the winter...

[G SXTY]

This industry is cyclical; several years of accelerating growth before some major event causes the @rse to fall out of the business, everyone stops travelling and airlines start to go bust. (ref. 1990 - Gulf War 1, 2001 - 9/11).

If history repeats itself, which I'm sure it will, 3-4 lean years sounds about right. Not necessarily a problem if you're just starting off - I managed to make my flying training last 7 years . . .

[pipertommy]

Ye thought about 3 years:ugh:

[Brainstorm]

Hard to say. If you remember. all the US airlines were firing pilots in the thousands after 9/11, but the industry, and the economy in general, made a fantastic recovery which resulted in an economic boom that lasted for quite a few years. Few would have predicted that.

At the moment we are heading for a downturn, as I am sure you know. How long nobody knows, but I would not believe too much of the doom and gloom in press and media. And certainly don't believe the hype that the world has run out of oil, that has been 'preached' endlessly since the beginning of the oil era over a 100 years ago.

I believe this is another typical aviation cycle. Give it a few years and another upturn should hit us.

But....don't be fooled, a this is a cyclical indstry. If you embark on a career as a pilot, there will always be uncertain times ahead, near of far.

[Wee Weasley Welshman]

We've reached Peak Oil, the Fed are about to run out of money and the nuclear winter after the Iran-Israel war can only drive up global food prices as harvests fail. I'm keeping an eye out for four guys on horseback... :p


The typical house price crash in the UK has taken 66 months to go from peak to trough and back to real terms growth. Used as a proxy for the fortunes of UK airlines then 2012 should see a return to expansion as the sector tends to lead the economic cycle both into and out of these downturns and booms. The Olympics will also prove a stimulus in that year.

Whilst that would sound like a disaster to most Wannabes it is important to recognise that the industry has been here before. As has been mentioned above - the industry loves to do boom and bust. In 2005/6/7 we had one heck of a boom. SSTR courses were getting phone calls during training offering them direct entry jobs in major airlines.

The likes of CTC were signing up HUNDREDS of young people per year and shipping them off to New Zealand for training before placing them in a choice of household name airlines. There were jobs all over the place as training departments struggled to keep pace with the rate of new aircraft deliveries. Experienced and barely experienced pilots were changing airlines just to get a particular base or new type. They were definitely boom years.

So its really no suprise what happens now.


WWW

[preduk]

Things are getting better, fuel prices are gradually coming down now and house prices in Scotland and Northern Ireland continue to grow. England are the only country really being affected by it.

The only thing I'm concerned about is the governments lack of action to prevent the large companies taking the p:mad:ss out of its consumers with the 35%+ price increases and then giving their staff 4-5% wage increases.

[Wee Weasley Welshman]

If you think house prices in Northern Ireland are growing then you must be on drugs.

I sold up in April 07 and they started falling two months later. In reality today they are 30% off where they were at that peak. You don't boom 80% in 2 years and expect to get away with it.

Fuel prices are 20% of their high of 100% above where they were a year ago. I hardly call that cheap fuel.

WWW

[speedrestriction]

Brainstorm,

In 1960 there were 3 billion of us (humans not pilots!), currently there are 6.7 billion of us, in 2050 it is projected that there will be close to 9 billion of us. Crude oil production was at 21m bbl/day in 1960, currently is a 79m bbl/day and projections vary quite widely for 2050 but 30m bbl/day is not unrealistically low (and is possibly generous).

Put differently, the number of litres of crude oil produced per person per day:
1960 1.1 litres
2008 1.8 litres
2050 0.5 litres

So based on current levels of consumption that equates to a 1.3 litre per person per day shortfall of liquid fuel. Mathematically this can be solved two ways:

1. We will source 42,705,000,000,000 litres of alterntive liquid fuel globally per annum. (I can just imagine the energy company engineers smirk behind their slide rules and shake their heads).

2. We will improve our fuel efficiency by 360% (I can hear the thermodynamicists scoffing already)


Needless to say the above is a very coarse calculation with lots of potential variables but points to a very serious problem as to the sourcing of fuel over the next half century.

[preduk]

WWW,

I never said fuel was cheap, I said we are seeing fuel costs gradualling coming down.

I appoligise over the NI house prices, I came across a document a number of months ago that stated the house prices were the fastest growing in Europe, after doing a bit of reasearch I see this isn't correct however I can still say Scotland is still growing this year.

[Brainstorm]

Oil will definitely get harder and harder to source, resulting in increasing prices. But the fact is that nobody knows how much crude oil remains. We can only estimate. And each year, the estimates seem to increase. Why? There are often strong business reasons for coming up with an estimate of remaining oil.

The same goes for oil production, it is not only driven by the amount of crude they happen to find that day, there are also other reasons for producing more/less.

Peak oil has been debated for a very long time, even before the 70s' oil slump. I don't think that the oil era will last forever, but it won't be a case of all cars and airplanes all stopping at once sometime next week. We have been through this cycle before and the market tends to adjust itself in the short term when prices go up i.e. demand falls. In the long run we will never run out of crude, oil it will price itself out of the market long before we get to that point.

I agree that the 'practical' oil supply will become a problem in the future; we need to start looking for alternate means of energy. However, as soon as hard times hit us the scare mongers are quick to come out and scare the children. I think it is important to remember that behind all the mad hype you will always find a more sober view if you dig a bit.

[jamestkirk]

Slightly off point;

Who honestly believes that there is not a synthetic fuel formula sitting in a oil company safe somewhere. One that will power cars, planes and all types of fetish appliances.

And when oil does start to run out, there will be a grand announcement that someone has just invented a petrol subsitute.

Yes I know its a bit cynical but it is midnight.

I also think that computers etc. are born from alien technology.

[mikehammer]

Oil will definitely get harder and harder to source, resulting in increasing prices. But the fact is that nobody knows how much crude oil remains. We can only estimate. And each year, the estimates seem to increase. Why? There are often strong business reasons for coming up with an estimate of remaining oil.



Yes there are, but additionally new technology allows the extraction of oil previously thought not economically viable, and new exploration techniques finds oil in areas previously thought barren. Apparently (according to a recent BBC documentary) this is why Scotland's North Sea oil should have run out by now, but hasn't yet, and is why the figures on the number of barrels still available change constantly.

The same programme claimed that Scotland produces more oil daily than Kuwait, so I want to know why we're not all rolling around the skies in BBJs or bigger!