Back end of employment window?

[feetnkneestogether]

I'm not trying to put the frighteners on chaps but I had a little chat the other day with an Airtours F/o and he managed to depress me.
According to his uninformed opinion he felt that this year was the back end of the pilot employment cycle. With a US recession looming and therefore the possibility of a European slow down to follow in a year's time, the whole travel industry will consolidate rather than grow. The knock-on effect is obvious. He said that they had been hiring a lot of t/p guys but now they were looking full.
I'm a low hours PPL who has just completed all the UK ATPL exams and is looking forward to doing the CPL/IR later on this year.

Has anybody got any better news or can at least reassure me we're not about to be plunged in to another 5 year waiting list for pilot jobs ?!?!?!!?
Yours concerned.............

[scroggs]

Virgin, BM and BA are all recruiting, and will be for the forseeable future (about next Wednesday...). While that is so, there will be people leaving the IT outfits and cut-price lines to join them, and so opportunities will continue to open for you inexperienced guys further down the line. How long that lasts is anyone's guess, but I for one don't buy the 'imminent recession in the US' story. Certainly their economy's amazing rate of growth is slowing, and that will affect those US companies, or their European and Asian suppliers, who forecast it to continue, and spent accordingly. The European economy, on the other hand, looks likely to improve its growth over the next couple of years. What does this mean for aviation? I haven't a clue, really, but I wouldn't get too depressed yet!

[Luke SkyToddler]

If anything, I've noticed an improvement in the short term situation recently. Half a dozen instructors from my place of work have been picked up by airlines in the last few weeks anyway.

However, feetnknees, would I be right in assuming that as a PPL holder with aspirations, you're probably in possession of a big bunch of advertising material from commercial schools? The ones that paint a rosy picture of the so-many-hundreds-of-thousands of commercial pilots that will be required over the next few years? Be very cautious when reading that sort of thing, what they don't tell you is that most of the really massive expansion is going to go on in areas that are closed off to the UK wannabe. Or the survey I read in a New Zealand aviation magazine a year or two back, that concluded there were 12 qualified CPL holders for every flying job in the country.

I reckon aviation is still going to expand and continue to hire for the foreseeable future, but I'm equally convinced that except for a really exceptional boom time, there will normally be more pilots than jobs, at the lower levels of the ladder anyway.

[dick badcock]

Latest I heard was that due to the rising cost of pilot school plus everyone getting jobs in IT now a days, there will be a chronic shortage of pilots starting the next few years. Imagine that; airline sponsored positions, well paid instructor jobs. Basically the expansion of the airlines will be hampered by the few amount of pilots that will be available... Hang in there, and keep trying!

[RVR800]

I don't believe there has been a big boom
in recruitment, certainly not on the scale
of the late 80s (there are still many 1000hr
plus people out there looking) and when the downcycle comes there wont be much of a drop either.

I reckon fuel prices may mark the start of any downcycle. Oil prices impacted margins in the US at the end of Yr 2000. But has eased again recently. However OPEC has cut production by 5% last week and this is feeding through. The other uncertainty is Bush - Once he's been in for a few weeks things will settle down though

Airline still prefer to train there own people if they can - Sponsorship is still
continuing - they prefer a home grown
product

However I think the airline industry has changed considerably since the 80s, the low cost operators are widening the market from
traditional bucket/spade&business to a
wider market - its cheaper to fly than go by rail - its an extremely well organised industry.

There has always been a surplus of pilots
So all this guff about shortages is rubbish
What it means is that some airlines have to schedule type training and cant get a product
off the shelf.

In short it's always been tough to get into and will remain so...