Aviation’s Future. Navy blue singlets, thongs, and hankies tied around your head?

[Wiley]

The post below has generated a relatively spirited response on the Dununda & Godzone Reporting Points page over the last 24 hours. I’m posting it here at the suggestion of one respondent to see if it engenders anywhere near the same reaction in the wider world of Aviation. Moderators, if you feel it’s a waste of bandwidth repeating it here, I’ll understand completely if you choose to bin it.

(A note for any Americans reading this thread: I must explain that ‘wearing a thong’ presents a very different mental image to most Australians than it does to someone from the US. In Australia, someone wearing a thong would be limping down in street in one rubber shower slipper. Similarly, a singlet is a sleeveless undervest, and a blue one is favoured outer attire for many manual labourers in the Land Dununda.)

Wiley

*****
Trolling through D&G, I came upon the now locked ‘Derogatory Comments’ thread. It was a shame, (if inevitable), to see it locked, if only because of the last post from Desert Digger.The days of the professional pilot are numbered, and soon you will all be relegated to coming to work in navy blue singlets, thongs, and a handkerchief tied around your head.Desert Digger echoes my own long-held sentiments to a ‘T’ with that comment, but then goes on to say “And all thanks to the scabs and heroes of (the Australian airline dispute of) '89. So for you idiots who want to bleat "get over it", it will be you, undoubtedly the youthful pilots of today, who will pay a higher price professionally, than anyone who can claim to be an '89er.”

I suspect he’s also right to some degree in his last comment. ‘89 certainly would have played some part in the seemingly endless downward spiral of working conditions the industry has suffered over the last decade – if not immediately for the heroic few who enjoyed (and continue to enjoy) incredibly good wages thanks to it. (You can be sure that few upcoming management trainees completely ignore it the way so many younger pilots seem to do judging by their comments on this site.)

But there are many more factors than 1989 at play here, so could we discuss this with a slightly wider brush? Do you believe it is going to get as bad as DD (and I) think it will? One hundred and twenty years ago, to be an ‘engineer’ on a train – today’s humble train driver - was an extremely well paid and highly respected position. Until around 1970, a merchant seaman officer enjoyed similar high recompense and prestige.

Both are now ‘navy blue singlets and thongs’ positions in the main, in the merchant marine case, done by poorly paid and sometimes dubiously trained ‘professionals’ from Third World countries.

I can’t speak with any real knowledge of what caused the descent of the railways to their present state. However, the merchant marine reached the position it is in today after ‘bright’ MBAs forty years ago saw a way to save money by ‘dumbing down’ the job with Third World (read ‘cheap’) labour, both seamen as well as officers. Cargo shipping today suffers quite horrendous losses at sea, which, because Westerners are seldom involved, gets almost no coverage in the Western media. Now many shipping companies have come to see that the current ‘cheap’ setup has been a horrible mistake (and is anything but cheap), but it’s too late. The rump of professional seamen officers is gone, they were not replaced over the last 30 years, and even if (magically), a large number of young men of the same calibre as used to apply to be merchant marine officers were somehow to come forward to take up jobs in the industry, there’s no one and no system in place to train them.

There were once many young men who had a passion for the sea every bit as deep as the passion many of us hold for Aviation. Today, it’s hard to believe there’ll ever be a shortage of young men and women who’ll want to fly aeroplanes, (but I’d lay London to a brick that someone said that forty years ago about the merchant navy).

So, as uncomfortable as it might be to face the fact, will we see a different kind of recruit into the airline ranks in the not too distant future? The current enormous outlay in time, effort and money to even qualify for the first rung of the ladder (with no guarantee of employment at the end of it) will surely make it less and less attractive to someone planning a career in the industry if they can see no meaningful recompense (or let’s be honest, prestige?) for all that effort except the joy of tooling about the sky in an airliner.

So, is Aviation, or the vast majority of it outside an ever reducing core of major Flag Carriers, destined for the same fate as the merchant marine? (And will the aviation industry, like the shipping companies, discover (too late) that they’ve thrown the baby out with the bath water?)

[S76Heavy]

I'm afraid that it will happen. You can see it now in Europe, the traveller wants very low fares, and the airlines either set up for low cost or lose out. So far, it has not affected intercontinental travel yet, but inevitably it will. The current downturn in the economy gives companies an opportunity to treat their applicants and employees like sh*t and get away with it, thereby setting the trend for the future. Most aviation managers nowadays don't love aviation, don't even like it; for all they care they could be running an elderly home, a hospital or a meat processing plant. They just want to cut cost and maximise bonusses for themselves, then leave before the airline folds..

This will affect the attractiveness of the job, with lower wages and spiralling training costs (as airlines increasingly will demand that they pay their own rating) it will become impossible to attain a proper standard of living in this job. Meanwhile, airliners are becoming more and more sophisticated and managers will find an excuse there to dumb down the profession of pilot as the aircraft and its systems will become more and more capable, and the pilots of the future will be considered captains no more, but caretakers and janitors of a self sufficient system.
So even lower wages, only attractive to people who come from countries with a low standard of living and a lower standard of training (for training is expensive). It has happened to the merchant marine, it is happening in It and it will happen to aviation.

After a few crashes the public will start demanding professionals again, but the damage will have been done. The accountants will have made their money grabbing bosses very happy and they will find another industry to repeat the trick, destroying it in the process.

Capitalism at work for you..:(

[ornithopter]

There are other things to consider as well. One of the ways that people will be put off is that general aviation is in decline, and so the feed from the bottom is dissappearing. GA needs everyone's support to help the whole industry, but I increasingly hear from professionals dispariging remarks about small aircraft and thier pilots. Before you ask, I am an FO with a major airline and not 'just' a PPL, but I realise the importance of the whole spectrum of aircraft and tasks. If we as professionals do not help campaign against the closure of small airfields and the underrepresentation of GA (causing STUPID rules to be inforced), then we will all be victims as people will not get that first ride in an aeroplane which sparks a dream, or be able to cycle up to an airfield and watch the aeroplanes. Remember there are many times as many GA aeroplanes in the UK than commercial aeroplanes - GA is not a minority (and I would guess that is true in Dunnunda as well).

Secondly, we need to work well, there are some crew I continually come across who will not do even the tiniest thing extra - and are paid quite handsomely. If this continues, it just adds to the managements desire to pay us less. And by 'extra' I don't mean always going into discretion, I mean smaller things that just help the world go round.

'Engineers' on trains were paid well as they were 'Engineers' ie people who knew how the train worked and actually did something technical - driving a steam train takes a lot more than driving a modern locomotive. These days the job is not really 'skilled' any more - for instance underground train drivers on at least one of the lines in London do not even start or stop the train any more - they just open and shut the doors, hardly worth the huge salaries they get (yes, it annoys me that they strike every year and get paid more and more, because the level of skill they require and the amount of work they do does not deserve it). You should be paid for what you do - not for history. We as airline pilots still have a very responsible job and 'do' an awful lot, despite what the public think about autopilots, hence a reasonable wage is a reasonable request. Similary, supertanker drivers have to have a good knowledge of the sea, navigation etc and deserve reasonable pay. We have to be careful that we are not too strong as unions, otherwise we will be squashed like the miners and now the firemen, but we do need to ensure we do not sell ourselves short. It is a fine balance sometimes.

[Wiley]

Interesting to compare the (admittedly few) well considered responses on this thread to the almost frenzied response (from both camps) this same post generated on the Dununda & Godzone page only 24 hours earlier. (Take a look there and perhaps take a not too comforting peek at our “Next Generation’s” attitude to his/their career.)

My fear is pretty well exactly what ‘ornithopter’ said – I fear the drying up of the supply of committed young aviators capable of doing the job as the job becomes less and less attractive thanks to the ‘death of a thousand cuts’ it is currently suffering at the hands of ‘bright’(!) MBAs who can’t look further ahead than the next six monthly statement. With the deepening reduction in conditions we are seeing worldwide, we will one day see a situation where the job becomes so unattractive that there won’t be enough youngsters out there with the qualifications and the qualities that are required to fill the job today.

So what will the companies do? They’ll lower - or to use a less emotive word, ‘amend’ - the minimum standard required to fill the seats. I know there’ll be people ready to protest loudly that there’ll never be a pilot shortage, and I accept that they’re probably right. However, it’s not a ‘pilot shortage’ per se that I fear, it’s a shortage of what we in the profession class as a pilot today. I fear that if the companies can’t find pilots, they’ll employ people who will not have the skills or experience to do the job without the automatics, so they’ll re-tailor the job where using the automatics all the time becomes mandatory. (You can almost hear the conversation from here: “We don’t really need pilots anymore. What we need is I.T. graduates to monitor the computers. After all, these pilots, all they do is operate computers, don’t they?”)

From there, it’s a short step to the job becoming a clone of the inner city train drivers of today who do no more than open and close the doors. I hear some saying that you’ll always have to have someone capable of manually flying the aircraft, but will you? If there’s not enough people out there with the skills required, the bean counters will be able to prove that it will be cheaper to suffer delays every ‘n’ thousand flights when the degraded automatics demand a cancellation or a diversion where a costly pilot could have completed the flight. The same argument could be made about it being ‘cheaper’ to suffer a hull loss every ‘n’ years than it would be to train pilots to the degree required to reach the standards we today accept as a minimum.

I can see it going the way of the merchant marine. After twenty years, someone will see they may have made a mistake, (as I understand they have acknowledged in the shipping industry), but by then, it will be too late.

[JJflyer]

I have been reading this thread with a lot of interest. Unfortunately it seems that professional pilots in the western world are going down the same tube as some the professions you have mentioned earlier. All of the following: Merchant Marine, Railroad Industry and even other sectors of transportation industry.

Not only is it increasingly difficult and expensive to become a pilot in, for example in Europe, but as working conditions, salaries, benefits etc are being taken down the pipe as well.
Unions are not doing any good either. Seems that many of the unions give companies with unreasonable demands that have no place in the present economical situation.
Companies are as inflexible. Companies lowering their standards and not just on flight crew requirements... But as a result of an ever-increasing competition and search for lower operating costs, service, training and last but not least maintenance are all suffering. Is safety being compromised?

However it seems that Unions are at the moment about the only way the workforce can get its voice heard. Unfortunately unions represent only a small minority of pilots around the world.
Do we need a worldwide union that any professional pilot can join regardless where or for who she/he works? There must be better ways than the unions now in existence.

There are still quite a few guys out there that are enthusiastic about prospect of flying for living. These numbers are dwindling though.
In Europe the sorry state of General Aviation is not doing any good to promote the industry for new prospective pilots. This applies to the new security rules for no visits to flight deck. Cannot see what security risk a 6 to 10 year old would present.

I for one have to say that I have been thinking about career change... But I love flying.

Cheers

JJ

[ornithopter]

If it is any consolation, I do not think it is confined to aviation. There is not a job I can think of where things are rosy. Everyone in the public sector is having a rough time of it as the government keeps meddling and cash runs out. Teachers are no longer held in esteem, neither are many other worthwhile and important jobs. ATC are now privatised, the trains still do not run properly, Ken has imposed the congestion charge and we have cameras to stop us speeding, driving in bus lanes, breaking red lights etc. I do not know of anyone who does not have something to complain about. It seems to me that most companies are desperately trying to cost cut and those that are in profit moan about other things. The key problem is poor management, which our government shows a lot of, and is also rife in industry. I would imagine things are similar in other countries too.

Certainly some of the people I fly with complain about things being 'terrible' when they clearly are not - ie they have lost the plot a bit, whereas on the other hand, some things have got a lot worse and deserve complaining about. I do not think we are on the verge of wearing thongs just yet, but it is true that we need to stop the rot before it becomes a problem.

[7x7]

Hard to comprehend the lack of reaction to this thread compared with the reaction to it on the D & G page. Is it complacency, or after years of MOL type bosses in Europe, apathy?

It scared the socks off me to read the attitude of Next Generation' on the D& G page. I'm hoping against hope that he's a management stoolie rather than actually a young pilot.

[wiggy]

Hi
I think the lack of reaction is because the posts here are so well considered and they are difficult to better. Yep, the job has/is going down the tubes and the comparisons with the Merchant Marine and Railways are entirely valid.
We have not helped ourselves - too many guys doing their Joe Cool act in the days of Flight Deck visits left many passengers with the impression we do s*d all and we are now reaping the benefits. I've got two young children and I most definitely do _not_want them following in their Father's footsteps.

Wiggy

[Croozin]

It's already started in my outfit - we've just moved to a hotel in one of our major layover ports that's so unsuitable it's a joke. No one can get a decent sleep, it's miles from anywhere, and the rumour mill says that the company was offered exactly the same price by two really good hotels, but chose the rathole they've put us in. You have to ask why, but after reading the first post, I'm beginning to get the idea. It's just bastardry, plain and simple.

[donder10]

Perhaps one of the reasons salaries in aviation will continue to fall is that the industry rarely covers its cost of capital over the economic cycle?Gone are the days of state-run companies like Sabena with lavish salaries and no regard to the bottom line.The result will probably continue to go down the lines of the LCC as they are currently the most successful in the industry.Although the industry is predicted to double by 2020,pilot numbers may incease by only 35% ,say,as pilots are required to work longer hours(eg the likes of the flying harp).