Pilot shortage

[gordonfvckingramsay]

Wow!! I read this article and found a couple of interesting points.


Firstly, he's hiding something, the use of words such as "boo-boo", "a bit on the low side" and "goodies" etc. is classic baby talk used when trying to trivialize a serious situation. "Houston, we have a problem" that understatement of the century is used to convey the "relax, I got this" persona. In this case, I doubt he does, but he wants the world and the shareholders to think he does.


Secondly, he's using non-descript and leading language to make pilots feel like they have something to lose if they don't capitulate. That word "goodies" suggests surprises or hidden treasures which could in fact be a bag of minties. This practice is deeply laced with basic oppressive behaviour.


Thirdly, he paints himself as a great admirer of his pilots and the proceeds to justify his approach to them by quoting the lowest figure he could find to denigrate them publicly. It's a bit like prefacing an insult with "no offence". The reader is being laced with positives before the insult.


I hope this guy is thoroughly investigated and then ousted for being the maniac he appears to be. I also hope this is the beginning of a phase of transparency when it comes to LCCs and their inability to actually produce the goods for the shareholders. I'd be pulling my money out if I was an investor.

[Rated De]

Mr O'Leary said pilots' pay at some of its largest bases "may be a bit on the low side".He added that pay rises will be offered in areas where there are recruitment problems such as London Stansted, Dublin, Frankfurt and Berlin.

I would be watching closely Qlink very closely. Cost of living pressures are not to be taken in isolation. Will Qlink be able to recruit into Sydney?

Secondly, he's using non-descriptive and leading language to make pilots feel like they have something to lose if they don't capitulate. That word "goodies" suggests surprises or hidden treasures which could in fact be a bag of minties. This practice is deeply laced with basic oppressive behaviour.

Of course he is, this adversarial IR model relies on the implied threat of 'taking away goodies'

• EA negotiations drawn out until business cycle deteriorates, they drive through their desired changes in a slowing economy, threatening to 'take away' the goodies or 'back pay' from stalling the negotiation for so long
• If deterioration, usually another big round of job losses, the implied threat of redundancy is quietly spread.

O'Leary is the poster boy for this style of IR. The problem with all their clever models of employee management is they NEVER imagined lack of supply.


It is structural, NOT cyclical. their model is dead and for you in Australia may portend a decline in the role of Oldmeadow and adversarial IR as practiced at JQ and Qantas.

[PoppaJo]

would be watching closely Qlink very closely. Cost of living pressures are not to be taken in isolation. Will Qlink be able to recruit into Sydney?

It’s a real problem. Previous mob I worked for struggled to crew narrow bodies for this very reason at the same port, paxing flight crew from outside bases down to keep the operation running. I have no idea how they expect to crew small props. I know quite a few at one prop operator who house share locally in order to get by.

[Rated De]

At a meeting with shareholders at the airline's AGM in Dublin, Mr O'Leary said the airline does not need the agreement of pilots to take back a week of their leave.

When all you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail

So more of the same will work really well Mr. O'Leary (take leave back because he can-a sure way to engender more co-operation.)
In the Australian context, who recalls Mr. Joyce telling all and sundry that 'his own staff were 'kamikazes'? The play book is the same. They speak with fork tongues.
Southwest Airlines is different,

"It is nothing short of a kamikaze campain," Mr Joyce said, directing his attack at the Australian International Pilots Association, the Australian Licensed Engineers Association and also the Transport Workers Union.

Southwest Airlines:
'Employees are treated more as a source of value, rather than as a cost. Consequently, it has never retrenched any of its workers.'

There are other ways to do things, Southwest has done it for 46 years. To dismantle an adversarial IR/HR framework takes serious commitment, treating people with respect just isn't part of the Ryanair model. Nor is it many airlines that replicate it, including Australia's Qantas group.

[The Bullwinkle]

To dismantle an adversarial IR/HR framework takes serious commitment, treating people with respect just isn't part of the Ryanair model. Nor is it many airlines that replicate it, including Australia's Qantas group.

You can add Virgin to that list!

[gordonfvckingramsay]

i can't think of an aviation company in Oz who doesn't deserve a mention.

[Rated De]

Quite right Gordon,

HR is an infection that has complicated workplace relationships across all industries. Wedging themselves into every conversation they are now a cornerstone of modern 'management practice'. Teaming with IR they make the experience of work, more complicated, more adversarial and less productive.

Candidly, in years to come it will businesses like Southwest that become the benchmark rather than the O'Leary adversarial model. Staff cost you money that is a given, but respected people in any profession deliver far more than the bookkeepers can ever measure on an excel spreadsheet.

In the short term, the bite of staff shortages with long lead times and numerous barriers to entry is amusing to watch from the sidelines.

[ramble on]

Hear Hear,

There is also the unquantifiable positive effect on society as a whole when there are good workplace relationships. When people are respected, treated fairly, paid reasonably and given opportunities to contribute skill, knowledge, experience and value........that stuff is priceless and gets taken home and spread around in society.

Instead we now enjoy a constant race to the bottom driven by greed for short term profit. It is no wonder Australia is on a graveyard spiral.

[Rated De]

There is also the unquantifiable positive effect on society as a whole when there are good workplace relationships. When people are respected, treated fairly, paid reasonably and given opportunities to contribute skill, knowledge, experience and value........that stuff is priceless and gets taken home and spread around in society.

Our societies have been rendered obsolete it is an economy now! What an economy fails to understand at its core, is the connection between people.
Some airlines realise it, some businesses understand that 'my income is your revenue' and so on.

Airlines remain for the foreseeable future 'people businesses' where they are a community. Airline managers as modern MBA graduates can't see the 'community' of an organisation. Instead it is divided into its segments where accountants can drill down and unit costs be assessed (and lowered). Having worked with many of these types I can attest, they look at a shoe factory as they would an airline; people are only ever counted as units of labour cost. Linking it all together where the collective is greater than the sum of the parts is really the limitation of their skill set; a scotoma.

Airlines were built by people with vision, never by accountants, who after all simply count what has already happened and project the future from the past. It is an important discipline of course, but in the modern corporation holds in my opinion, way too much power. Accounting is by definition assessing a businesses' future whilst driving forwards, focused on the rear vision mirror (apologies to Paul Keating) Tied together with HR/IR and you begin to comprehend the problem and task.

Alan Joyce given his humble Irish background, had a real opportunity to take Qantas in a different direction; away from conflict and adversarial relations with its staff. Candidly with Leigh Clifford even if he wanted to it would have been a difficult task.

It will be left to someone who remembers their history and values people that will turn it around. Part of that herculean task is dismantling well entrenched interest in the conflict model. That is a task of a big man. Joyce has neither the intent nor appetite, like his mentor at Ryanair, Joyce loves jabs at pilots

Trust Mr O’Leary to add fuel to that inferno with his accusation that some pilots were being “precious about themselves” and “full of their own self-importance”. Not to mention jabs at the amount of hours they have to work.

In 2011 as it suited his (Joyce's) narrative, pilots wanted first class travel, massages and were kamikazes.

Can O'Leary or Joyce change?
Perhaps best summed up by the Independent:

Time for the mutinous pilots to book the gains they’ve made and pipe down?
If I were in their shoes I would at this point ask myself whether leopards ever really change their spots.

Though the pursuit of this adversarial strategy handed management gains over their pilots for decades, this is now changing. As O'Leary continually increases the flight cancellation count and writes confessional letters of apology to the pilots at Ryanair, they have, through their own IR/HR structure killed off the unlimited supply of pilots their model necessitated.

That is amusing to watch and Australian pilots ought remember that unless Australia is somehow divinely different it will get there too! The pilots at Cobham ought remember that revenue for an airline approaches zero if no flights get to destination, and also remember that whilst pilots are a very important part of an airline, there are other operational people that help it all come together....

[Chocks Away]

Airlines were built by people with vision, never by accountants, who after all simply count what has already happened and project the future from the past.

Snap! Exactly and I've had first hand experience of this twice, where Accountants have been let out of their back rooms to take up key managerial roles. One airline had a slow death after he took over, as his "accountant magic" / smoke and mirrors were utilised in the effort to stay afloat, while the other struggled until they shunted him back into the back office to continue "doing the books" and not things he had no clue about.
With this pilot shortage, as you look around the many dozens of airlines promising you a nirvana, do your research on who the head person is and if they're Accountant ... run.

[CurtainTwitcher]

Cross posted from the ryanair thread, post #770 on why O'Leary believes there won't ever be a shortage (as of 2016).

[bazza stub]

W@nker...!

[IsDon]

Well.

I guess he has egg in his face now doesn’t he.

So where are those hundreds of pilots willing to pay Ryanair to fly for them now?

Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

https://youtu.be/NP0mQeLWCCo

[Rated De]

The task for Australian pilots is to recognise that this is a structural (somewhat self fulfilling) shortage.

As Curtain Twitcher kindly posted, the Achilles heel of the model is the 'unlimited supply'.

Every adversarial structure erected by the corporate sphere (in aviation's case) the Ian Oldmeadow (Qantas) model borrows heavily on this. Jetstar ringfenced Qantas mainline and as Peter Gregg (former CFO) testified in a parliamentary joint hearing that JQ will add 'competitive wage tension' Perhaps the 2011 grounding of Qantas reinforces the 1989 meme, but against falling supply, even O'Leary is on bended knee. Eventually in a market with global supply, Australia will catch up.

Having read the Qantas thread on recruitment, I am positive the HR capture has occurred.

The shortage throughout GA is likely to infect firstly the regional airlines, my hunch is that Qlink, Rex and Cobham will struggle to find recruits. As Horizon Airlines (a Q400) operator subsidiary of Alaskan Airlines found in their summer 2017..

But American companies don't have a shortage of people. They have a shortage of wages, benefits, and training. Companies could fix that problem, but they haven't.
Take Horizon Air, a regional airline that services the Pacific Northwest, which the Seattle Times reports is "cutting its flight schedule this summer because of a severe shortage of pilots for its Q400 turboprop planes.

Whilst there will always be pilots too scared to read up on what has occurred elsewhere and will comfort themselves with the mantra Straya is different, it is not.

• Ask a flying school how many commercial students are trained now versus 15 years ago?
• Ask a GA charter operator how many applicants hang around a season or two in the Kimberly or Darwin, sweeping hangers and washing planes
• Ask CASA how many Commercial licences are granted in Australia year on year. Compare FY17 to FY00.

The shortage is not a cyclical one, it has been building since the baby boomers were born. It has big ramifications for asset prices and indeed labour unit cost. Given the barriers to entry an aviation career presents due time ,commitment and expense is it any wonder that the negative feedback loop of constant downward pressure on terms and conditions, poor work life balance sees a lack of supply?


O'Leary enjoyed the narrative, Qantas' Joyce and Clifford are well known to detest their pilots too. Like O'Leary they enjoy the snide remarks, but the reality is that pilots are a valuable component of a dynamic people business.


De commissioning an adversarial model is like removing asbestos; something that takes patience, commitment and time. Ryanair will face huge resistence if they attempt to do so. Their pilots are well aware of it.



Australian airlines have time to change but will not do a thing until schedule pressure requires them to act. Do not think for a moment they will ever telegraph that the schedules are a problem. I would watch the QLink schedule for the Southern Summer

[framer]

Ask CASA how many Commercial licences are granted in Australia year on year. Compare FY17 to FY00.

I would be interested to know the answer if anyone can help. I have spent a few minutes searching the web and found a graph showing that in 2000 there were just over 6000 ATPLs in Australia and in 2005 there were 6500 ATPL's in Australia but that is all I can find.
Can anyone direct me to better information?
Cheers

[framer]

I found this in a news article relating to New Zealand numbers

Figures from the Civil Aviation Authority showed the number of commercial and air transport pilots it approved between 2009 and 2016 had fallen from 709 to 386.

Halving the number of licenses issued while the number of airline sectors being flown increases at about 8% per annum and the retiring pilot numbers increase has got to bite at some stage I guess.

[Duck Pilot]

Compare the annual statistics for Flight Crew Licences in CASA's annual reports, CASA website probably has the past reports published for those interested.

Whatever the figures state with regards to CPL and ATPL issues, be aware that some of the initial licence issues would have been foreign students.

[PoppaJo]

My local Aeroclub produced 1 CPL last year and 3 PPLs. The figure when I joined it in 2007 was 10 and 20. They made 2 instructors redundant and sold a couple of aircraft last year to avoid going bankrupt.

Would I be correct in saying it will be easier getting jobs as a CPL going forward as next to nobody is learning to fly?

[mikewil]

Originally Posted by PoppaJo

My local Aeroclub produced 1 CPL last year and 3 PPLs. The figure when I joined it in 2007 was 10 and 20. They made 2 instructors redundant and sold a couple of aircraft last year to avoid going bankrupt.

Would I be correct in saying it will be easier getting jobs as a CPL going forward as next to nobody is learning to fly?

Nope, just most students are choosing the sausage factory flying schools with shiny G1000 equipped DA40s who are charged $100K for their training (deferred with fee help) rather than the solid grounding you get from a flying school/aero club with C172s & C182s that will cost you only $60K that you need to pay as you go.

Sad state of affairs....

[DeltaT]

If indeed there is shortage, then what does an airline achieve by having high minimum experience hours for entry, psychometric testing, sim ride, and a interview where they like to play mind games, and thats just the airlines that squeeze it into 1 day, never mind the 2 days worth experience.