If there is a true shortage then pilots won't need to band together. They will take the jobs they want and the companies will still be short and will start competing on wages/conditions with each other. If there is a true shortage.

In demographics is destiny...

Oldmeadow a relic from a by-gone era and Clifford way past his use by date.
Joyce took Qantas with board acquiescence down a path where any respect was lost. The bad mouthing, implied threats and outright rubbish used to justify the grounding of an airline and locking out of staff is not forgotten. They won the dispute and used the 'loss' they manufactured with a fleet write down to lock staff in to pay freezes (cabin crew excepted) with the usual threats of job losses for pilots, cabin crew and engineers.The ink hadn't even dried and the 'transformation' was announced...

As you sow you will reap.
Maybe all the HR smart alecs can pick up a pilot's licence and take up the slack...Apparently Bruce Buchanan was going to do the same as CEO of JQ, thinking it was a week or two to get qualified.

There is no shortage of pilots or will ever be. Companies need to adapt to the market situation and drop their ridiculous requirements. Supply and demand. When I finished my course in 2009 in Europe, there were no jobs for low houred pilots. The only thing you could find were some pay to fly schemes in Asia with no guarantee of employment. Many fellow pilots just dropped their dream and moved to other endeavours.

The excuse of lack of experience or wanting short-cuts is not valid as have many friends and know several pilots that went straight from flight school to jet and nowadays are captains or becoming captains very soon. As an example, one of my mates started as a 737 F/O at the age of 22 and became a 737 captain with 26 with Ryanair.

Just give a chance.

Best regards.

Rui

Sorry, must disagree with you.

There is a shortage of EXPERIENCED pilots and it looks like it will get worse. As a 30 year veteran in the industry, in my opinion, you cannot teach experience. A low hour pilot will come out of school with a basic understanding of how to fly an aeroplane.

Yes, such a pilot can very quickly move through to Captain, however, I am not sure such a person can be the same as a 30 year captain. There is so much about flying safety, which we learn as we fly. I had the privilege of flying with very experienced pilots and learned so much from them.

Another aspect of this immediate result attitude, is that many pilots are prepared to accept crappy deals to get a quick jump into a shiny jet and a command at 26. Sadly, these crappy deals then become the norm in the industry and these young 'uns may well be stuck in the crappy deal for the rest of their careers, almost 40 years.

May be better to suffer a bit as a youngster to ensure the deals remain good, so one can MAXIMISE one's income over a potential 45 year career.

Think long term guys, it is not easy but it is essential!!

In demographics is destiny...

Each empire rises and falls on demographics: the Romans, Egyptians and even the West!

There is no way to 'buy' experience but of course there will be attempts to water down the levels of experience so the employer doesn't have to 'pay' for it. JQ and numerous subsidies kept absorbing the rising cost pressure of flight crew at Qantas. Oldmeadow was right for a while...However, .pilots are a global strategic asset. Walk into the Qantas administration buildings in the next few weeks and they will be deserted. All the while the operation tinkers along, revenue flows in through the Christmas period. Take the operational staff out (including pilots) and the thing grinds to a halt...

I don't know about others, but if I need a brain surgeon I want the best, most experienced and likely grey flecked hair and experienced specialist I can find. They also usually cost a bit more than the 'Dr. Nick Riviera version'. I would imagine a jet costing $250 million is worth the same consideration as well as the 450 odd souls on board.

The simple economics are thus:

• Markets clear at a price.
• Demand unmet will eventually be satisfied as the price increases.
• Employers will do everything to keep costs down, particularly as it relates to pilots.
• Pilots are a strategic asset.
• the skillset is expensive to attain, not everyone can do it and experienced crew save a lot of operating expense.
• Pilots are commanding a premium as the demographics at play reduce supply.

Is funny to watch the Oldmeadows et al in their respective IR towers design an adversarial scare campaign to tackle it..They already locked the operational staff out once!



Connections tell me Qantas and Jetstar are really short on crew with the problem persisting for many months, ironic really as their corporate IR vision helped reduce supply and turn people away from aviation as the reward was not there for the expenditure.


Many pilots looked elsewhere.

A great commuting contract would see a few more leave Qantas and Virgin...commuting contracts have the potential to expose the Achilles heel of Australian airline recruiting, and as supply continues to contract as pilot work forces age, the tension just builds. Sadly for airline managers who put Flight attendants on the 457 visa list and tag flight foreign crew through Australia, globalisation at least in this instance is a two way street: Whilst they love undermining onshore terms and conditions, they would much prefer the market closed and restricted when it suits them!


Hubris in action! :ok:

Pilot shortage or no pilot shortage, it will have no effect on our terms and conditions in Australia unless we remove our dependence on seniority. The pros are of course horizontal movement of pilots between airlines. And the cons are of course well known.

Only the departure of pilots in large numbers will make a difference, and this will never happen so long as a return means starting again at the bottom.

If we make no changes to the way we operate, Asia Pac could need 2 million pilots in the next 3 years, threads like this would continue to appear, and yet it would make no difference to us here in Oz.

The future is here, Autonomous flight is here. It started with killer drones, then move to supply drops in isolated regions, then everyday use in parcel and pizza delivery by amazon and your local pizza bar into mainstream cargo flights and finally, commercial pilots will be a thing of the past.
Kids from Hungry Jacks will get drone licences and it is all over.
All major aeronautical companies are furiously working day and night on this "problem". Public needs a little convincing but that shouldn't be hard with a few more accidents associated with pilot error. Am I kidding? Sadly I think No.

fender....I think you might be a little ahead of yourself there. Agreed that autonomous flight is already here, hell we can even do auto lands and have done for quiet some time. I think it will still be some time however before we do without pilots for several reasons. Firstly, the comfort factor. Humans still gain confidence in seeing people (pilots) at the front of aircraft (even if they don't see them for the duration of the flight mind you). The comfort factor I suggest has to do with trust or lack of trust of machines at this point of time should something go wrong. Whether the pilots make the correct decision or not is kind of irrelevant.

Secondly, I don't believe we are at that stage yet and may in fact be some time to overcome the logistics, but more so the expense (take NASA out of the equation) required to establish such a system that allows autonomous flight particularly intercontinental.

Fender, do yourself a favour and read some of the literature concerning the accident rate of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles vs. Manned Aircraft in the USAF... unmanned commercial airline aircraft are a long, long way off!

I agree that there is an upcoming shortage of "experienced" pilots, not pilots in general. Not to start a debate or anything, but would I have trusted myself in the right seat of a 737 at 200hrs? No way. The left seat 4 years later? Hell no. Some of the things I did in GA..... we all know what that is like. Mistakes that shouldn't be made with 200+ plus pax down the back. It is all part of the learning process.

Re automation.... I am not so sure that it is a long way off. In the next 10-20 years? No, but in the next 50? Absolutely. Automated cars will be the catalyst. The technology is still in its infancy and nowhere near ready, but once people are comfortable with the idea and they see tangible results on how it will improve safety, the world will change overnight. If I were thinking of getting into the industry right now, it would be in the back of my mind.

Once we have AI and I don't mean programmable AI, I mean real AI. Then we may have automated pilotless jets.

Until a machine can use previous experience and a proactive preemptive style of command verse a reactive one, then it will remain the status quo. There will also need to be someone there to reset systems and takeover when it hits the fan.

Before you get too carried away with considering UAV - "pilot less" aircraft...ask yourself why most train systems around the world still use drivers given that automated trains are in use in various countries. Also shipping could very easily adopt this concept until the marine pilot jumps on board near harbour.

The first step would surely be single pilot high capacity RPT, not likely in the next twenty years.

Another small point, most US military UAVs "drones" still have a pilot somewhere, and a payload specialist. Have a look at the film Eye in the Sky...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_in...ky_(2015_film)

Agree, still many decades away....... as for trains etc? $$$$$$
I know we all want to keep our jobs etc, but we may as well accept that the world is (very) slowly going in that direction. Won't be a problem for this generation, but maybe the next and definitely the one after that. If pollution hasn't killed us off before then :E

Mach, take a look at Google's deep mind project. AI may not be as far off as you think! But then again, what would I know :)

Autonomous vehicle.

Ask the the decapitrated Tesla driver who thought making a YouTube video about his autonomously driving vehicle, while he was hurtling down the motorway, was a great idea.

Right up until he ploughed into a semi trailer.

I agree with you that there is a shortage of experienced pilots it will get worse. The question is how to solve the problem? It would be nice to build experience step by step but what if there is no other option? In Europe, unlike in Australia, there is virtually no GA in order for young pilots to gain experience. Most regional airlines went bust as low cost carriers took their market, creating a tighter bottleneck. Going straight to jets has been the only viable option for some time. Would you rather stay at home with massive debt from your pilots studies instead of taking the RHS in jet full with passengers?

No airline will give you a LHS or a RHS if you are not fit for the job. If 200 hours pilots in jets is dangerous, the number of accidents would be higher. Yet, statistics do not support that claim.

My solution is that if you want experienced pilots, you have to let them fly. Let every choose their own path, as everyone has different objectives.

In terms of benefits, when you have bills to pay, loan repayments and put food on the table, would you choose a crappy pay or no pay at all?

Rui Dias, I think the problem is that the more inexperience you have in the right seat, the more experience you need in the left seat. So there may be plenty of inexperienced guys available to fill the right seat and airlines may be happy to put them there. From the new FO's point of view there is no shortage as there are lots of other low time FOs competing for the same seats, but the same companies are scratching around for experienced captains.

In short, there is no contradiction. On the one hand new pilots still don't find it easy to get work while on the other hand older pilots are getting contacted out of the blue by head hunters. At the same time, the airlines are addressing the experience issue by putting low time pilots in the right seat but it takes time to build that experience and some of them need experience now, not in five years.

Yes, can't say I want Skynet flying me and the family for our annual holiday.

I totally agree. But I don't feel sorry for the airlines as this supposed crisis was created by them. Since I finished my training in 2009, the vast majority of airlines were and are treating young and inexperienced pilots worse than dog ****. That was one of the reasons I came to Australia, as I saw the possibility of building a decent career, despite being not as easier as I thought. But I will keep on going.

Hollywood and Tesla may promote it, but it doesn't mean it will happen soon! Driver less cars advertised by Tesla are great marketing but the acceptance of an automated aircraft is long way off.

I personally would love to see a manned mission to Mars, and although films are made and the chatter incessant, the reality is a little different:

Tom Young, the former director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and former president and chief operating officer of the Martin Marietta Corporation, agreed that NASA does not currently have a clear pathway to Mars. “What we do not have is a plan, strategy, or architecture with sufficient detail that takes us from today to humans on the surface of Mars,” he said.

Space experts warn Congress that NASA?s ?Journey to Mars? is illusory | Ars Technica

Things may be a bit further off than advertised...:ok: