How about the Airlines invest in their product?
What if an Airline spent money in 2017 to ensure experience in 2020?
If that Airline penned an MOU with the local flying school to take ten CPL graduate per annum , pay them the minimum wage, roster them on the computer meanies HF course and one flight per week in the jump seat while they studied their aviation degree or what ever they chose to study and actually nursed them through from young 18 year old CPL to keen 23 year old first officer candidate . Pay Experienced Captains to sit down with them once a month and mentor them through a program .actually put money into creating a good product. What about that?

I would never suggest that Unmanned commercial flights are upon us. But with technology at exponential growth it could well be closer than we think. Depends on your interpretation of close. Mine is within the ? generation.
In the short term, I think some airlines WILL come to the party and start to reduce cost to candidate to get them in the right seat.

Im in my "twilight years", maybe twilight months, and I have never had to pay for an endorsement, how times have changed. I feel privileged I was born a 50s wild child even my kids are envious. THAT'S what worries me more. Good luck to all who go down the aviation path.

I believe Aer Lingus does, and I would consider BA to effectively fund its FPP with the full cost of the course being paid back over seven years as a form of quasi-bonding. Very unlikely for someone to leave a legacy carrier like BA within 7 years anyway.

Minus the wage bit, isn't that similar to what Qlink and UNSW are doing? What you've described is essentially a sponsored cadetship

Past performance a predictor of future performance
 

Have a look at what has changed in the last 100 years in aviation; the last 20 years in computing; the last 10 years in communications.

Telsa's autopilot is commercially available now. Very sadly killed a guy, and people are still buying them faster than they can be produced!

The only reason for drivers remaining on trains is industrial (E.g. Sydney Metro. They're still getting rid of conductors).

UAVs and the technology have been around since 1959 progressing to new viable methods year by year.

First to go will be the Second Officer/Cruise Pilot followed by the F/O.

Long Haul will initially have 2 Captains eventually one purely to sit in the seat for T/O, approach & landing (and to feed the dog)

Where will Captains of the future get 3, 4 or 5,000hours of experience?

Pilots have clearly demonstrated they no longer have the industrial will, unity or care to stand up for their future; sadly airline operators/management clearly understand this.

The crunch is already hitting majorly.

One Company cancelling and combining a huge number of flights already - with hardly any upgradeable FOs. The ones who are upgradeable and who pass the 3-6 month upgrade are resigning within weeks of achieving command anyway. Plus losing training pilots is destroying the upgrade capacity.

I cant wait for AI to take over. Douglas Adams even predicting it years ago...

<dissolve> ``Yes,'' said the voice again, ``there has been a delay. Passengers are to be kept temporarily in suspended animation, for their comfort and convenience. Coffee and biscuits are being served every year, after which passengers are returned to suspended animation for their continued comfort and convenience. Departure will take place when the flight stores are complete. We apologize for the delay.''

Zaphod moved away from the door, on which the pounding had now ceased. He approached the flight console.

``Delay?'' he cried, ``Have you seen the world outside this ship? It's a wasteland, a desert. Civilization's been and gone, man. There are no lemon-soaked paper napkins on the way from anywhere!''

``The statistical likelihood,'' continued the autopilot primly, ``is that other civilizations will arise. There will one day be lemon-soaked paper napkins. Till then there will be a short delay. Please return to your seat.''


Dont get me started on the ability of AI to cope with situations out of left-field..

However Captain; omitted from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is

Can we say who? Or are we to guess?

Fallingleaf
A little birdy mentioned that the once proud now mangled marsupial will have interesting times Q1 next year...
Apparently the Orange child is having similar issues..

Get all the HR back from leave, train them to fly, after all it is simple just ask them! They may actually generate a bit of revenue for a change instead of just spending it..:E

Here we go with the Tesla autopilot argument again. If you are going to go down that path, dyor at least please :rolleyes:
Autopilot is nowhere near a finished product, the owners manual CLEARLY states that you must have your hands on the wheel at all times. What more do you want? Is it poorly named? Hell yes. We all know how many people have been killed while using Autopilot. How many have been saved? The media doesn't report that.

Now for the issue of space travel..... NASA is extremely underfunded and it is amazing what they accomplish with such limited resources. Imagine if they had the funding of the US military for example. Space X has autonomously landed a first stage rocked on a floating barge. That has never been done before, and again on limited resources. Before you go around claiming we will never make it to Mars, ask yourself why do you think that is? The capability, the motivation, the technology (to a certain extent) is all there, the only thing that is missing is FUNDING. With unlimited funding I think you would be amazed at what could be done. We already have an electric car that can travel over 500km, too bad it costs well north of 100k.

AI is going to happen whether you like it or not. Yes, a lot of high profile intelligent people are vocally against it, but a lot of companies are aggressively researching the technology as we speak. No one knows how it is going to impact society, but I think we have been watching too many movies.

Anyway, I am getting seriously off topic now, so I am just going to skip ahead and say "past performance is not an indicator of future results" (someone already said that above). :)

A little bird whispered to me they need 200 pilots. Good luck getting those with the parent short as well as the feeder turbo-prop operations.

Well that'll be why they restarted the cadet program then!

They'll come from Virgin.

And the queue is a mile long.......

Maybe but that just kicks the can further down the track. Who will crew Virgin flights? Or if they fail, will crew the flights of the operator that tries to fill the gap?

There is certainly no shortage of suitable applicants for QF and JQ positions to fill the numbers required many times over.

As for a pilot shortage more generally...experienced, type-specific Captains in Asia and the ME perhaps...but not in Australia.

I posted the following under the Virgin Recruitment Thread but it belongs here as well:

There are (better contracts), but generally not in places considered by many Australians as desirable to live long-term, or commuting to work under contracts that do not have the backstop of employee-challengeable industrial relations laws championed by unions and arbitrated by a law-abiding umpire. So there is significant career risk in leaving for these jurisdictions...especially when you are young(ish) and have more than 5 years left before retirement.

Mostly these 'better and better' contracts are in the Middle East or Asia or working under the terms of a potentially rubbery contract. Often they are in an environment where you are tolerated and made to feel like a foreigner. Most pilots that I know place significant importance on having a professionally enjoyable atmosphere on the flight deck...especially on long haul.

These are major reasons why the ranks of Australian carriers have not been decimated by the growth in jet jobs in the Middle East and Asia.

I have friends and know of many pilots in these regions who desperately want to come home but feel trapped by the money they are earning and the fact that even if they are lucky enough to be successful then that position will be entry-level and of course at the bottom of the seniority list.

Most Australian pilots still place a VERY high value on living and working at home, under Australian IR laws with transparent seniority lists and the participation of unions in the workplace.

Now, if suddenly these jobs and commuting contracts were available with Western European or North American carriers? Well then I think the trickle of pilots leaving our shores could turn into a flood and our terms and conditions here would likely be driven up.

Until then, the 'pilot shortage' we often hear about doesn't apply so much to such a sought after location as Australia.

PG

If you change operations then of course you go to the bottom of the seniority list..and start in something other than command..what do you expect!? Just because you've got a few silver hairs, a bunch of hours, had commands flying rubber dogsh-- out of Sri Lanka etc etc that means you should get ahead of everyone else?? Just slot into the program and enjoy letting someone else take responsibility for a while.

Hey Matty while I agree what you're saying regarding seniority I think you might be missing the the point.

If they're talking about inexperienced FOs so inexperienced that they can't upgrade, then the guy who's been flying the rubber dog Sh1t out of Asia might be better in the left seat.

Slotting in and enjoying the program in the right seat, might mean an experienced captain baby sitting someone in the left seat who clearly shouldn't be there.

This sounds like a committee to me, not a great feeling to send your wife and kids off flying with!

You can't buy experience and if management with nice suits, big egos and political agendas can't understand this, then the holes in Swiss cheese will line up pretty quickly.

Good luck and I hope you're around long enough to grow a few grey hairs.