Most any Challenger job in Australia wont just be turn up with your nav bag and fly then go home. If its like most it may well involve lots of other leveraged tasks that many are willing to do to join the race to the bottom in order to get a foot in the door....a month or three away from family, manage the hangar, do ops, office duty, clean the aircraft/hangar/bosses car....

Doesn't look good for the future of the industry

That video should be re-titled "Why I Quit Commuting".

He worked for a Regional Airline...PSA, I think. There's no doubt that a job with one of the US commuter carriers has more than enough challenges to leading a balanced life. However, adding a stressful and expensive (hotels) commute is very counterproductive. Living a short driving/train distance from your base airport is the way to negate many of the stressors he mentions.

PG

Get your sh1t together
 

on 38bucks an hour (blocktime) after flying for 7 years?

Correct...commuting to a regional job is a very tough way to do it. I hope his new plans work out for him. He could undoubtedly go back to the regional world in the future. He's a very young guy.

Perhaps the reality more pertinent is that the salary on offer means that living a reasonable distance from base is simply not financially possible.
Indeed the NTSB report referred to fatigue and the effect of commuting, which itself may be a result of the 'salary' on offer rather than a simple choice.
The UK CAA is currently conducting a review of commuting and sources suggest that there is more to the reasons a pilot 'commutes' a distance by road or air other than personal choice: cost of accommodation and the salary on offer being two.


As Qantas link are finding in Sydney, a median wage package does not attract sufficient applicants, thus the 'need' for skilled shortage visas, rather than providing a livable salary in a very expensive city.

Interesting that the title of the thread is "Pilot Shortage" yet the minute a young commuting pilot walks away people come out of the woodwork to point the finger at him. I say the conditions aren't up to scratch, so an intelligent young man instead of bleating for 20 years in the cockpit is simply handing his stuff back and going back to GA. I'm actually seeing this on our side of the world at the moment. People in senior positions demoting themselves or young smart guys leaving the career. If you have level headed good operators demoting themselves, taking a massive paycut or looking to leave the industry I think you might have a problem. (Canary coal mine).

I'm not a commuter but have commuted for short periods so understand his perspective. The attitude of some non commuters toward commuters, particularly some of the managers is poor to say the least. A friend of mine commuted as his dad had a serious illness another because his child needed specialist support in a particular city. You never know why you might have to commute you know. And those that do it for career, I say good on them, good luck and hope to see you in the jumpseat sometime soon.

None of the items listed by the young man were deal breakers but the accumulation of them made it in the end not worth it. Please now blast me, I enjoy it,

I don't blame him for walking away but there is no semblance of an airline position in his job description. It's GA like. Actually, its first job GA like.

Awaking at 3am for a commute and flying beyond midnight on a multi-sector day is a safety issue, requiring intervention and deterrence. Whatever your views are on commuting, its often thrown back in the face of pilot organizsations pressing fatigue issues and rostering. This pilot's commuting seems extreme. Far more sensible commuting scenarios are used as evidence, by management, of pilot roster stamina. Commuting is a proven double edged sword.

Recent advances in the "Low Cost Ethos" business model permeate virtually every aspect of the industry. As an example, one operator now has virtually mandated commuting or alternately moving cities in order to gain promotion or even change aircraft type within rank. The irony is, it's training costs are out of control BECAUSE everyone is required to attend one of the two original main bases to actually do the training. All because they tried to and save hotel costs for overnights. A clusterf#ck of epic proportions. The law of unintended consequences punishes both the operator and crew, a negative sum game.

This operator has, in effect seven bases for 80 domestic aircraft. It also interleaves two other non interchangable types into the "Group" domestic operation, and looks like introducing a third! No economies of scale, no cross crewing, and highly inefficient unable to utilise pilots annual stick hour quota's in these peripheral operations.

It has made the same error for it's international fleet with a huge number of permutations for promotion and bases upgrade paths . As a consequence, there is going to be a revolving door of training expenses will only continue, and people will be commuting some place they don't want to be.

The record personally relayed to me is 5 bases in about 7 years, and a lot of unhappiness.