Canadian MPL
Thread Starter
Join Date: Apr 2013
Location: At home
Age: 64
Posts: 140
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
To all those on this thread. Please don't shoot me I am only the messenger.
I absolutely have a dog in this fight as I am a independent pilot union officer, and I have a background in training both at the primary and airline level. The acceptable standard of the MPL as it exists in other parts of the world is simply unacceptable to me and to those who have any experience in actual airline operations.
However, it is naive to believe that simply opposing a possible legislative action will have any effect. In the aviation world, rule making is a complex process and it uses hearings, boards and ARC's (Aviation Rule Making Committees). you have to ensue you are on the inside making the sausage or the opposing side will simply run you over. The process is very political.
The fight is being stated by the Regional Airline Association is that small communities in the US will lose air service because big bad airline pilot unions advocated for the insane and ridiculous position that a pilot engaged in Airline Service to the public should have some legitimate level of training experience and skill.
The Regional Jet airline industry, at least in the US, is a monster created by the airlines themselves. Potential candidates now see how the industry works and they see the amount of work study and money required to become an airline pilot. If they are lucky enough to get that coveted regional airline job they will have trouble paying to keep a roof over their heads. They will likely have to commute to work and live in a crash-pad with 15 to 20 others. They will sleep on bunk-beds, endure terrible schedules, be on continuous call to the limits of the regulations, and still not make enough money to live on.
They will however be able to operate a shiny jet....
If they are lucky after a while they might be able to get a job at a real airline and finally make a living. However if you look at the last 13 years, counting from Sept. 11, 2001, you see a terrible picture. Until just recently United and American had pilots on furlough. It all has to work so that a new guy is in the right place at the right time. American Eagle ALPA, (now Envoy) is warning its members that there could be a reduction in their contractual flying by up to 47%. Despite this the membership is holding strong on not giving the new American Management contractual reductions.
The industry has not been in this situation in my memory and that goes back for 40 years of flying and 29 years of airline service. The industry wants cheap pilots and my management, whom I have had first hand knowledge of, believe that they are smarter than anyone they have met. That's why they are where they are and the pilots are where they are. They also believe that there has never been a pilot shortage and if there is such a stupid thing as that they will just get the licensing rules changed.
If they can get enough really low time pilots to fly those RJ's all will be well and they will not have to pay anyone any more money. In reality they have built a business model based on an airplane that is not efficient. They did it because they could beat the pilots scope clauses and reduce large aircraft flying to smaller cities. There was a non efficient reason to deploy RJ's. It was to beat pilot contracts.
It was known at the start that the 50 seat RJ is not a fuel efficient beast. At the time the CRJ was certified oil was about $20 per barrel. It is now over $100. Airlines must now employ larger and larger RJ's to make them efficient enough.
Airlines cannot reduce pilot pay at the regional level any more because they cannot attract the talent considering the wages they are offering. The only thing they can do now is attempt to change the rules to increase the number of new pilots available who will consider the job.
The current pilot shortage, if in fact there is one, is self induced and it was done by the major airlines themselves. Now that they have shot themselves in the foot it's time to change the rules.
I absolutely have a dog in this fight as I am a independent pilot union officer, and I have a background in training both at the primary and airline level. The acceptable standard of the MPL as it exists in other parts of the world is simply unacceptable to me and to those who have any experience in actual airline operations.
However, it is naive to believe that simply opposing a possible legislative action will have any effect. In the aviation world, rule making is a complex process and it uses hearings, boards and ARC's (Aviation Rule Making Committees). you have to ensue you are on the inside making the sausage or the opposing side will simply run you over. The process is very political.
The fight is being stated by the Regional Airline Association is that small communities in the US will lose air service because big bad airline pilot unions advocated for the insane and ridiculous position that a pilot engaged in Airline Service to the public should have some legitimate level of training experience and skill.
The Regional Jet airline industry, at least in the US, is a monster created by the airlines themselves. Potential candidates now see how the industry works and they see the amount of work study and money required to become an airline pilot. If they are lucky enough to get that coveted regional airline job they will have trouble paying to keep a roof over their heads. They will likely have to commute to work and live in a crash-pad with 15 to 20 others. They will sleep on bunk-beds, endure terrible schedules, be on continuous call to the limits of the regulations, and still not make enough money to live on.
They will however be able to operate a shiny jet....
If they are lucky after a while they might be able to get a job at a real airline and finally make a living. However if you look at the last 13 years, counting from Sept. 11, 2001, you see a terrible picture. Until just recently United and American had pilots on furlough. It all has to work so that a new guy is in the right place at the right time. American Eagle ALPA, (now Envoy) is warning its members that there could be a reduction in their contractual flying by up to 47%. Despite this the membership is holding strong on not giving the new American Management contractual reductions.
The industry has not been in this situation in my memory and that goes back for 40 years of flying and 29 years of airline service. The industry wants cheap pilots and my management, whom I have had first hand knowledge of, believe that they are smarter than anyone they have met. That's why they are where they are and the pilots are where they are. They also believe that there has never been a pilot shortage and if there is such a stupid thing as that they will just get the licensing rules changed.
If they can get enough really low time pilots to fly those RJ's all will be well and they will not have to pay anyone any more money. In reality they have built a business model based on an airplane that is not efficient. They did it because they could beat the pilots scope clauses and reduce large aircraft flying to smaller cities. There was a non efficient reason to deploy RJ's. It was to beat pilot contracts.
It was known at the start that the 50 seat RJ is not a fuel efficient beast. At the time the CRJ was certified oil was about $20 per barrel. It is now over $100. Airlines must now employ larger and larger RJ's to make them efficient enough.
Airlines cannot reduce pilot pay at the regional level any more because they cannot attract the talent considering the wages they are offering. The only thing they can do now is attempt to change the rules to increase the number of new pilots available who will consider the job.
The current pilot shortage, if in fact there is one, is self induced and it was done by the major airlines themselves. Now that they have shot themselves in the foot it's time to change the rules.
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Canada
Posts: 1,306
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Zaphod, the last genuine pilot shortage was in the skies over Southern England in September 1940! I think the point you are making is best illustrated at a major city in Canada, when the pilots go to work they do so on a buss, as living in Toronto on the salary paid by the airline there is no way most can afford a car. Whilst on the bus they sit behind a driver who makes about three to four times more money than they do,{depending on years of service} a driver gets full benefits, paid vacation and sick leave , is paid if his shift is cancelled, has two pedals {stop and go and one route to learn, } none of which the pilots get, but he/she is not overpaid by any measure given the cost of living in Toronto. My advice to kids wanting to fly is get a good job or trade and buy your own aircraft and have fun, but if you really must fly go with a survey company/medevac/corporate, anything but a regional! If these kids want to re-build pay and working conditions the all must "stop the props" or things will not get any better!
Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: CY??
Posts: 111
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Even for those youngsters with visions of shiny jets in their eyes the staggering costs, and the added little kicker of the inability of those holding student loan debt to re-finance or discharge that debt in Chapter 11, and this is another story entirely, is a major obstacle. Why would any one take on that burden for a job that will not pay enough to pay off the loan?
I'm not sure that those kids with shiny jet syndrome really look into the serious (potential)financial downside of flying for a career. 3 years ago, I volunteered at a careers day at the club where I learned how to fly. Most of the time my serious advice to 'make sure that you have a plan B' was received with glazed eyes, and a 'that's for those other losers who couldn't hack it as a pilot' shrug. People just don't see (or, more likely, don't want to see) the $20k jobs starting out - they see the (apocryphal? legendary?) 10 days a month, $250k, end-of-career jobs that airline flying is glamourized as being.
Also, I don't think that they realize the serious limitations that an MPL licence will place on their career - all they see is that shiny BomEmbBoBus standing at the gate...
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Canada
Posts: 1,306
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Well said North Shore, but as you state its hard to get the facts into the skull's of most of the kids, by the time they do finally "get it" its too late for many to make the move to another job, that's when they find out that the fancy piece of paper given to them by a college beginning with an" S "isn't worth the ink in the print, most having no other qualifications in other fields of endeavour. As for the "shiny jet syndrome", I no longer fly a big silver tube, instead a small twin with ten seats, but have more fun, and make FAR more money than most on the heavy metal, but its hard to convince the kids at the "puppy farms" that this is the way it is.
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Wherever I go, there I am
Age: 43
Posts: 806
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
To be fair to the new pilots doing their licenses right now, they listen to a flight instructor every day who is telling them to keep flying because it's worth it. They hear how, sure the money sucks for the first two years, but it gets better every year after. This, typically, from a slightly older pilot who became an instructor within the past two years. Then come in some real old guys who tell them to be careful of the big bad wolf. At such impressionable ages as graduates are, who do you think they're going to listen to? To them the Air Canada pilot is the gold standard and they're not going to listen to anyone who does not meet or no longer meets that standard. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule, but I think we all know the type we are referring.
What needs to happen, and I've said this before, is a change in the way we train pilots. We need to have older and very experienced pilots going back to do the training. That way they get instruction in not only how to fly, but how to be a professional pilot. Unfortunately, ab initio training (PPL up to CPL & ME-IFR) is very much seen akin to teaching kids to drive. If we want to keep having 250 hour pilots teach ab initio, then do it under the guidance of a CFI who has a minimum of 5 years operational flying at the commuter or airline level. There must be enough of us willing to go back and do that...for the right price of course.
What needs to happen, and I've said this before, is a change in the way we train pilots. We need to have older and very experienced pilots going back to do the training. That way they get instruction in not only how to fly, but how to be a professional pilot. Unfortunately, ab initio training (PPL up to CPL & ME-IFR) is very much seen akin to teaching kids to drive. If we want to keep having 250 hour pilots teach ab initio, then do it under the guidance of a CFI who has a minimum of 5 years operational flying at the commuter or airline level. There must be enough of us willing to go back and do that...for the right price of course.
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Wherever I go, there I am
Age: 43
Posts: 806
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Assuming 500 hours per year, that's $47,875 before taxes...too low for what I was thinking...around $60k to $70k for the right person.
The pilot would have to understand that the flight school cannot afford to pay a 20-year seniority level pay up in the six-figure range. The flight school, however, would need to understand that having experience requires a certain level of income...not to mention that it may need to cover a couple older kids and/or ex-wives.
This, of course, would be limiting to many smaller companies, but there should be no reason why a school with over 15 airplanes could not afford to pay that for a CFI...or am I away with my dreams and out of touch with the ab initio training industry already?
The pilot would have to understand that the flight school cannot afford to pay a 20-year seniority level pay up in the six-figure range. The flight school, however, would need to understand that having experience requires a certain level of income...not to mention that it may need to cover a couple older kids and/or ex-wives.
This, of course, would be limiting to many smaller companies, but there should be no reason why a school with over 15 airplanes could not afford to pay that for a CFI...or am I away with my dreams and out of touch with the ab initio training industry already?
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Vancouver Island
Posts: 2,517
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
If Canada were to copy the way flight training is done in the USA where there is no need for all the B.S. requirements for getting and maintaining a FTU it would be possible for older more experienced pilots to make a career of teaching flying.
Conversely if I were to renew my instructors rating it would take months of regurgitating the paint by numbers method that TC requires to be a flight instructor not to mention several thousand dollars for the recurrent training required.
Then once I had my flight instructors rating back I would be at the level of a 250 hour new flight instructor earning potential wise.....and knowledge wise according to TC.
.....now lets see......months of training and thousands of dollars spent......A FTU may pay me two thousand a month before taxes.....
Why don't I jump at that?
Conversely if I were to renew my instructors rating it would take months of regurgitating the paint by numbers method that TC requires to be a flight instructor not to mention several thousand dollars for the recurrent training required.
Then once I had my flight instructors rating back I would be at the level of a 250 hour new flight instructor earning potential wise.....and knowledge wise according to TC.
.....now lets see......months of training and thousands of dollars spent......A FTU may pay me two thousand a month before taxes.....
Why don't I jump at that?
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Kenora
Posts: 63
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I don't have an instructor rating, but I'd be willing to bet I could take the man off the street and make him/her as good a pilot as an FTU.
The hoops are there to justify somebody's employment.
WD
The hoops are there to justify somebody's employment.
WD
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Canada
Posts: 1,306
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Having owned and operated a few FTUs I can only agree with those fed up with the TC "crap", in the USA they have none of this endless nonsense but they have a lower accident rate. So many of my group tried to "put something back" but became utterly fed up with the system. I use our corporate twin to provide meaningful experience outside of the FTU system, but unfortunately can only help one kid at a time .
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Wherever I go, there I am
Age: 43
Posts: 806
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Well, you are right there Chuck. To think that in 30 some-odd years I'll have to go back to being a Group 4 Instructor because my instructor rating lapsed some 40 years prior is crazy. Why we don't have a conversion allowing experienced pilots, especially those who have been training at the airline level for umpteen years, is crazy. Granted, teaching an airline pilot in a simulator is slightly different than teaching a 0-hour pilot, but that's why we call them "transferable skills."
I'll open the can and ask whether we should maybe have a TRI/TRE system like our friends across the pond. At the same time build in a conversion process that allows a TRI with y-number of years experience to also hold a flight instructor rating - maybe a 2:1 process - for every 2 years as a TRI you move up a level of instructor rating. Just thinking as I type...no deep thought here.
I'll open the can and ask whether we should maybe have a TRI/TRE system like our friends across the pond. At the same time build in a conversion process that allows a TRI with y-number of years experience to also hold a flight instructor rating - maybe a 2:1 process - for every 2 years as a TRI you move up a level of instructor rating. Just thinking as I type...no deep thought here.
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Vancouver Island
Posts: 2,517
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Well +TSRA you bring up an interesting subject.
So lets look at it using logic.
We will assume that in your early years of flying had held a flight instructors rating and let it lapse for thirty or so years.
However as your career progressed you had enough experience and teaching skills to have spent years as a TRI/TRE.
Then in your retirement years you decide to go back to ab-initio flight training do you think that you may still remember the basics of flying or have you completely forgotten the basics?
As I have previously related here on Pprune according to Transport Canada the fact that I had acquired decades of flying experience outside of ab-initio flight training it was going to be more difficult for me to renew a flight instructors rating than a 200 hour new commercial pilot.....because I now have to many preconceived ideas about how to fly which I would have to unlearn.
See their logic?????
So lets look at it using logic.
We will assume that in your early years of flying had held a flight instructors rating and let it lapse for thirty or so years.
However as your career progressed you had enough experience and teaching skills to have spent years as a TRI/TRE.
Then in your retirement years you decide to go back to ab-initio flight training do you think that you may still remember the basics of flying or have you completely forgotten the basics?
As I have previously related here on Pprune according to Transport Canada the fact that I had acquired decades of flying experience outside of ab-initio flight training it was going to be more difficult for me to renew a flight instructors rating than a 200 hour new commercial pilot.....because I now have to many preconceived ideas about how to fly which I would have to unlearn.
See their logic?????
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Wherever I go, there I am
Age: 43
Posts: 806
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I see their point only as far as the question of whether you would remember the patter for the exercises and whether you can remember how to draw out the lift curve and relate it to the drag curves to come up with the L/D curve. That's where I see it ending. Any good teacher knows they need to know the material, so would at least go back and read some literature before hopping into an airplane or classroom.
Besides, a pilot who has spent years trying to figure out how best to teach at the airline level - which as you probably well know means having to often reach back into the old basics bag - and get through to certain students means we have to keep up with the basics anyways. Lord knows the last ground school I taught I had to go right back to basic prop theory and build from there...the student had been taught completely wrong on day one! If that scenario, which happens on a daily basis, does not prove airline instructors meet the minimum requirement, well...I'm not sure what would.
I digress. That's why I was wondering before if maybe a TRE/TRI format could help those pilots to come back to the flight schools and clubs. At the moment with no certification process there is nothing for Transport to gauge an instructor pilot to a minimum standard. But throw a certification at our airline instructors, make them prove at certain intervals that they remember the basics (kind of like how an ACP has to do their renewals) and there would be ongoing proof that the guy had the theory and experience to become a flight instructor again.
Not saying that this needs to be the only result from a TRE/TRI format, but certainly a benefit thereof.
Besides, a pilot who has spent years trying to figure out how best to teach at the airline level - which as you probably well know means having to often reach back into the old basics bag - and get through to certain students means we have to keep up with the basics anyways. Lord knows the last ground school I taught I had to go right back to basic prop theory and build from there...the student had been taught completely wrong on day one! If that scenario, which happens on a daily basis, does not prove airline instructors meet the minimum requirement, well...I'm not sure what would.
I digress. That's why I was wondering before if maybe a TRE/TRI format could help those pilots to come back to the flight schools and clubs. At the moment with no certification process there is nothing for Transport to gauge an instructor pilot to a minimum standard. But throw a certification at our airline instructors, make them prove at certain intervals that they remember the basics (kind of like how an ACP has to do their renewals) and there would be ongoing proof that the guy had the theory and experience to become a flight instructor again.
Not saying that this needs to be the only result from a TRE/TRI format, but certainly a benefit thereof.
