ROADTRIP,

Since you are here on the PPRuNe I am assuming that you are a pilot. I am also assuming that you have never traveled to this side of the world.

It is not as easy as it sounds to setup a flight school here in the Eastern States. First of all, we will have to import planes (guess where most of the training aircrafts are made). Secondly, we need airfields to fly those planes. Do you know that there are more airfields in the state of FL than entire India. Now an infrastructure like this cannot be setup over night. Yes, the government is working on it but it will take years. Third, the fuel is a lot more expensive here than in State, Oz or even South Africa. Another problem that we face here is what you are facing in USA. Why would someone want to work as a FI when he/she can fly a brand new shiny aircraft (where they do not have to yell "clear prop" and chances are that they can walk under the wing and need ladder to climb in the aircraft. This kind of flying any day beats flying C152, at least for work).

Not all the students come to USA to live there and stay there. There are easier ways to come to States than trying to get an M1 visa for flight training (visa counselors still remember 9-11).

Yes, you are right, there a lot of Brits training in FL. But there are also people from India, China, Japan, Scandinavian countries and southern EU States training in FL. There is a very good reason why FL is called the flight training capital of the world.

These students when they come to States, not only they spend money in the flight school, they also spend money in local business'. We saw the impact of no flight training after 9-11. Lots of local business' were hurting because the foreigners had stopped coming to States. You think Disney can survive if only Americans were going there?

Anyway, I do miss the days when we could fly over the Hudson and work on the lady.

Happy Flying :)

Yes, I fly in that area of the world.
So, India has no problem setting up new airlines, so much so that it needs to import ex-pat pilots and train its own nationals and outsourcing highly technical jobs from the US market, yet it is incapable of setting-up and running some flight schools???
I suppose my understanding of this must be as a result of some cultural bias on my part.
Don't get me wrong, if foreign students from countries that are not hostile in government or national sentiment towards us want to come here to learn, that's fine . . . as long as they go back to their home countries and not try and stay here and work.

No shortage of pilots here.. only a shortage of qualified pilots who will work for $19/flight hour... It's sort of like legal prostitution without the pay.. The mins are dropping to below 500hrs with some carriers. This is because most people won't fly for that low of pay...

Roadtrip,

It is not the school that is the problem. I have extensive experience in flight school business. It is infrastructure and airports in India. The students will have to go for cross countries, or practice ILS approaches for their IR training. I didnt realise how luck we were in USA until I came back to India. I fly for an airline and we still shoot full VOR approaches in non-radar environment. If you are a student pilot and practicing landings and an airliner approaches you would have to call it a day.

Most (cant say all, that is the counselers job) student pilots will come back to India. When you are only 18-20 years old and you can make $3500 per month and are treated like a king why wont you come back. I dont think they want to stay back in the states to pick oranges or work at gas stations or motels making $6 per hour. So you dont have to worry about people staying back. It is a different story if someone who wants to desperatily move to USA uses aviation to get in the States. But thats where TSA, and US embassy expertise comes in.

There are so many better opportunities for foreign pilots outside of the US.. I don't understand why you would want to fly here. I'm guessing to build an experience, but it's still not a great place in terms of pay for a starting pilot.

A pilot from England joined the Army Guard over here and said that he had worked as a Blackhawk Crew Chief, then went to NW Airlink as FO. I asked him about the lifestyle with a lower US CRJ First Officer salary compared to a higher salary in England with the much higher taxes. His company sent some senior pilots to Embry Riddle in a recruitment campaign. I spoke with them.
The Englishman told me that you can survive better in the US, at least in a lower cost region such as a smaller city in the south, because of the much lower taxes and cost of living. This surprised me.

CruiseClimb: How about the problem of some regional airline new-hires who have less than the minimum PIC hours, who theoretically will never be able to upgrade to Captain? The core problem, based upon what a Check Airman told me, with attracting experienced pilots is that some regionals pay nothing during training-not even per diem for meals etc. They expect the applicant to live with Mom and Dad, or have a girlfriend supply food, hotel and gasoline money. Wait until they hear about the salary, whereby you will qualify for foodstamps.

The company may hire you, but whether you have enough instrument experience to successfully finish training, makes no difference at all to the company :cool: . They want you as cheaply as possible-nothing else. And it works every week.

A furloughed airline guy working as Instructor at a regional was introduced to me and described a common, but most unfortunate situation. He told me that the Gulfstream program gladly took a guy's money and let him later fly the B-1900. This came as a cruel surprise when he was a new-hire at another company: the lack of actual instrument flying crippled his chances to finish CRJ training.

PIC hours? Will some new-hires be forced to remain forever in the right seat?
The solution is that the FAA will soon, or has already lowered the PIC hour requirement to enable First Officers to later upgrade to Captain after 2500 hours or more. Maybe 10 SIC hours equal 1 hour of PIC?

PS: This is May 28. That company's Chief Pilot reportedly quit recently over this PIC/SIC concept.

Low timers looking to be PICs
 

What's happening is pilots are coming in at 500 hrs, but must sit in the right seat until they meet that company's mins for Captain. This is usually 3,000-3,500 hrs in an RJ, lower in a turboprop. Other pilots who meet the mins are upgraded past them, but have lower seniority numbers. As soon as the junior pilot has the time to upgrade, he is automatically senior to the pilot who may have been a captain years ahead of him. many of these junior pilots have never seen icing or turbulance until they're flying a jet with 50 passengers in back.

TSA minimums
 

Ok it really has happend!!! Trans State Airlines announced today their new minimums 250tt/25me. So pretty much a Commercial license with an multi add on it.

http://www.pilotjobs.com/default.las...ine&airline=27

check it out.

The demand can not keep up with the supply.

:ok:

Importance of English
 

Thorny,

When you arrive at the airlines and are flying international routes, you will understand the absolute necessity of a common aviation language. Situational awareness, especially in the airport traffic area, is greatly reduced when the pilots are not speaking the same language. Improper communications will kill people just as fast, if not faster, than poor piloting skills.

As far as a shortage of Instructors goes. Only the largest flight schools in the US are suffering a shortage. Most pilots are not willing to move across the country for an instructing job. It just doesn't make economic sense. So when a large school taps out the local market, it is hard for them to find instructors. Instructors don't generate huge income for a flight school so it is usually not worth their while to pay immigration costs.

Good luck!

What shortage???
 

The airline industry is a cyclical beast. There are plenty of pilots out there to fill the jobs available. When the major airlines were booming, the regionals weren't. Now the big guys are shrinking and the regionals are growing. The minimums go down when the demand rises and go up when it falls. When you start seeing pay going up, then you'll know there is a shortage. :) I can tell you this much for sure. My company hired several classes of pilots recently and every one of them had a college degree, three letters of recommendation from within the company, and 4000+ plus hours TT. They all had turbine experience and most were type rated in something, or prior military pilots. Three of them were sons or daughters of pilots working for the company. It doesn't sound like much of a shortage to me.

Cheers

Acquiring and maintaining a light airplane overseas IS in fact expensive, but that in itself is not the big problem. The problem is that the big airline growth is mostly occurring in developing countries where only a select few can afford to learn to fly. There just aren't enough potential candidates yet to support any kind of big training operation in those countries. Language skills come into play as well. Not enough English speaking people.

There is no FAA PIC minimum to upgrade from F/O to Captain. If you can do the job, what difference does it make anyway. Like other posters have pointed out, the Europeans have been putting 250 hour pilots in the right seat of 737's and A320's for years. It's not a give away though. You still have to get through the training.

Hi DesiPilot
 

Hi,

Greetings from ex CFI teaching at GIF!

Are you still in the US? or back home? I was looking at your site but my emails didn't get to you. Right now, I am in China trying to do some instruction and we need a lot of patience here.
take care,

Flytoo

To AQflyer,

Yup..., I have nothing to say.

My old company just lowered the mins to Commercial, Multi Instrument. I really feel for some of the captains there now. Thats going to be an interesting environment to fly in.

His initials aren't EF, are they?

no instrument skills?
 

what kinda bone head doesn't have instrument skills? it isn't the airline's fault the student has weak instrument skills...he wasn't properly trained in flight school and the examiner that passed him didn't do their job properly.

FlyBoyIke:

It has been about three years ago, and I have no idea who the poor guy was. The IP's background was supposedly with Delta. All he said was that the guy had trouble with instrument flying, or maybe he meant performing them in a much faster plane, the guys first jet.
I can easily sympathize, knowing that it is the first FMC c0ckpit for many, rigid standardization for some, and many new types of procedures and demanding, hectic airport environments. Remember, these planes have replaced most DC-9s, F-100s and 737s, even many 727 city pairs. The twin-engine jets went everywhere east of the Rockie Mountains (MIA, HOU, STL, IAH, ATL, MKE, ORD, MDW, BOS, LGA, JFK, DCA...even MSO and
Bozeman). Now, many new FOs flying to these same cities, and many more, have maybe 500 hours total, instead of the 3,000-5,000 which all of us had, with a few exceptions for those who flew F-4s etc. Considering all the extra work (despite fewer legs many days) compared to a BE-1900, SD-360 or SF-340, how about the right-seat pay, counting inflation?

Recruiting pilots with much more than 300 hours for one of our primary regional affiliates is very difficult because the company pays nothing until one flies the CRJ on the line for about two weeks-but they don't pay any expenses during training, no per diem, unless changes have taken place.
Corporate greed at its finest. :E

Read about the Mesaba's pilots' terrible situation last year. Pilots qualifying for food stamps were asked to pay for a chunk of their medical/dental insurance and also take a pay cut!

It must be bad enough paying the many deductibles even when the company makes payments for the policies...don't at least some have a wife or a little kid with a medical condition?

Noted this on an interview sheet for a US regional:

"will receive a $500.00 longevity bonus to be paid out to each student that successfully graduates from the training program, and completes six months of continuous employment"

Six months qualifies one for a longevity bonus? Sounds like they are having a few retention problems. The sheet I saw indicated 400TT as a minimum, CRJ FO.

The main question now is whether any of the regionals pay per diem or hotel expenses during training, or a tiny salary, in order to better recruit applicants?
One guy on the employee bus a few days ago said that some regional now pays you a salary during training.

Samusi01:
A few days ago another pilot told me that Mesa Airlines recently had an entire class of "no-shows" -- nobody came to class. Maybe only three or four had been hired? If many more were expected, that would be quite significant.

They have lost many pilots who were on the line. A friend worked there many years ago on the 1900 and went to Berlin for CRJ training.
Even back then, they paid Beech pilots at least 25% less than the other companies paid, and transferred pilots often base to base, in order to remain in a Captain's seat.

PS: When many of us trained on the Bandit and Shorts 330/360 in '83-'85, we might have been paid per diem during training. We found roommates in whichever apartments.

Hadn't heard about the Mesa class, but I've got a friend who started with them recently. I'll have to ask him if he heard anything. The regional I referenced is Pinnacle... they are taking care of hotels and all (my understanding) and paying a per diem during training. Two of the guys here at work headed off there and other than being in a rough section of Memphis, all they've said is that sims are backed up and Pinnacle was making noises about shipping them to Montreal or Berlin for CRJ training. Skywest and Horizon may pay for training... I'll have to check with some folks I know over at Mesaba. Flight out this morning had a former co-worker jumping, and he said starting is around $25/hr for his present employer - American Eagle - but I didn't ask about per diem or other pay during training.

I will not fly on a commuter airline in the US. Do you really want to be sitting fat dumb and not happy in the back of a jungle jet while a no time fo just fills the seat while a low time Captian fly solo? (Comair crash?)
There will not be a pilot shortage if the wages were better than a fry cook at McDonalds.
Wages will not go up till folks stop taking the jobs.
Do you really want to trust your life to a low time pilot ?
This "plot shortage" is going to lead to Major problems down the road.
The good news I've made more money last month by having to go around at LAX. Rj wanted to turn around on the rwy and taxi back to the taxiway he over shot..... 12,000lbs of fuel and a lot of noise later...(oh well i get paid by the minute.) Hopfully seeing a 747 going missed low ,up close and personal woke him up.
Next week rj was told 180kts till the marker, they slowed to Vref early without saying anything..... Kind of scewed up the spacing a tad.
Well i guess the only fix is better training, like that is really going to happen,
WD

Right on, Whaledog! Can I buy you a martini?

Guess we'd need to be careful if we offer to bring any new rj fo's out as i don't think they'd be over 21 years old. :=

Thank you for the kind offer.

There is no shortage of pilots in the United States, I was told by three different companies today that I was over qualified. One told me that if he hired me, he expected to have to pay me to fly while there are plenty of kids around that would do it for little or nothing. and he liked paying little or nothing. Oh well I guess there is a shortage after all.

Not that I disagree with the general sentiment of your post, but, for the record, both pilots in the Comair crash were plenty high-time, as were the pilots in the Pinnacle incident. That may be because a low-time guy (like me, for instance) is always double and triple checking himself, while the higher-time guy may well become more complacent.

Just a thought.

John gets hired as a low time f/o. The captains he flies with were hired as low time f/o's, like John is. In 2 years John becomes a cap'n. He's trained under the tutelage of low time, inexperienced pilots.
I would look at him as a self-taught pilot. His low time f/o's even more so.

Most Scarey!

Oh how I yearn for the glory days of aviation when people were born with experience.

flyboyike
Oh how I yearn for the glory days of aviation when people were born with experience.

A facile response.... of course nobody is born with experience... but hat experience should be gained hard time without putting the lives of paying passengers at risk. Give me an FO who's been flying night-freight out of vermont through a couple of winters on a Bandit anytime over some classroom qualified wanabee when things are going pearshaped on a crappy night.

I understand where you're coming from, but let's try to be entirely honest here: how much does that Bandit really have in common with a CRJ, besides that both are airplanes? How much does night single-pilot work have in common with a 121 crew environment? How much does freight flying in Vermont (or South Dakota, or Arkansas, or insert your favorite hell-hole here) really have in common with flying a transport aircraft out of place like JFK or BOS or DCA?

I came to the airline after over a year of flying a turboprop, and what I struggled with was getting over the whole single-pilot mentality. The airplane wasn't the problem, the systems were no big deal. Getting used to being part of a crew was. Now imagine if I had 5,000 hours in the Bandit or a King Air doing all that freight flying. I submit to you the transition would have been even harder, not easier.

There is experience and then there's relevant experience. There is a reason why JAL, Lufthansa, Singapore, and many other big-time carriers pick up people with 200-250TT. It's to teach them the airline way from the outset. That way they are not reverting back to the Bandit and night freight while in the right seat of a 744. And those carriers have an exemplary safety record. That tells me that not all low-time pilots are created equal.

Besides, I fully expect to get to 10,000 (or whatever) hours and have fossils tell me that they didn't become a "real pilot" until their 14,546.3rd (or whatever) hour. In this business there never seems to be a shortage of people who get off by belittling others, with or without reason. Regrettable, I think.

Very well put flyboyike.
Hours mean a lot but not everything;)

I've flown with 15,000hr pilots who performed pathatically on a regular basis for various reasons and with 500hr pilots who performed very well on a regular basis. So please save your 'flight time = experience' b.s. for someone who doesn't have thousands of hours and doesn't know there are sub-standard pilots out there with thousands of hours of flight time who can't fly worth a crap. The accident files are littered with high time but low experience pilots who looked very competent on paper and flew perfectly good airliners into the ground with hundreds of pax onboard. Experience is a matter of knowledge & ability, time alone only gives you a 'chance' to learn and improve yourself. Some choose not to put in the effort and learn next to nothing after all those thousands of hours of flying and their low performance level shows it... I see it all the time. Read pilot error accident reports and look at the high flight times of the pilots involved. Then ask yourself if they had a high experience level matching their high flight time.

Also a freight pilot flying Bandits or the like for a shady outfit which does not keep their equipment up to standards and expects it's pilots to break many regulations on a regular basis (pretty much ALL small plane freight outfits in the US), who has knowingly broken the rules to the satisfaction of his/her employer sinking below standards to keep his/her job is hardly the professional aviator I would hire. I don't care what kind of crap he/she has flown thru and lived. Those initial attitudes and habits are hard to get rid of. On the other hand a low time aviator who has been trained to perform to high standards with dicipline to adhere to SOPs and regulations is someone I would trust with my aircraft. I don't have to untrain a lot of bad habits and attitudes which are inherently present in the typical freight pilot who has the initial traits of a rougue pilot imprinted in his/her character as a basis of his/her 'experience'.

Amount of time is not a good indicator of 'experience level', simply becuase some people are lazy idiots. And once a lazy idiot, always a lazy idiot.

Cheers

I will not fly on a commuter airline in the US. Do you really want to be sitting fat dumb and not happy in the back of a jungle jet while a no time fo just fills the seat while a low time Captian fly solo? (Comair crash?)
There will not be a pilot shortage if the wages were better than a fry cook at McDonalds.
Wages will not go up till folks stop taking the jobs.
Do you really want to trust your life to a low time pilot ?
This "plot shortage" is going to lead to Major problems down the road.
The good news I've made more money last month by having to go around at LAX. Rj wanted to turn around on the rwy and taxi back to the taxiway he over shot..... 12,000lbs of fuel and a lot of noise later...(oh well i get paid by the minute.) Hopfully seeing a 747 going missed low ,up close and personal woke him up.
Next week rj was told 180kts till the marker, they slowed to Vref early without saying anything..... Kind of scewed up the spacing a tad.
Well i guess the only fix is better training, like that is really going to happen,
WD
Then how about the US airline heavy that was lined up with 25R although they were cleared for VISUAL 24R two weeks ago at LAX. Not only they had to go around themselves, they made a 737 go around as well due to a TCAS RA and we were right behind that 737 watching this whole thing listening to ATC calling them repeatedly. I met the morons on the crew bus later, they were mistakenly on ground freq already while on final and only went around becuase they saw an RJ in position and holding. They didn't have a clue it was the wrong runway until then. Both high time with thousands of hours to go along with their white hair. What's their excuse??? Calculate the fuel burn for that one. I would not trust my life with these two morons, I don't care how many thousands of hours they have.

Cheers

Work Permits
 

If there is this shortage of pilots in the US, what are the chances of a British person with FAA tickets getting a job in the US - even for a year or two?

>>>Oh how I yearn for the glory days of aviation when people were born with experience.<<<

I yearn for the days when experience was valued.

The problem with a certain number of low time pilots in the United States is not that they are low time, but that they don’t value experience. This seems to be the result of being told during their training in the pilot puppy mills that “good training” is more important than experience. Then, when they start to fly for a living, they are paired with Captains with only a couple of years in the real world.

Compare this to a European ab-initio program where the new FO clearly understands that he has a lot to learn, is expected to work diligently at learning it, and is paired with well seasoned Captains. Same with the United States in the late 60’s when low time pilots were being hired.

What we have in the United States is a profit based training system that tries to increase its perceived value by denigrating the importance of experience. This attitude then flows into their trainees and airline management.

JulianStorey wrote:
"If there is this shortage of pilots in the US, what are the chances of a British person with FAA tickets getting a job in the US - even for a year or two?"

Better than an American with a current CAA/JAR ATPL and type rating without a "Right to live and work in the EU" passport. A bit lopsided don't you think?

RDG

742 and HeavyWrenchFlyer posted some thought-provoking comments.
A Line Check Airmen at this crewbase described the possibility that some future pilot new-hires might have mostly glass-c0ckpit experience. I hope I'm not quickly paired with any such new-hires (maybe next year?) unless they received adequate legs during IOE. One of our guys jumpseated recently to TYS and it was quite an eye-opener for him. The plane has some glass but no autothrottles. He told us that he was very relieved when the Captain finally took the controls, perhaps having been reluctant at first to embarass the new FO in front of an off-line guy on the jumpseat.

Can they learn to fly an old jet, with no 'glass' automation? There are many (727s) at Fedex also. Southwest pilots are supposedly trained to not use LNAV and VNAV. Their glass displays in the SWA Boeing 737-800 were designed by Boeing to indicate airspeed, VSI etc as if on round gauges.

Might one underlying problem, discussed in various ways on this thread, be caused partly because of many young pilots' reliance on automation for almost the entire flight? It might be most awkward to go on a "steam-gauge" jet from ORD to LGA or ATL-DTW, forced to navigate with a Jepp Hi Chart and the DYLYN Arrival to EWR with weather enroute. Or fly a procedure turn at Kalispell or Missoula, MT on a pitch black night.