Is there really a lack of pilots
 

Today I saw an add that you can pay for your own upgrade. For some 50.000 EUR. When will we open our eyes and stop paying for own ratings. If you love to fly spend money maybe on some Pitts or glider and have fun. With self sponsorships we are only making profit for the companies and not for us. I saw that in USA first officers on CRJ are working for about 23 USD. What kind of joke is this and I guess they all payed for Type rating.

What can we do to stop this nonsense. With nowadays managers logics we will start earning money when we will be some 50 years old.

What I suggests is not to pay for any rating for about one year. If you can afford to pay for type rating then I guess you can be at home with that money doing nothing just waiting.
If there really is a lack of pilots, in my opinion companies will have to start paying again for planes which they operate.

Maybe I'm dreaming but I'm not willing to pay for any rating. Till today I'm CRJ captain and didn't have to pay for any rating and I hope it will stay that way.

What do you think? Should we spread the word....

Bad assumption... I don't know anyone who pays for a type rating at a regional job in the US.

Not gonna happen. Supply and demand, and there is too much supply.

Nobody pays for type in US regionals, and most majors bar Southwest.

With the new ATP rule coming into effect in August the regionals are having a hard time finding qualified applicants.

It is not so mucha pilot shortage as a shortage of some types of pilot, in Europe young guys with a type rating and no experience are still two a penny but the shortage is with people who can command a 737 or A320 as demonstrated by the airline that pays a staff member £1000 for each captain they can get to join the airline.

Where are those 320 jobs ????? Would love to know !!!!!!:)

No, there is no shortage and there will not be in the next few years. The schools pump out new pilots every year, when there is not enough jobs available and this creates the lucrative business for some banana companies to do p2f. :ugh:

Every year without fail......

Yes there is......according to the FTO's ;)

Ohh there is a shortage, of EXPERIENCED flight crew.

Experience is the word they like to miss out every time. Just look at the jobs available on these job sites. Captain for either B737 A320 or B777.
There are jobs for the odd FO but again, hours on type and sometimes around 3000 total time.

There has been and NEVER will be a shortage of low time inexperienced pilots.

There IS a shortage of EXPERIENCED high houred captains and TRE/Is on certain specific types that are willing to travel to the ar*e end of the world as expats.

By the time that the low houred inexperienced pilots have attained command and experience these contracts will be long gone and the developing/3rd world countries will have sufficient local man/woman power in order to recruit internally.

''There has been and NEVER will be a shortage of low time inexperienced pilots.''

So true, not even in the early 90's when flying clubs were trawled for anyone with a heartbeat and a CPL.
I/R and type rating provided with full pay one day one.
Aircraft sat on aprons, terminals full of pax, plenty of Captains but no one to fly with them.

Yep, I can't remember those days either! :E

No, but I remember the days in the late 90's when that was indeed the case. After a few years of getting "We're not hiring, and even if we were we wouldn't be hiring you" letters, I finally got a job after buying my own rating. (There's nothing new about that, despite it all being seemingly ryanair's fault.)
Within 6 months I was getting phone calls at home from those same companies.
It seemed to happen overnight, but the amusing and equally frustrating thing was we had all been predicting it for ages, and yes there were all those glass-half-empty people telling us we were all wasting our time and would never get a job. I still could never see the pleasure in that.

What's repetitive; always fails to impress; and results in extreme poverty to anyone who takes it up?

Yep you guessed it.

Pessimism?

Maybe it's me being over simplistic but it seems to me that in a few years the airline industry is going to have a major problem. When experienced Captains retire, who is going to be there to take their places? If the P2F guys and gals have had to bug out because they can no longer afford to live on peanuts, where is the experience coming from? Surely Airline management must be thinking ahead to this possible scenario if someone like me who knows absolutely jack about airline recruitment can dream it up.

Define pilot
 

Can we narrow our definition of pilot? Then the answer to this question becomes very easy. Whilst using the broadest possible definition the answer is: no there is no shortage. If we require a person capable, competent etc then I suspect he answer might be yes.

Disappointingly, defining capable, competent etc, through, do you have a licence? is not a particularly fine filter.

Brilliant! Possibly the best post ever on pea prune.

Aye, we're doomed, doomed.

Is there no legal minimum number of hours required then before you can get command on certain types? I would hate to think that in a few years i'm being flown around the world in a 747 by a couple of 20 year olds whose parents had deep pockets. Granted, as a traveller I do look to find the best price for my trip but there are limits. At least at the moment I know (or hope I do) that there is at least one of you at the pointy end who has not only the training but also experience.

If I recall correctly Mexicana had a severe home grown shortage (early 80's?) and was forced by circumstances, politics and other to eventually end up with 21 year old Captains, 19 year old First/Second Officers on the 727, the entire average age of the flight crew around 20!