@Peter a wide gamut, some very smart engineers and scientists who are switching careers, and you wonder why society is not using them to a higher purpose.
At the end of the day it is a heavy machine operator job, and not atypical that ex truck drivers make excellent airline pilots. Lots of good fast jet air force pilots straight out of school, and in the 50’s/60’s the RAF made a point out of recruiting from the lower sixth, ie before A level. The nineteen year old lads providing first strike low altitude ballistic delivery in Canberras, being seen as more reliable than the more experienced, better educated V-bomber crews. These last obviously having the option to head to Bermuda and not Moscow :)
Peter wrote:
However I wonder whether somebody with no higher education is going to enjoy being an airline pilot? Sure one can learn to push the right buttons but a person with no technical aptitude will never learn anything useful about aircraft systems.
A very common route to the majors by my observation has been (1) business, economics etc degree that’s enough to get into military flying, followed by (2) military retirement at an opportune moment to hire on into an airline job. Having said that the most competent pilot I know did exactly that via an undergraduate psychology degree and is pretty significantly technical, flew as a production test pilot, built his current plane etc. He certainly did not fail to learn about aircraft systems, I’d consider him an expert.
RobertL18C wrote:
The bigger threat is the potential of commercial air transport moving away from multi crew, to a hybrid flight and ground based crew. This could indeed happen in around five years.
@euroga bot: Remind me in 5 years
BeechBaby wrote:
Possibly a bit harsh. I think they should be applauded for releasing a reality check on a decimated industry. It may get even worse.
As someone directly affected (mid 30’s, 15 year airline career, 3 kids, reduced from ok wage to 800€/month “force majeure pay” within days) I agree with you. I think the next few years will be tough.
Private flight training outfits are in it for profit and sell a 100.000€+ dream to young people who take loans to finally post a selfie in uniform on instagram. I can understand the wish to fly obviously, however a reality check is desperately needed in this industry. The airlines have made training and recruitment a profit center. Want a job: pay here! Lufthansa has recently announced it is closing their in house training facility in Bremen (pre select cadets, training is advance funded, repay only with LH job offer). What is not mentioned though is that they operated outfits for self funded training in parallel for years, and those will continue to exist. This step was “culturally” not acceptable before but CoVid is a nice reason, for this and many other cuts.
EU/US cannot be compared easily. First of all, the US has the largest market for commercial aviation far exceeding european numbers. Some of the larger single GA airfields there have more aircraft based than some EU countries have registered in total. There’s much more general aviation, business aviation and domestic airline traffic. Non “legacies” like Southwest or Jetblue give you 700-800 airframes.
The “shortage” in the US wasn’t real. There wasn’t a shortage of pilots, there was a shortage of qualified 1500hr ATPs, so the industry had an artificial choke point introduced via the 1500h rule which dried up supply to regional airlines (where all pilots had managed to finally leave and replace retiring boomers at the majors). A position at the big three (DL, AA, UA) as well as top tier freighters (FX, 5X) was always very competitive, with thousands of applications on file at any moment. The regionals (each tied to the system of one of the majors) however competed for the same pool of pilots, some with “flow to mainline” schemes, others with higher hourly pay, faster upgrade times and/or some also introduced sign up bonus schemes. Generally, all upped their pay scales from food stamp eligibility to “normal” (it was not unheard of to work from a NYC base on 20k USD basic pay a year before).
Yes, this did give pilots in the US a little more bargaining power. In Europe, terms and conditions have been in a steady decline for years, and CoVid isn’t helping…
An interesting comparison is the “employment practices” of Ryan vs. Southwest. The latter was the original low cost carrier, by the way. They still offer free checked bags and drinks, and some of the best terms and conditions in the entire industry for their staff.
Some quite interesting, albeit cynical, views on airline unionisation – http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines
I’m old and knackered and I’ve got work coming out of my ears.
But then I can jump in a Cessna 150 fly 150 miles in less than 10K VFR weather get some photos done and get back home again. Where as these freshly minted CPL/IR holders don’t know how to use the mixture lever, have never asked for a MATZ crossing and don’t know you don’t even have to.
I would like to say I don’t make a fortune but this summer I didn’t do too badly peaking at 6000 Canadian for 9 days work. But then none of these kids can do a balanced turn let alone a balanced turn while putting in and then taking out flaps with a climb rate that’s dreadful.
I’m sure my phone will ring again next year.
Charlie wrote:
Some quite interesting, albeit cynical, views on airline unionisation – http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines
And it’s missing some historical information on how seniority systems evolved.
Pilots sometimes face decisions that aren’t in the best economical interest of the airline, for reasons of safety. If there is no protection, the just culture and non punitive environments that took decades to develop (and lessons learned written in blood) at larger western airlines will go out the window overnight.
Seniority bites back latest when you’ve invested many years and suddenly need a new job… it’s very anti merit based.
A quote from a comment on the article:
„The solution sounds simple, just start a non-union airline and treat the employees right! But without a wide network of companies to move between(ie: switching from Company A to B while retaining pay/benefits) this wont work.“
@bathman
I’d love to learn from you, seriously. I do think a US widebody skipper earns more because there’s a lot more revenue involved in filling a few hundred seats on heavy metal than special ops in a C150.
The widebody pay is often justified on the basis that the pilot has more responsibility because more lives are at risk. However if you think about it, over a (say) 8 hour period, a narrowbody pilot is likely to carry more passengers plus has to do a higher number of “risky” manoeuvres (such as takeoff, approach and landing) than widebody ones – who generally do one of each in any 24 hour period.
The antisocial lifestyle on widebody I guess makes up for some of the other difference, but not the multiples of salary that we see in the industry. And in general, pilots want to do long haul rather than short haul (not driven all by pay) which makes it make even less sense.
Many years ago I knew a woman who was head of a 747 cabin crew and she said the job was a total “life stealer”. She was on 40-50k which was (then) great money but you largely write off 20 years of your life.
