Wages - the limiting factor of hiring

Those "quick schools" are charging $70-150k. The school that advertises the most and "promises" students a job teaches just to pass the test. Their pilots are notoriously weak on skills. The parallel between pilot shortage and driver shortage is real. The pay and conditions are not attracting the number of newbies they once did. Regional airlines are cancelling flights and giving flights back to the big airlines because they don't have enough pilots.

The big airlines put certain flights out for bid to the regional airlines. The regionals undercut each other and used to count on an endless supply of wannabes aspiring to the glamor of the airlines. The word got out there is not glamor and the pay is miserable for the first 5-10 years. The military has cut back on pilots, plus given out HUGE bonuses to keep experienced pilots so they are not the airline pilot source they once were. The airlines are going through their version of "new generation" with pilots that have trained on "technologically advanced aircraft" and they are clueless once the automation gives up. It's not as bad in the US as in Asia or Latin America but new pilots in the past never had the poor skills of some of the current crop, especially from the "quick school".

Some European airlines have returned to Cadet Programs, where they hire people with zero experience, train them, put them on contract and they are committed to be future airlne pilots for the company. Some of them have used Ab Initio (from the beginning) programs. Lufthansa has a program in Arizona. Where your first fligth will be in a Beechcraft Bonaza (complex airplane, retractible landing gear, complex avionics). Every bit of your flight training is as a crew member in a multi-pilot aircraft. They rely on automation alot. While the FAA now requires 1500 hours and an Airline Transport Pilot certificate the Europeans are moving toward less experience on new-hires. They hire new pilots that are ONLY qualified to fly as an airline crew member.

Trucking and aviation have been trying to wring out every inefficiency possible for the last 3-4 decades. Wages are not increasing. The highpoint for aviation wages was the 1970s, like trucking, due to the regulated market back then. Regulation is good for the companies that were ALREADY in the business but bad for new companies and especially for passengers or shipping customers.

 

What I was seeing before I gave up on airplanes was just what you say. I last flew in South Florida. There were a LOT of Beech 18s flying cargo to the Caribbean. It was becoming common for the aircraft owner to "hire" pilots based on if they could pay the cost of an engine overhaul or "1st year training costs" which was about 90-110% of expected salary for the year. If anyone thinks delivering freight to Detroit is risky, try flying groceries & stolen bicycles to Haiti, Dominican Republic, or the usual islands. No autopilots, some GPS back then, but mostly it was island hopping peering through haze all day long. It's great experience until it's not.

I'm not proud. If I had been able to scrounge up $18k I would have paid for a job. I had $300, a car bigger than my dirtbag apartment, and once my car was impounded due to expired plates I got into trucking.

 

I guarantee you those Beech 18s are still running. There are DC-6s as well. I was flying out of Ft Lauderdale. I didn't even see the really old stuff flying out of Opa Locka, North Perry, and Tamiami and Miami. Going to those airports was like going to a museum, only dirty and hotter. Those round engines ARE the economy of the Caribbean.

 

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The schools are expensive. However you can get a CFI/CFII for under 25K. I challenge anybody to google cost to get CFI.

 

What killed aviation for me was the gawd awful heat & humidity of South Florida inside a small aircraft, think 1968 VW Beetle with no AC and the windows rolled up. I didn't mind spending my bosses money flying, but the instant that money was coming out of my wallet, that's when #### got real for me. I'm Scottish. watching hundred dollar bills fly out of my pocket takes most of the fun out of anything. Even with my current job, I could spend a whole week's worth of my pay flying between sunrise and lunch on a Saturday. Can't do it.

 

You mean the radial engines? Those things are a joy. I never hd one, and recently we had a restored B17 visit little rock. Next year I hope to have the 400 plus dollars to take a ride on that thing. There was another -17 in Polk City Fla on I-4 at the old Museum Fantasy of Flight which I found to be essentially complete back when they were a museum. I think they are a living history sort of resto shop now that maintains the old iron as they should be. The money that they ask of people is not too expensive when you consider the fuel burn those 4 engines do sometimes.

 

I never had to pay for my ratings, other than the checkrides. If I had I don't think I could have afforded it. We're talking 1960s now. I got my commercial on my 18th birthday 1964.
My family was heavily into aviation and we all just kind of grew up with it. There wasn't much choice.
My Dad always said "There's a lot of money in aviation, lots of it. Just try holding on to some of it, that's the trick"
LOL...flying is what got me into trucking. Every winter when the crop dusting and the fire bombing was over...especially if they'd been poor seasons...I'd grab a driving job to keep bread on the table.
Being a big time hairy chested professional aviator didn't impress anybody at the grocery store. They wanted cash.

 

That's about right if you have the time to train and the money. The high-priced "quick schools" are largely sold to older wannabes in a hurry and younger/foreign wannabes with maybe more cents than sense.

Once you pay all that you have to find a way to pay rent and be available to fly 24/7. The most common strategy I saw was being smart enough to have picked wealthy parents or fall in love with a nurse (high pay, live anywhere) while you get your 1000-2000 hours of experience.

 

Yeah, nothing like radial engines. Kermit Weeks / Fantasy of Flight has a ton of YouTube videos search for "Kermiecam". Kermit walks through a pre-flight on some of his strange planes and then a startup and flight. I believe Kermit Weeks is one of the few people to fall in love with airplanes that hasn't gone broke taking care of them. I think he's independently wealthy plus he gets good support through his museum.