The day is coming when the airlines of the United States will have to start training their own pilots from scratch. This has been going on in Europe for many years. Why? First off, we train 1/10 of the military guys we used to, and more of them are staying in. Even with the shitty deployments to bad places every other year or so. They view the airlines as a step down not up. Civilian training is less than 1/3 of what it used to be. Recently, I flew down the east coast of Florida. From Ft. Pierce to Lantana. I could count on one hand the number of planes I saw on that one hour flight. Used to practically have to play "dodge em" in this corridor.

I have been in General Aviation now for about 10 years. Just plugging along with my little four place airplane. I have met a lot of younger guys getting training etc. At first I was startled at  how few wanted an "airline job". Hardly any WANT TO FLY FOR A MAJOR AIRLINE AND NONE WANT TO WORK FOR A REGIONAL! I personally know three commercial pilots, two with military training, who have left regionals for Net Jets. No more being based in a-hole places. These folks are commercialed to and from work and live damn near anywhere they want to. They aren't worked to death either and have to put up with BS from the TSA three or four times a week. They are well paid for their work.

The word is out. The majors are absolutely no fun to fly for and the regional will work you to death and pay you crap. Everything that  has come out about major or regional airline work in the past five years has been negative. I blame the Fn'AA and of course ALPA for letting the press make the airline pilot look like a cretin from the bus driver pool.

The day of the average career with an airline giving you a decent quality of life, the good pay it deserves and the decent and safe working rules that goes with it - is history. There is no big pay that last 10 years, based in horrible places like Newark, and a management group, that while gentler than Frank Lorenzo, just as vicious. Just ask the American guys who took pay cuts, increased work periods etc. Only to find out that upper management had been stealing the airline blind with huge bonuses. Now their payback is bankruptcy, their existing contract is down the crapper, AND the press has blamed it all on those damn greedy pilots for wanting more, more and more!! Where in the world is Allied Pilots Union or EVEN THE MIGHTY ALPA setting the record straight with the flying public. I haven't seen or heard a word in defense of the American pilots.

Glad I did it, and met you wonderful folks but thank God I am out of it.


 

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Airline Pilot: Is Anybody Interested in Being One?

By Captain X

Captain X is a training Captain for a well-known regional airline and
occasional correspondent to AVweb and our aviation publications. We're
publishing his compelling observations as a guest blog. --Paul Bertorelli

We can't quite put our fingers on what's occurring in the industry right
now. I've talked to my counterparts at other regional airlines and they all
are seeing the same thing. For lack of a better description, a large
percentage of newly hired airline pilots just aren't as excited about their
career prospects as they used to be.

During our last hiring boom in 2007 and 2008, it seemed as if we had people
climbing all over each other just to get an interview. Now, we'll frequently
call 10 for an interview and only five will show up. I don't know if other
airlines are hiring them before we can interview them or what, but it just
seems the level of interest in our industry isn't there.

Of those who do come to the interview, we are appalled at how many show up
and can't pass a written test. Our interview test isn't that hard. It's
straight out of the FAA commercial pilot written. We have a couple of
questions we took straight from the AIM. I'm amazed at how many people who
want to be airline pilots struggle to interpret a TAF! I mean if you want an
airline job, wouldn't you at least review the rules on holding pattern
speeds and what an ILS Critical Area sign looks like?

Then we send them on to a basic instrument proficiency checkout in an Elite
PCATD. Again, it's shocking how many people can't scan a basic six-pack. Is
it because Cessnas today have G-1000's? I actually interviewed one candidate
who got so slow on an ILS that he stalled and went out of control. He
probably would have gotten lost in the holding pattern, except he never got
there because he turned the wrong way when I told him to go directly to the
VOR. He couldn't read the HSI well enough to know whether he was TO or FROM.

Even those who do get hired seem to lack a basic knowledge of operating in
an IFR environment. One of my instructors came to me one day in the middle
of a lesson and he was extremely frustrated. He said he couldn't introduce
any emergencies to the crew he was working with in the procedures trainer
because they were struggling so hard just to navigate. And this was with the
FMS fully functional!

It seems that there are a lot of students who think "close enough" is close
enough. We tell them on day one of Basic Indoc (and every day thereafter)
how important it is to learn their callouts, flows and profiles. Twenty-one
days later, they're still arguing with us that they have the callouts down
"pretty well." In our program, they don't even go to the simulator until
they've spent 13 days in the procedures trainer, and we still have students
who struggle to get ready for the sim.

We've discussed this amongst ourselves and think there are many issues at
work here: (1) Maybe the younger generation just has a sense of entitlement.
I know I sound like an old man here, but there really is a perceptible
difference in work ethic from young pilots today and new pilots just four
years ago. One of my most senior ground instructors mentioned that it's just
different this time around.

(2) The industry has driven the good people away: The last four years have
not been kind to the airline industry. Maybe today's best and brightest have
decided to go to medical school instead of pursuing their real dream of
aviation. I live in the midwest and I think everyone around here knows
someone who used to fly for either Delta or Comair who has been devastated
by what happened at Delta over the last few years. A friend of mine on
furlough tried to get a state grant to get re-trained with a 737 type rating
so he could apply to Southwest. In the past, other pilots have been able to
do that. This time around, the state of Ohio denied his request by saying
that basically they didn't think there would be enough flying jobs in the
future to support him and that his retraining grant needed to be spent
pursuing another career. It doesn't take long for word to get around that
flying isn't exactly the positive career choice it used to be.

(3) The upcoming 1500-hour / ATP minimum requirement for all airline pilots
might be scaring away good people. The ATP rule won't go into effect until
2013, so this is a perfect time to get an airline job. In two years of
flying 85 hours a month, it'll be easy to beef up the logbook. This may be
the last time in history that a guy with less than 1000 hours has a shot at
an airline career. But I'm concerned that some pilots have only heard part
of the story and have given up, thinking the rule is already in effect.

(4) Now that we're all wired and connected to the cloud, we just process
information differently: My company is taking a hard look at our training
procedures to see if we can present the information in a way that's more
exciting for tech-savvy pilots. Unfortunately, many regional airlines see
their training departments as expenses rather than investments, so there's
not exactly an open checkbook for new training initiatives.

(5) Economic hard times have made it difficult for instrument pilots to stay
proficient if they're paying for their time themselves. I'll be honest; I
don't know if I could have afforded to get all my ratings in today's fuel
environment. I paid between $50 and $85 an hour to rent most of my training
planes, and I struggled to do that. That was when avgas was about $1.50 a
gallon. Throw in reduced hours at work or downright unemployment, and
staying proficient takes a back seat. We're seeing a lot of people coming in
the door who haven't touched an airplane for three years!

(6) No one is getting commercial pilots' licenses any more. The FAA will
tell you that the number of commercial pilots licenses issued has plummeted
in the last three years. It is only a fraction of what it was four years
ago. That means that the regionals are going to be competing for a smaller
and smaller pool of pilots. When that happens, the quality of the candidate
pool remaining quickly drops.

Everyone on the inside of the industry sees it, but none of us knows exactly
what "it" is yet. I personally think it's a combination of all the above
factors.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but we are working hard to find one.