It’s more than that. The entire industry knew this big bubble of retirement was coming. In an effort to kick the can down the road, in 2009 the mandatory retirement age was raised to 65 from 60. This effectively froze everyone in place.
The older more senior pilots stayed around making the big bucks. The middle seniority was stuck making middle bucks. The bottom seniority was stuck making bottom bucks. And the new pilot was never hired. The solution sucked.
Now, the talented young new generation doesn’t want to go through the long career slog to make it to big bucks when they can become computer programmers and make big bucks quicker.
The military isn’t pumping out pilots like it did post Vietnam.
The entire pilot pool dried up, especially the unwanted white male. Watch for the next big solution to be even worse.
EC
Yeah, it’s gotten pretty bad.
The new generation of civilian trained pilots are a different breed. Not all, but a lot.
My policy in the past was fly commercial for business because you need to get there and fly private for fun.
Now I block of the time and fly private for business.