Some of the regionals pay very low, approaching minimum wage. Only attraction is flight time to get on the big carriers.
Just noticed your freep name.
Quick, summon the H1b visa genie!
Flooding the pilot pool with underpaid muslim imports will fix everything.
What could possibly go wrong?
Plus millenials think driving a stick shift is beyond their capabilities.
No wonder.
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Regional carriers pay pilots an average of $27,350 per year, according to Paul Ryder, a captain at ExpressJet Airlines who is active with the ALPA. That compares with an annual salary of $103,390 at large airlines, according to US Labor Department data.
Aspiring pilots must pay between $150,000 to $200,00 to obtain their license, Ryder said.
Three years ago, US regulators stiffened the requirements on pilots following a 2009 Colgan Air crash near Buffalo, New York, that killed 49 people.
Commercial pilots must now have 1,500 hours of flight time before qualifying for their pilot's license, compared with just 250 prior to the rule shift.
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So if you want to be an airline pilot, which can be one of the most stressful jobs in the world with an awesome responsibility, you can look forward to being paid peanuts at the regionals.
Yes the pay is a factor, but for me when they required 1,500 hours to be hired is the real reason of the shortage.
alot pilots or pilots wannabees don't want to work for a living, so they have in the past accepted the lower wages
There is a pilot shortage?
Forgive my ignorance, since I just saw “An Officer and a Gentleman” again last night. But aren’t pilots with military training still a big source of pilots for airlines? Or has our military downsized so that they just aren’t producing that many? Or are many military pilots staying in making a career in the military, rather than retiring from the military and becoming pilots in civilian life???
bfl
According to my friends who have retired from the USAF in the last ten years, and now fly for the airlines, it is a pretty well paid job of bus driver.
They will always tell me that flying for a living is great. But the hours and the work “conditions” —(the long routes and what not)—get tiring after a while.
But as a friend of mine who flew in Iraq in ‘90 and ‘03, it is nice not to be shot at.
Hire the Muzzies, that’s what they’re here for, aren’t they...
Oh...wait.
And yet America has 95 million working-age adults out of the labor force.
We are a nation with many, very great, contradictions.
They can start by paying pilots a decent salary.
The article didn’t mention the root cause of the pilot shortages.
IMHO the root cause is the downsiszing of the American Military. Like it or not for over 30 years the Department of Defense ran the world’s largest technical training school system. And to a large degree it still does today.
Where else can a recent high school graduate with no money learn technical skills like every job in the airline industry? Where else could the high school graduate learn the inter-personal skills required to be a good employee and lower to mid level manager?
The technical training costs thousands of dollars - the personnel skills cost even more - time.
Jump to college graduates and the same rules apply
Reduced number of military pilots means fewer future civilian pilots and higher training costs at every level.
For the smaller regional airlines it means higher training costs (dollars and time) than they can absorb. Thus the problem will continue and deepen.
This is coming to all industries and government offices. This is a demographic contraction of the experienced work force. The boomers will benefit if they want to keep working as companies will bend over backwards to keep them. My generation, Gen-X, simply does not have enough people to replace the boomers, so we will also benefit when it hits the fan. Automation may fix this problem in some areas, but demographics is a powerful force on economies.
Just came across story in the local paper related to this.
http://kdminer.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=69215
That’s what you get when you think you can pay highly skilled people $15.00 an hour, might as well work at McDonalds.
They destroyed general aviation due to all the associated sky high costs, now airlines are complaining of lack of pilots?
Most can’t even afford the schooling/training....lol
Because Diversity! Also #NeverTrump !
...oh wait.