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Pilot shortage threatens industry
The looming shortage of pilots and technicians in [Asia] is hampering the burgeoning civil aviation industry in Asia-Pacific that could account for nearly half of global air travel in the next two decades. As in other parts of the world, there are already insufficient aviation personnel in the region to support airline fleet modernisation and a surge in air travel demand. (www.bangkokpost.com) Más...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
starting a new thread so we will have room to write. Back to the pilot shortage. I remember, in the early seventies, United would hire someone fresh out of college with zero time and put them into a training class with flight safety or some other good flight school and bring them up to commercial w/insturment. It seemd to work well for awhile then they got offers from other airlines or businesses and they drifted away. The young fellows we have read in this block are right about the need to have "the burn" to be an airline pilot. Many "think" they would love to be an airline pilot but a few checks and several night flights later (and all the crap that goes with a job that others are jealous of) and the "burn" fades unless one is born to fly the big ones. I thank God I was allowed to do so!
Here's my favorite. With about 5000 hours and 2 type ratings, I applied to American Airlines. I was given an interview, with a non-pilot HR type that lasted about 3 minutes. A letter followed a few weeks later that said I was not qualified. Fast forward about 6 months. I was dropping off a Sabreliner at Perryville Missouri for extended maintenance. A young lady that worked for Rockwell, was assigned to give us a ride to STL in a Cessna 421. As we progressed toward STL, I asked her if she was getting any jet time in her capacity at Rockwell. See told me she had been a few test flights and had accumulated 7 hours in the Sabre. But, she really didn't care because she waiting on a class date from American. Her 700 hours in a C150 and 100 hours in a C421 trumped my military training at American. Or then again, maybe it was the plumbing.
After the Air Force I ran into the same thing when interviewing with United and TWA. I let myself get discouraged and went to crop dusting (actually spraying, I had done some while in the Air Force during days off, had to sneak around to do it but it paid good!) Anyway, I flew crop work in summer and pipeline patrol in the winter. Also went to school and finished my college (biochemistry). While in my last year, I was doing instructing, and an old student came in and said "you should talk to Pan Am, they are looking for high mach time guys and they would probably be happy to have you." I did, two weeks later I went to New York and one week later got a letter of acceptance. Funny thing, after getting that letter I got calls and letters from every airline that had turned me down 2-3 years earlier! Never have I gotten so much pleasure in writing letters of NO THANKS! As is was I would have made a lot more money with almost any one of the others but stuck with Pan Am because they stuck with me!
Richard: my e-mail is [email protected] drop me a line.
Richard Weiss: As a 38 yr. pilot (Pan Am) who went to work for Korean Air after Pan Am shutdown I agree with your viewpoint. The pilots themselves are at fault for the mistreatment however. I remember in the fifties when all airline pilots shut the airlines down for a 5 day period. The Cowards in government couldn't do enough for them and for awhile a pilot was treated with respect. I'm retired now but I would have just called the chief pilot's office and explained to him that I wanted the Pan Am lawyers to explain to me why I must give up my right to due process to fly their airplane for them. I would have been out of a job but it would have been great fun! For all the young bucks out there that think they'll do ANYTHING for a flying job just remember; When they talk about raising taxes on millionaires YOU will be the one targeted. The millionaires are the ones who give the politicians the money to run on, if you think they are going to tax them your not smart enough to be a pilot! Try putting up with the B.S. and having 50-60% of your money stolen from you and see how gung-ho your are after sitting up in a cockpit for 3 nights in a row. The glamour kinda loses its' glow after 25 years of that kind of crap!
Gene, I rode the jumpseat many times on Pan Am and can honestly say tears were in eyes the day it was shut down. What a great operation, with ton of professionals. The new guys coming up have been taught from day one to sit down, shut up, let the plane do the flying and do it under conditions that are demeaning to free people. I've written, in various threads on Flightaware, about the lack of respect a pilot must be willing to endure to practice his profession. If these new guys are willing to subject themselves to TSA harrassment,and FAA random pee tests without probable cause, just to earn a shrinking living they will get exactly what they deserve.
richard: I'm sure we were glad to have your company in the cockpit. Where did you fly out of? I might have been the Capt. if it was a 747. I should have given the whole story on my flying life--I was in the last three classes of Aviation Cadets and many of the "hot shots" posting on this site would not have completed that course of instruction. I flew in Nam when it was still called indonesia (protecting some of the rubber plantations). Later I was recalled and flew F-105s for 16 mos. That was in '72 and 73. Did a rescue operation in Angola when the FLN (that lovely group of "agricultural reformers" who ran around with AK-47s "enforcing the law" and killing about 500k people in the process. We hauled out 2451 Masa Verdy Islanders to Ghana where another crew, Pan AM also, flew them on to Brazil where they were resettled. We were flying a 707 (only 1200 hours on the aircraft) so you can figure out the loads. Many were children and they rode on their parents laps. Those "Celebrated" (by our Congress and Acamedia) reformers shot up the airplane so bad over the ten day period that the United Nations paid Pan Am for the aircraft and it was flowen to Arizona and junked. So I figure I have paid my dues just like thousands of others. At this point if I want to complain about a overbearing government and their paid thugs I will and to hell with the "wet behind the ears" youngsters who have been so indocrinated into socialism/communisum that they think they have the right to question their elders! Just "learning the rules" and how to hook up an autopilot doesn't give them too many "rights" as far as I am concerned!
Did the Air Berlin thing in the 80's. I rode the 727 shuttle to FRA for the trip to JFK on the 747. I was treated to many first class seats. The entire crew always made me feel like a paying passenger. Flew hueys in the delta in '68. Another tour on the DMZ in Korea, in '70-71. The sense of entitlement started with a lot of the younger pilots in the 90's. As soon as they showed up on the property, it was theirs to control. If they keep up the trend, the guys who made airline flying a great job will have all their gains erased.
Unfortunately Richard, I'm afraid you are right. The "golden age" of being a pilot was when the airlines were still flying props and the loss of an engine on takeoff was a real test! Jets are fast, comfortable, well powered, and everything we all wanted when we were kids but they also made airline flying just another big business where the pilot never saw the vp or pres. during his whole carreer so the operational side of the business got lost in "big deals" and large loans. It was still a great life, well most of it anyway, and I'm glad I had my shot at it.
For what it's worth; pardon me for my mistake 9 days ago, I meant to say Indochina not Indonesia. Our little town has a "community college" and I run into a lot of the kids from there (they work in a lot of the stores) and they are being indocronated into socialist thinking. Of course we have disagreements and I tell them to go to the library and get a world atlas that has the "CIA" pages in it. Note that literally every country that is listed as socialist (politically) has 20% to 40% of the population living below the STARVATION level! I tell them to try to figure out why that is!
It started in kindergarten for most of the kids. The leftist teachers' union make these kids believe that anyone with more than them is evil, and deserves to be taxed to poordom. Listen to the idiots marching on Wall Street complain about having to pay back student loans. The evil bankers must have held them at gunpoint to get them to sign loan papers. Entitlement mentality at its finest. They actually feel entitled to everyone elses wealth. Unless that mold is broken, we are doomed as a republic.
richard: We have been doomed since Johnson's "great society". The huge amount of wealth created while America was still a truly free country (read-government feared the people)has slowly been bled off by theives, thugs, and fools who seem to get re-elected time after time. At this point there are so many more "takers" than "producers" I fear for the Country. Some of the fault lies with the public, we are the ones who have allowed the government to forget we are a Republic. We could start rectifying the situation with a mass arrest and trial of the "occupy" crowd with a loss of Citizenship and deportation to Afrcia! When there they would complete the other half of their education--that's where you actually have to face the world and DO something! As it is we have gone through the country's wealth with no return on the investment!
In 1964 the poverty rate in the USA was about 10%. After nearly 50 years and trillions of dollars spent, we have a poverty rate that has remains unchanged at about 10%. The diffence is our poor have big screen tv, airconditioning and a car. Our poor live better than 70% of the world's population. It makes it easy to draw the conclusion that we will always have a group of people that will have less than others, and complain about it. If the same energy was used to make a living, the poverty rate would drop to 5%. Those are the truely disadvantaged that need the rest of us to lift the up.
Richard: I remimber when I was a kid the County in Kansas where I lived at the time had something called the "county farm". It was a place where the people who couldn't or wouldn't take care of themselves were sent for a place to live and three squares a day. This place would be a working farm and the people living there were,for the most part, self sufficient. Doctors would go visit the farm a couple of times a year to check on cronic health problems or accidents. My Grandfather was a circuit court judge and he thought that was the most humane, thoughful, and best way to care for welfare clients. They even held school 3 days a week (after dinner) to better qualify a person to go back into the world and fend for themselves. The system worked very well until the lawyers thought they could "make it better" (read, steal money from the system). The farms were sold and the lawyers bought them and became rich farming and paying the "poor folks" the smallest wages they could get by with. As my Grandfatehr often said "I never saw a lawyer that made anything better!". So it goes with most "good intentions" when the "good intentions" meet up with lawyers!