Submitted by DeSouza on December 02, 2012.
This whole thing about pilot shortage drives me nuts when considering current annual entry level salary $20,000/year and ATP license cost of $90,000; not mentioning the 1,500 hours experience. It is hard to see how this void will be fulfilled. Most of my pilot friends comes from well to do families that received a lot of help from parents before they finally started to make the proverbial “OK” financially. With the offer/demand marketing rules, things will have to change somehow; however the ones in the training business are not vested in the hiring business. It will be interesting to see what happens.
"The guys I was having dinner with said they’ve taken pay cuts recently, and if they had to do it all over again, they probably wouldn’t choose to become professional pilots. The cost of going to school is too high and the new minimum hours requirements would be a deal breaker if they had to sign on with an airline for food stamp wages.
And you wonder why there is a pilot shortage....