I don’t know about you folks, but lately, I’ve had the repeated feeling that we’re living in the upside-down world. There’s a lot of craziness going on—some of it good, some of it bad, all of it weird. The airline industry is a prime example. Now, mind you, change is historically the most constant thing in this business, but even by aviation standards, these are wild times.
We went straight from a historic pilot shortage with tons of hiring and opportunity to staring into the abyss of industry collapse and mass layoffs—and then right back to the pilot shortage, twice as critical as in 2019. It’s left many of us with a severe case of whiplash, wondering when the next wild swing will come. (Hey, who had a major European ground war in 2022 on their darkest timeline bingo card? Not me!)
