Re: Buffalo crashchat

On May 14, 3:36 pm, CheeseHusker dos <jonrus...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On May 14, 2:32 pm, xyzzy <xyzzy.d...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:



On May 14, 3:27 pm, CheeseHusker dos <jonrus...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On May 14, 2:24 pm, xyzzy <xyzzy.d...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On May 14, 3:08 pm, CheeseHusker dos <jonrus...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On May 14, 2:01 pm, xyzzy <xyzzy.d...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On May 14, 2:57 pm, xyzzy <xyzzy.d...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On May 14, 2:35 pm, CheeseHusker dos <jonrus...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On May 14, 1:15 pm, xyzzy <xyzzy.d...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Mentally chew on this for a minute:

http://www.willflyforfood.com/airlinepilotpay/Colgan_Air_Pilot_Pay.php

These amounts are per hour.  Pilot message boards report a bit over
minimum is the typical workload.   FO means first officer (i.e,.
copilot).

Who probably made more money than the pilots (especially the first
officer):

1. The TSA screener who x-rays the baggage
2. The manager of the McDonald's in the terminal
3. A pizza delivery guy (for the first officer, anyway).

Looks like I lucked out, having to settle for a career in software
instead of the aviation career I used to dream of....

Is this more an example of too many qualifed people chasing too few
slots?

No, see my other post. It's like minor league baseball, people willing
to toil for peanuts with the promise of a bigger payday down the line.

Plus. in the last decade they've significantly lowered the
qualifications for these jobs, so definitely not too many qualified
people chasing too few slots, it's more like they've steadily lowered
the qualifications until they get to people who will take those jobs
at that pay.

For example:

Used to need 1400 hours to fly for a regional.

Now you can do it with 300, with the appropriate ratings  (*I* have
over 300, ferchrissakes, though not the ratings).- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

So they had to lower to 300 hours to find enough applicants to fly the
RJs?  But doesn't that sort of contradict your minor leaguer analogy?
Or are you more saying that they are plenty of pilots - but very few
willing to work at those pay scales - and to get enough at those
scales, they had to lower the requirements?

Bingo.  I mean consider all the thousands of pilots who have been laid
off post-911, you'd figure the regionals should have people with jet
experience lining up for those jobs.  But they don't want to pay, so
even with a glut of unemployed pilots they had to lower the
requirements to get people in.  My flying club and the FBO at my
airport have got zillions of resumes from guys with 1000's of hours of
turbine time, looking for flight instructor jobs.

If the latter, it seems that there would be a lot of mid level pilots
on the outs - w/ too much experience for the RJ pay scale, but not
enough seniority for the major leagues.

Yup.  They're called real estate agents.  Or pizza parlor owners.  Or
general contractors.  Or database administrators. Etc.

When I first learned that you could get into the right seat of an RJ
with so few hours my first thought was, sweet, I know what my post-
retirement gig will be.  Spend some time and money getting the ratings
while I'm making a good salary, and after retirement/layoff/whatever
ends this gig, right seat here I come!  I know one guy who went
straight from being a flight instructor at my flying club (in Cessna
152s) to captain (yes CAPTAIN) of a Q400 (he could have flown an RJ,
but it would have been as an FO).  But the more I learn the more I
think, hmm, maybe I'll just do flight instructing or local freight
dogging.

Btw, as yet another aside, the captain of the Q400 that crashed had
previously worked at Verizon and taken a very good severance package,
which is how he could afford to hold the job of regional airline pilot
in his 40's with a wife and two kids.  This is one the things he was
discussing in the cockpit transcript with his cute young female co-
pilot when he should have been SHUTTING UP AND FLYING THE PLANE.
Personally, I think he was trying to impress her which didn't help the
situation at all.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

So.....basically you're blaming the chick?

I know what the canonical rsfc response to this should be but I just
can't bring myself to do it.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Back to a more serious vein of conversation.....isn't flying still
statisically enormously safer than driving?  And wouldn't a more apt
comparison of pay scales be between various modes of transport - eg
buses, transit operators and the like?

That's an interesting point, a few things in reply to it:

1. Flying is statistically safer than driving because it's done by
professionals who have a lot more training that the average car (or
bus) driver.

2. How does the training and complexity required of bus drivers and
transit operators, etc. compare to piloting a jetliner?

However the higher up the food chain you go the more automated and
easy it is to fly the equipment. IMO, I really think the difficulty
of various jobs in aviation is inversely proportional to the pay and
prestige. I'm not sure the job of piloting a 777 across the Altantic
to an airport like Heathrow where you arrive before dawn with no wind
and even though it's foggy, there are automated approach and landing
systems that take you right down to the pavement is really much harder
than driving a bus, if (and it's a big if) nothing goes wrong. But
taking a turboprop into Buffalo on a windy, snowy, icy night
definitely is harder than either of those, yet pays far less.

I do think over the next generation the job of piloting aircraft is
going to become much less lucrative and less prestigious than it
was. I think if you talk to people who are in and around the
industry, it's already happened but i think it will get even more so
over the next few decades.
.

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