The US just pulled out of Afghanistan. There should be plenty of Air Force reserve pilots to recruit from. Perhaps they're just not making it worth their while.
@@jonathanperry8331 The 'RULERS' don't want us to travel around...while they take their own jets to travel anywhere ....!! Bad luck we were born 'sheeple'..!! They just want us out of planes and in our one room appartments, stacked upon each other, without cars, only one train or bus.to travel to work .!! WE MAKE YOU OWN NOTHING...BUT YOU WILL BE HAPPY !!!.
@@gerdiealbers7788I apologize. by we I meant America. I wasn't trying to claim that I was in the military. The point I'm trying to make is there's a lot of surplus military pilots around that could use jobs. Not only that if they are reservists they can work full time unless they get deployed. All they have to do is give them a salary that's worth their time. I follow a lot of pilots on UA-cam including Blue Angels and combat pilots you name it. A good one is a guy called c. W. Lemoine. Call sign mover. This guy is nuts. He's flown f-16s f18s Air Force and Navy. He's also an airline pilot a police officer and author and is learning how to fly helicopters. I don't know how he has the time. You should check his channel out he's a pretty cool guy. What's funny is the reason he got the call sign mover was because he was on a live fire training mission out on a range and he mistaked a bunch of cows on his infrared for the Targets. Not intentionally they just happened to be there. So he was given the name mover. Short for moo-ver. Get it? Call signs are funny because every call sign that someone has is supposed to be embarrassing although it sounds cool. For example there's this one guy called slag. Slag sounds like a badass call sign but he got that because the first time he took off from the carrier they said he Screamed Like A Girl hahahagahaha. I'm going to have to edit my first comment I have no intention of people thinking that I served when I didn't. I do know a lot of people that were at some of the biggest battles in Afghanistan and Iraq because I graduated in 2003. Fortunately everyone came home safe at least physically. I knew one guy that was in Fallujah in the Marine corps and it was like you could see it in his eyes it's like he never left. Haven't seen him in a few years hope he's okay. Sorry for ranting I went down memory lane for a second.
@@jonathanperry8331 No man...I loved your story......,! We need fun in our lives aswell!! Thanks for 'our conversation.....it was enlightening...!! Bye..!!
It's not a staff shortage, it's a wage and conditions shortage. Why would I take an offer from Dublin Airport when I can just earn more working at Aldi
I am a fit, healthy ATPL holder with 20k airline hours and an impeccable career behind me. The management of my airline decided to offload me last year, luckily paying me handsomely to go. In fact, they gave me about double what I would have earned if I had continued working to the end of my career, as a tax free lump sum. I cannot comprehend how this was a sound business decision for them, but now it seems it was also a disastrous strategic decision as well. Effectively, they lost me at huge expense! I have learned over the years that the root of all the problems in aviation lies within airline managements. These companies are run by self serving, self important and often corrupt people who refuse to be criticised or even advised by those with valuable (and invariably much longer) experience in the industry. Disgracefully, in my case, even safety was subordinated to mindless compliance with all the irrational and often illegal diktats being forced by governments. So in fact, I will be happy never to return to the industry that I loved for 35 years, despite the idiots running it. Their arrogance is everyone’s downfall. Their loss, my gain.
most larger corporations (not just airlines) are run by people who know little to nothing about how their industry works. It's a general problem with publicly traded companies where anyone can buy themselves a part and then pick friends or whoever they like best to take on the management, with no concern for their experience or abilities. The general misconception is that the people at the top only need to know how to do business and don't require any knowledge of the product or service the company provides, and thus you end up with bad decisions, poor planning, and a failure to predict which direction the industry is going (evident by the enormous amount of big old companies that went bankrupt in the past 10 years). We have tons of companies that are mostly owned by hedge funds, holding companies, banks, and other money people who just want to make money and generally don't care what the company is doing as long as the money come in. Granted many of them stay out of the business, but usually the CEO and top management is picked by the owners and all the problems trickle down from there
Congrats to you on ending your career with such a golden parachute!! That is a rarity in the industry. And as you stated so clearly, a stupid and idiotic decision by management. I’ve seen such moronic management in many industries and always hoped it would not happen to aviation, but alas greed knows no boundaries. ENJOY YOUR RETIREMENT!!
The one thing that I find laughable is that an organization that treats its employees like a number (by firing them during the greatest uncertainty in a generation) is absolutely shocked when those same employees treat the organization as just any old job. Trust flows both ways and the organizations that realize that are the ones that are best suited to survive times like these.
You can’t blame them for firing people after the entire air traffic industry comes to a stop… what if it took 5 years instead of 2 to get back to the industry normal? In that case almost every airline would have gone bankrupt and nobody would have a job. This is just a reality it is hard to plan for events like Covid.
I just got home from a flight from a small regional airport in Wisconsin to Mumbai and back. This was my first time flying since pandemic happened & flew on United, Lufthansa & Vistara. Something I noticed was that there were a lot more really difficult people that the airports & airlines had to deal with but also noticed how much more a smile, a word of appreciation & joking with people from every department of aviation during my trip- meant to people. I’ve always been respectful and thankful to everyone when I fly but those actions definitely were much more appreciated this time around. I picked up a couple $10 Starbucks gift cards and when noticed someone going above and beyond or with a really good attitude, I gave them a gift card. It was such a small gesture on my part but being appreciated brought tears to almost everyone that I gave one to, even the luggage handler guy that was singing a song and joking with passengers while unloading our carry on bags teared up. It’s easy to forget that it’s not only us passengers that struggle in the airports or on the planes, it’s everyone and that’s important to remember. A small gesture of appreciation and thankfulness goes a long way and can make the worst situations a little bit better for everyone.
My airline has noticed a significant rise in 'Disruptive passangers' in the last 6 months. Crazy stories that used to be oblnce a summer are becoming every 2-3 weeks.
@@MrBizteck That’s really concerning. You’d think people would be better behaved now. I’ve never seen a FA have to threaten to call police on passenger b4 but saw it 2x on way to India and once on way back. It’s like some people have forgotten how to act in public.
5:14 Speaking as a stubborn something too. If my workplace fired me because of reasons other then my performance, then asked me to come back two years later. I'd kindly tell them where to put it
I used to work for a big bank and I saw some long term guys get laid off. They did a critical job supporting old software, something you couldn't just retrain someone for, they did it for 30 years. One of the guys came back and I assumed he was in a tough spot. I said hope everything is ok, sorry you got laid off.... And he said oh don't worry, they've been calling me frantically since the week they laid me off begging me to come back and I told them to screw off or pay me and meet my demands. It was funny, I was happy for him. Long story short they laid him off as he was close to retirement to offshore his job to people who also got paid absolute garbage (I talked to them and they were underpaid too... I always thought a big us company in a place like India would pay good, but it didn't... They didn't want to pay for skilled workers, and simply hired anyone for bottom dollar and tried to train them).
I am an RN. Management laid me off with a nice payout in 2018, before the pandemic, because I had been there the longest and made the best money. They were cutting costs. So I retired earlier than planned. One of the docs (we were a doctor owned organization) expressed concern, saying I would be able to find another job. I told her “nope, I’ve piled up a nice retirement already. I’m out.” I burned my license. Needless to say, it was a blessing in disguise.
"pilot shortage" is usually an abbreviation for "shortage of people willing to accept the diminished wages and working conditions of modern airline flying"
@@darkgalaxy5548 yes, that is true. Perhaps as our society regresses to a feudal state, and the middle class disappears, pilots will become like a kind of knight, with the profession passed along hereditary lines by titled landowners. Or, flying will become almost 100% automated, with office people able to learn to operate aircraft over the weekend from a tablet.
If airlines want pilots they are going to have to train their own while on contract. No debts, straight up pay. Sign them for 5 or 10 years, leave before that and you have to pay part of the education back.
Its not an abbreviation for $143,741 average wage? And an average salary of $257,000 at retirement? But your words sound cool, even if there is no actual basis for them.
To be honest, these problems existed already prior to the pandemic. I startet working as a ramp dispatcher in August 2011 and every year it got worse and worse and worse. People only getting part time contracts of about 100 hours, so that your employer can let you work minimum hours in the winter and up to 190 hours in summer. Most people need one or two other jobs beside their main job to get along in their daily life because of only getting paid minimum wage. So a propper work life balance cannot exist. There is so much pressure to cut costs that a lot of new employees have bad training because every day of training cost money because these trainees are not productive when they are in the classroom instead of working at the check-in desk or on the ramp. In my opinion we could encounter major safety issues in the future because not everyone who is loading airplanes knows what a center of gravity is or what influence a certain way of loading or seating might have to the CG. As an employee you are under constant pressure because your employer makes you responsible for delays instead of protecting you. Often it is not even possible to do a break and eat or drink something because your next aircraft landed already. Then you have complaining crews who yell at you because you were late at the aircraft or passengers who yell at you even if you didn't do anything wrong. Those circumstances only make people sick and with minimum wage I personally don't see a chance to hire enough people to get along during this summer. Luckily I quit my job as ramp dispatcher and I am now working as an apron controller at Frankfurt Airport. And we encounter problems with shortage of parking stands because the aircraft on the stands don't depart because of big delays but other aircraft which were supposed to get on those stands landed already, so they have to wait with running engine on the taxiways until their parking stand becomes vacant. So the question I ask myself is. Why is there so much pressure to cut the costs? Who is responsilbe for that? Who is responsible for these ridiculous low ticket prices? In think that there is no chance to improve the situation as long as it is possible to fly through Europe for 10€. In the end the people who pay those prices are the employees who are working their asses off because aviation is their passion. Flying has to cost a propper price in my opinion in order to pay every party who is involved in the process with a fair amount of money, so that companies can pay a fair wage to their employees and to provide propper and secure working contracts and to have the chance to hire enough people and give them a propper training to improve safety.
Absolutely! I remember a time when even tickets for charter flights to holiday destinations within Europe would cost the equivalent of 200 euros. Ticket prices are simply not realistic anymore.
You´re right. But it´s not only the "Low-Price-Ticket-Policy" - and btw.: especially in Germany most selled tickets are far away from being selled for cheap money. It´s mostly a question of the Shareholder-Value-Management-Policy who made the core point in generating as much benefit for the shareholder´s as possible - and that means to cut costs as much as possible - and that means to cut money payed for the staff and the equipment as much as possible because both are costs. That is not only a problem for the airline industry - it has ruined whole branches.
There will be a disaster for badly loaded luggage. Ramp dispatchers will have to have a certification. There will be a normal contract and it will not be possible to hire certified ramp dispatchers just for the Summer months, so the industry will have to adapt. Ramp dispatchers must just wait for the aerial disaster ;-) Similarly, new pilots will have a wage increase under the form of loans for training at favourable terms, or of wage increase. Airport security personnel will also have to have a wage increase if the scarcity has to be remedied. Ticket prices will go up. Marginal airlines will get out of the market.
Imagine someone in their 20’s, having already bearing school debt, you'll need to build even more debt to get into a cadet program that takes years and not guaranteed to pass, and having recent example where they can just fire you if some crisis hits and left you be hung you to dry, it's just too much risk to pursue a career like this. For airport workers it's even worse. Long and unstable work hours and remote locations, and they still only offer wages no better than minimum pay, and then complain about not able to hire anyone. I wonder why.
In the UK some airline staff reportedly moved into haulage and the rail industries. I suppose for airport workers it depends on location, in the UK, at least at Heathrow, there's a high reliance on local immigrant communities for staffing -- and if you can't retain staffing levels from that pool of resources you're going to be in trouble long term. I think we could see the end of the low-cost airlines sooner rather than later, especially in Europe.
By 'school' do you mean college/university? If so, I would ask our host here whether he thinks that a degree should be demanded of anyone wanting to learn how to fly commercially. My view is that it shouldn't be - and I would rate stall-recovery more important than dissertation-writing.
I know Dublin airport laid off a load of ground workers during the pandemic era and is now struggling to recruit anyone to work for them, causing endless issues. The thing is they are offering far worse pay and conditions than pre-pandemic. They recruit staff on a pathetic 20 hours per week-guaranteed contract, and expect them to then be 'on call' for the entire rest of the week. And they offer a measly 14 Euro per hour for this. In a city where the cost of living is INSANE, rents are far in excess of London at this point. So nobody can literally afford to work for them. 20 hours at 14Euro p/h isn't nearly enough to pay rent, let alone feed yourself in Dublin, and having the block out the rest of the week in case they need you precludes picking up other work, and you'll effectively be living a financially precarious to unsupportable and socially utterly miserable lifestyle working unsocial hours and likely 7 days weeks, having to pay part of said low wages in transport costs to work and never having a proper 2-day weekend. The staff they're getting in Dublin are quitting fast too, due to the horrible conditions and turnover is huge, causing issues due to a lot of staff with zero experience, having driven off the experienced ones. Those who recruit need to understand NOBODY wants to live like this. Not people with families, not single people, nobody. They're better off stuck on the dole or working for similar low wages in the back end of nowhere where living costs are lower than getting into debt working in a major city ina dead end, go-nowhere job where they will be fired the moment the company feels the pinch. The same issue is actually effecting the hospitality industry too. They aren't paying bar staff enough for them to pay rent in Dublin. So there's a 'shortage'. A shortage that would be remedied if the owners put their hands in their pockets and paid a LIVING wage. which is way higher than they think.
@@pekirt I went through school knowing that I was studying something I would enjoy. I didn't get my degree because I expected to make money. The same may well be true for pilots, but I'd be surprised if it held true for most other positions in aviation. I have an uncle who worked baggage for United for over 40 years. He didn't like his job, neither did his co-workers. But, when he worked, it was steady. It isn't now.
Who knew that it would be a tough sell to get someone smart to dedicate years of their life and hundreds of thousands of debt, without guarantee of a job, and a starting salary that won’t pay half their rent, and a certification that is useless if they get injured in any way, develop any mental health issues, can’t pass background checks, or they simply can’t find a job in this ONE highly specialized field. Not a gamble that anyone should take honestly.
With a pilot shortage the industry and safety regulators need to be very careful about overworking those crews they have remaining, we've seen so many major crashes and incidents where crew fatigue has been a major factor. Another excellent video there Petter, thanks.
I'm not comfortable flying at the moment. There WILL be safety problems, not only due to overworked crews, but also because of the lack of competent security personnel on the ground. I hope I'm wrong, but I fear we are in for some very unpleasant incidents in conjunction with air travel in the next months...
A earlier video of Petter’s concerned the Air Canada San Francisco incident. The flight time limitations in Canada were highlighted and have since been changed as a result. With holiday flights from Canada to the Caribbean leading to 14 hour duty days, possibly 15 with Captains’ discretion, it’s no fun landing back in bad weather in Canadian winters when you’ve been on duty 14 hours. They now need an augmented crew. It would have helped with employment if not for the pandemic but we are now seeing the same issue as in Europe as things pick up.
My spouse was employed by Air Canada. When the pandemic hit they were laying off staff. Even though the position held was fairly high, my spouse, who had stayed on longer than necessary, decided to retire. When travel picked up again, they called begging for a return to work. A number of friends had done the same. Very few returned to work. The airlines were having trouble getting staffing who were already trained. Also because it was 2 years of not working, anyone who returned would have to be retrained on changed sops. My spouse was laid off during 9/11 and worked as an escort for airside services escorting employees who were waiting for security clearances. This is a major problem. It used to take 3 months to complete the clearance, I have no idea how long it takes now, but, I imagine that they are very backed up. Therefore it is hard for airlines and airports to get qualified to secure employees to fill the spaces that are needed. I know for a fact that the salaries have been increasing because people have more choices and don’t have to go through all the rigamarole just to get paid what an untrained job would pay. The rules have made it difficult for airlines to get cheap labour that requires security and training. Too bad that they didn’t recognize this a long time ago. They might not have had to go back to the beginning, if they paid their staff decently to begin with. They also want you to work in areas that you are not sufficiently trained to do. If you say yes, if anything happens, they will blame you. I remember them trying to get staff to work on machines and areas, without training just before he retired. He knew enough to say I don’t have up to date training. Others who didn’t would do it. He said training had gone from a week long course to a day of following someone around. Having been through the process before, he was not willing to take the legal responsibility, without any of the appropriate training. I would not work for an airline these days. The lack of sufficient support and making sure that people know what they are doing, is scary and appalling.
Also still a lot of people getting sick with Covid, being sick for weeks and sometimes for months. Covid isn't gone, people just got used to it and try to ignore it. The truth is, were still in the middle of the pandemic and there is no real idea how to get out of it. In a few months, numbers will rise again massively.
I got let go after 32 years in the business and many of my friends have taken £10-15k pay cuts to stay in work and seen their roles in security dumbed down so the employer can pay lower rates, ignoring the fact that there still do exactly the same safety-related process ... For years airports, airlines, handlers have all been paying less and less and reducing benefits, and now this is coming back to bite them on the ***!!! Glad I'm out as the industry does not treat people well, and only the top execs kept their high pay and benefits and screw the employee... And it's more than just about pilots!!
@@nooboftheyear7170 hypercapitalism. Simply hypercapitalism. The fields hit by worker shortages now are those that are notorious for abusing their employees.
@@Argosh but you blame that on the dollar and by extension america, whereas this is economics and it seems to me that the pilots / crew and staff need to organise and get employment lawyers to firm up contracts while they have bargaining power, and this time around, they should hopefully realise that selling out your colleagues / the agreement for what would appear to be a job leads to the very conditions that you are berating as everyone races to the bottom.
@@nooboftheyear7170 Dollar, Euro, Pound whatever currency you prefer, the fact remains that wages are not keeping up with inflationary pressures and that affects every field of employment where employers are screwing their staff down on pay rates in order to build profits and satisfy their share holders. The airline industry is not immune to the same pressures.
I always laugh, when I hear about staff shortages due to low wages. As a Danish unionized citizen I know that businesses can afford paying a decent wage without going bankrupt, no matter how much they whine. If you really need unskilled staff to move stuff around, you can find them, provided you pay them well. And if you need skilled workers, then educate them yourself. What Lufthansa and Ryan Air is doing is just common sense.
@@salyoutubepremium7734 Maybe one way to look at this is to compare countries to vacation resorts. Denmark is like an all-inclusive resort where you pay one advertised fee, which may be higher than its competitors, but everything is included. Conversely, countries like the United States have a lower advertised fee, but most things cost extra. Depending on the circumstances, the all-inclusive resort, while seemingly more expensive in the beginning, actually costs less than having to pay for each incidental product or service.
@@Eternal_Tech Such a great way of putting it! It's the same old, same old argument we hear in the healthcare sphere too - but apparently "tax is theft", and everything else is interchangeably "socialism" and/or "communism"!😉 The facts are, that despite the US paying literally *twice* the GDP on healthcare than the UK does, it still gets outperformed on every metric - for instance, Brits have a longer life expectancy, suffer lower infant mortality rates, lower maternal mortality, etc, etc, but hey - that's American exceptionalism for ya!
One of my parents is a pilot for one of the big 3 in the US. It goes back to a big culture problem in the US of needing workers for jobs that need an incredible amount of training but pushing the cost of the training onto workers, then not paying them enough to make the training worth it. It's easily $100,000 to go to a premiere aviation college for a bachelor degree, and then another 6 figures to pay for additional flying time, certifications, aircraft rental, insurance, etc. Then you're frequently expected to work flying jobs for small regional companies that pay minimum wage equivalent. Then if you're lucky, you'll get picked up (or apply to and be hired by) a large company. So after having enough debt to buy a house, *then* you can start a job at a big airline. Some companies have started programs to train pilots from the start and cover most the cost of flying time, but it's too little, too late at this point. The culture of having to "put in your dues" = working in shitty conditions and pay for a number of years in the hopes of it working out like everyone else had to go through. it's not good for the people, and not good long term for the companies. It's more of shunting the costs from companies to employees. Conversely, the Air Force and Navy can't keep pilots in either because those pilots can fly in the military for 6 years, get trained on the military's budget, leave with no debt, then go fly for an airline where the job is easier (less multitasking/task saturation), pays better, doesn't risk your life, and you can see more of the world.
@@elliotoliver8679 The way to go is for airlines to train their own pilots, not rely on them being ready made at taxpayers expense. This is the trouble with industries today, they expect to be able to just employ from a pool of skilled people because they are too stingy to train their own staff, something industries used to do as standard.
From what I can see, the airlines still sold seats on aircraft that they knew they could not run. If these passengers where told the truth ‘sorry we can’t offer you a flight’ they could have made other arrangements
@@jamesr1703 What absolute GARBAGE - and sorry, Americans are worse than the British for shouting a company down. Highly demanding - want bread, butter and jam, but do not want to pay. What happens - yes, the airlines are to blame to a point - by spoiling passengers. Then, when they don't get their upgrade, they kick off. Pay for the f*****g seat if it matters that bad. Besides which, hound the airlines - want want want and I tell you what happens, they go bust. The greats, Pan Am, TWA, Eastern - but that is ok, the public cry for a day then move their allegiances to the next kid on the block, then repeat the whole sorry saga until they go bust. You don't walk into a restaurant and demand lobster when you're paying for chicken. The worst concept for airlines are frequent flyer miles and they're past their sell by date. Airlines do not sell seats on aircraft they knew they would not be able to operate. Airlines have slots at airports, no one will give a hoot about losing a slot at Wichita, but they do care about losing a slot at JFK or London Heathrow, Frankfurt etc. If they did not operate the flight within a specified time limit, the government/airport authority would 'force' the airline to give up the slot. Try getting a slot at one of those airports. Besides which, very smart people work in scheduling at airlines and there are sophisticated analytics built in. The pandemic was new to everyone and no one had a crystal ball to predict a bounce back. None the less, if airlines were able to forecast a rebound in travel based upon 'news', airport authorities were in the same position and should have started recruitment much earlier. We all lost 2 years of our life through covid, it looks like we are on our way to a 3rd. Next year will be better - we hope.
As observed, the chaos starts in the departure hall prior to check-in, with long queues. Yet the management response here in Australia has been to tell people to arrive earlier. Since that doesn't in any way increase the speed of processing, the result is just that the queues are longer. In a situation like this, telling people to arrive two hours before departure just guarantees that they'll have to queue for nearly two hours. Tell people that they cannot even join a check-in queue until half an hour before departure, and the queues will shorten, as if by magic, without affecting throughput at all.
Not a new problem. I looked at becoming a pilot 20 years ago. The math was to spend (borrow) £100k to train and become a pilot, or spend £15k to train and become an engineer. Was really an easy decision to become an engineer, so here I am. 20 years into it and senior engineer of a large tech company. I have a UK PPL and am quite content with that. I won't have been alone in my decision making back then.
@@MentourNow one thing I thought of that seems relevant here is that I've noticed over and over a certain specific detail in the work histories of pilots you've talked about. Not ALL of them but quite a lot... this being that they learned basic flying in military aviation. I'm not sure how much that reduces their cost of education, but it does make me wonder.
This is a familiar story of companies not making provision for the future. When I graduated in 1986 I got a job as a metallurgist at a firm making steel pipe fittings for the oil and gas industry. I had an office and a lab but my building also included the apprentice training workshop. That workshop was abandoned as they no longer trained apprentices. I suppose someone had decided they could save some money, not considering what impact that would have as skilled workers got older and retired. The American approach of expecting pilots to fund there own accumulation of experience is typical of such short term gains mentality.
Yeah I've noticed in the UK constant moaning for years of not enough skilled workers in *X* industry, but basically no training programs until the problem becomes acute. Why not just constantly train a steady rate of people all the time? I think some exec types look at the accounts and think "we have enough workers and it costs quite a bit to train them, so we'll stop training and I'll look good to the shareholders as our profits go up. By the time it has a seriously bad effect it will be the next guy's problem anyway, or maybe the government will come to our aid." This only applies to some industries (manufacturing for example) but a more sinister reasoning is "oh no we just can't get skilled staff in this country anymore, we're going to have to shut down our main operations here and move somewhere else." When the truth is that they haven't been training anyone or hiring anyone for many years. I say this because we hear those things on the news all the time, but last time I was looking for a job I'd find nothing advertised (or eventually find something but it was very badly advertised) in those very industries - it's very weird.
This, in my view, is a very astute analysis of the current situation [ and, not just pertaining to flight-crew, I might add ], vis-à-vis 'employment within the aviation-sector'. Keep it coming, Mentour-Pilot. #SupplyAndDemand
Over the past few years airlines have been truly despicable with their treatment of pilots. Many have had to put up with base closures, salary reductions, attacks on pensions, longer hours, poorer hotels and a general reduction in terms and conditions. Many pilots have had enough and left the industry. Combine this with a lack of ab-initio training and airlines are finding that they have insufficient pilots. This is called an own goal. Top tips to the wastes of space in airline HR: 1. Pay for your pilots’ training. 2. Pay them as much as you can afford. 3. Allow them to live where they want. 4. Make sure they have a good pension 5. Make sure they have drinks and meals at your expense. 6. Treat them as part of the solution, not as the problem. 7. Say thank you every now and again. ps. Treat the rest of your staff they same.
Exactly the same issues with Engineering staff. They don't want to pay decent wages nor assist with ab initio training nor any further training once you have paid your own way through 3 years of full time ab initio training i.e. 5 days a week 7 hours per day with a requirement of 95% attendance. over the entire course
@@melyvaldez3311 Let me guess… There is a shortage of qualified engineers and HR can’t understand it. These arseholes are sitting and nice warm offices working 10-4, Monday to Friday and just can not understand why qualified engineers object to being treated badly and don’t to work in the pissing rain for a below average set of terms and conditions.
It takes more than a pilot to run an airline. I admit, it makes refreshing reading to hear a pilot crib about money, usually it is a flight attendant. I accept, an airline will not get an aircraft into the air without a pilot. But if there are no reservations staff, ticketing staff, check in staff, sales staff, marketing staff, finance staff [ to name but a few ], you don't have a passenger to occupy said seat of said aircraft. So let us say that conditions for employees 'generally' at airlines could be improved. By the same token, look at the longjevity of careers in airlines and compare it to other industries. An employee at United, American, British Airways, Lufthansa etc will generally be there for life compared to an employee at Bank of America, Walmart, Asda.
Turns out having ZERO loyalty to your employees makes them return the favour! You lay off your employees and expected them to go into debt and become poor only to return to your companies? Government should never be allowed to intervene in business like this again!
How many companies have loyalty towards their employees? A company exists to make money, or what is the point. You're there, you do a job - you get a salary. Tomorrow, you have a triple heart bypass, everyone shows concern for a week. You're a memory and the business carries on. It's called life. To digress, I once heard someone at British Airways make a statement ' we could offer a salary of £1 an hour for a flight attendant and still have more applicants than we need '. There will always be 'young' candidates who think the job is glamorous and ready to fill those positions. If airlines did not shave jobs, how would they survive. It is unfortunate for any one to lose their income, someone had to fall within those numbers, some were lucky and dodged the bullet, some were not. I mandate, unprecedented times - a situation like never before and no one knew if/when we would ever get back to normality. But as life bounces back, jobs become available and if you were so poorly treated where you were, you can pick a different career path, someone else will fill the place you left !
It’s basically a showcase of bad management. I see it eeeeeverywhere. My wife is an independant doctor and many of them, even though they had contracts, were simply sacked. She always finds work, but due to that treatment, maaaaaany simply didn’t help out those that now suddenly needed them back. “Tough luck” and “increase my payment” were super simple statements of those workers due to their treatment and because it happened all over the place, many think the same. So they now wait patiently for people to increase the pay etc and then they’ll come back, costing businesses way more money then they would have lost if they had a better agreement in place back then. The new generation doesn’t have this “having a heart for the business” anymore, they want to work hard and well (I hope), but they’ll not just swallow everything anymore.
I'm not crying for the greedy airlines. They turned this into a terrible job and when a friend who was a Captain at a major US carrier for 30 years was offered an early retirement package at 60, she jumped on it and has never been happier and feels lucky to get out. I'm sure they did this reduction to save her very high seniority salary.
As a member of an older generation, I grew up with this idea that if I was loyal to a company, they would be loyal to me in return. But that completely stopped in the 80s. We were the first to start getting screwed over in the name of profit at every company we worked for. I was actually diagnosed with PTSD a few years ago from getting fired so often. It was soul crushing. I'm no longer working because of this. I'm really glad the younger generations are not as deluded about what companies will do to them.
If the airline has a cash flow crisis and they are not getting enough revenue to support the payroll, they have to make short term decisions to let people go. Management know that the cost of recruitment in an upturn will be higher and there will be lost skills, but what do they do? If they don't solve the problem in the short term there is no future for the company.
Looking through a large number of TripAdvisor reviews it seems that more than a few airlines have been cancelling tickets and then selling the seats at higher prices to other customers. I've been lucky so far. Having taken four flights in May and June, with easyJet and Royal Jordanian, all have gone without drama. But I won't fly again until after the summer rush.
@@Stettafire Thanks - but that represents some £2000 of lost business to the air-travel and tourism industries. My travel plans in the autumn won't be increased. Who is mainly to blame? Governments, I think. They locked-down too hard and too often.
@@well-blazeredman6187 Gov and a lot within the aviation sector (airlines, handlers, airports) - all took the chance to save ££$$ and now are wondering why people don't want to work for them...
I'm a student pilot here in the U.S., in Los Aneles, and the struggle is finding the time and the money for training. It costs on average around $60,000-$80,000 to get from zero to you're ATP License, and just the cost of living here in LA is expensive on it's own. It would be great if there were programs that paid your way through flight school.
Lots of trades offer apprenticeship programs in which your school is free as long as you agree to work for a lower rate afterwards for a set amount of years. I don't understand why airlines can't do the same.
Great video !! Here is my two cents . After having been a commercial airline pilot for over 22 yrs and being laid off by a legacy carrier I find myself basically starting from scratch as a yr 1 Capt . My experience counts for zilch !! The scourge of low cost airlines and the modus operandi is to charge and bond abintio pilots right up to when they have enough hours to become a Capt . They even have a program where you can pay 18000 usd to upgrade to a Capt . So basically low cost airlines ( and their bean counters ) want to invest nothing in their crew and pilots . This shortage is only going to get worse as airlines don’t find anyone to join their cadet programs and the experienced lot retire earlier than normal . Imagine investing between 150k USD to 200 k USD as a cadet before u get your 1st paycheck and then having to get minimum wage and then be bonded to the airline for the next 5 yrs . Having recently joined a low cost airline I am appalled as to what extent the airline will go to cut corners just to save on costs . They will try and use every loophole just to cut costs . The charm and glamour of being an airline pilot has long been killed off through this short term thinking . I wish everyone who enters this industry all the very best . Our T & C will only get worse . Personally I would never encourage my child to even think about taking up commercial airline flying as a career .
My generation, far removed from the boomers, has seen the way the world was heading. It's so difficult to even be able to afford most of the things they took for granted. They were able to get cheap education, get benefits from their jobs, actually buy a house out of university... and yes this is a US perspective that I have. But it's all down to the eroding of benefits and stakeholder mentality here. Companies have continually 'cut costs' by trying to pay less and not invest in their employees. They cut jobs, making people do the job of two previous people. They expect people to work longer, not get paid sick leave, not get any kind of consideration for the work they put into the company. And it's no wonder people are still not wanting to work because it's not enough. I've seen companies like gas stations suddenly trying to pay for workers twice what they did a few years ago just to get workers. And somehow they're able to do that. It makes you wonder why they weren't already. Of course the answer is so they can have more profit for the top people, but it's clear that the aviation industry is falling apart because they don't want to spend on the most important investment that they can make-their people.
As far asI can see from figures collated by local unions, erosion of worker power vs company-owner power clearly correlates to ongoing reductions in working conditions & wages keeping up with living costs. Not to sound like a rabid socialist or anything, but it's not really rocket science... Companies that put worker wellbeing & engagement ahead of constantly growing shareholder profits (& who may even move tieards more of a fully or partially employee co-op model) will naturally find it easier to hire and maintain staff? The underlying problem seems to me to be the capitalist expectation that every firm must put shareholder profits first and that constant rapid growth is a realistic business model, rather than just a reflection of how cancer operates... 😔
I’ve been following you for a few years now and love your channel and content. I am a Physical Therapist working in a hospital and have seen huge staff turn over in the past few years. Kind of similar to the pilot shortage in that many of the older nurses, therapists, etc have decided the job just isn’t worth it anymore. Why expose yourself working on the Covid units when you didn’t get paid a differential, and if you got Covid you ended up burning thru your own sick/vacation time? And for whatever reason, patients and family members (now that the are allowed back in to visit ) have also become more aggressive and ill behaved like the airline passengers have ! And staffing ratios continue to go the wrong direction . I’m lucky I’m that I can retire in a few years, if I had to become a PT now, I wouldn’t do it!
This is insane, no other industry has ever seen a shortage this bad other than the aviation industry! This actually is a great motivator because the airlines are wanting new pilots and since I’m an aspiring pilot I’m looking forward to starting my pilot training as soon as I have the opportunity
I think you mentioned some key points: compensation and work/life balance. If they want prospective pilots to see it as a career with work/life balance, it needs to *have* work/life balance. If they want it to be seen as "worthwhile", it needs to *be* worthwhile. A decent wage, paid for the *entire* time that you're working. They need to stop the "you're only paid when the doors are closed" BS.
I agree with other commenters, alot of this boils down to terrible mgmt decisions in the early days of the pandemic, who let valuable skilled people lose ALL trust in the industry as a whole - not only in the airline industry but everywhere. Now fully justified, the work force are laughing at an industry that are begging staff to return, having unceremoniously back stabbed them alongside receiving govt subsidy to survive - had they instead kept them on, had they not been so greedy and suffered financial loss in order to keep staff, this situation would not have happened. All across many industries, the same story is playing out.
I agree completely. Airline management are arrogant, selfish, mindless idiots who treat staff like s**t, always for the short term gain and screw the long term consequences. The other issue they suffer from is what I call “mindless compliance”. Government applies restrictive, often unlawful and harmful mandates, and airline management fall over themselves to comply, regardless of the rationale or real safety issues behind the diktats. Just keep flying, keep earning us the money! We don’t care if the injections might disable you, just take them to comply. We don’t care to check if there might be severe health and safety issues if you wear a mask non stop for 12 hours. Just keep flying, keep earning us the money! Shameful.
Not as simple as that, so many more Baby Boomers than younger workers that when Boomers leave the work force there are fewer people to fill those job vacancies across all industries, the answer is to balance the number of jobs with number of workers - to reduce jobs with technology, to promote faster even if unready, etc.
Yes, definitely saw a similar issue in the tourism industry here where some operators just flat-out fired their staff when border closures started. Purely self-interest and shareholder protection - other firms have stood by their staff instead and found alternative solutions to hold them until duration of the crisis became clearer & the government could put wage supplement/replacement scheme in place. Where employers show no loyalty to their existing staff, it's obvious why new prospective employees may hesitate to take contract with them?
Petter, thanks for a thorough explanation of this problem. So many LEAD TIMES involved that have to be satisfied and meshed together - new airplanes being delivered, trained pilots and cabin crew, ground crew and security. The part I am still confused about is, in the short term, the airlines still seem to be scheduling an over abundance of flights considering the available pilot pool. I know the carriers want to make the most of their post-covid market. However, when an airline cancels 1,400 flights in one day, it seems they need to rethink their schedule and pare it back until they have the crews and TSA staff to get the job done. With cancellations of this magnitude, they are not making friends of the flying public.
IMO, Another great way the airlines could attract newer pilots, could be by implementing some sort of scholarship or paid-for flight school, where the newer pilots would have to sign a fixed term contract (3 -5 years) with the airline upon completing it. It adds an extra layer of security for the pilots as well as the airlines. I know that this is already implemented by many airlines, but making it more mainstream codul be the way to go.
Yes, this model has worked before. As Petter already mentioned, Lufthansa has their own flight school. In the late 1980s, Norway had a flight school owned by the government. It was free for the students, and when they had passed all checks and tests, they are hired by Scandinavian Airlines System.
In the past Lufthansa gave their prospective pilots a credit which they paid off when actually hired. I don't know what happened to drop-outs. But I know a former LH pilot who couldn't fly anymore at age 40. (AFAIR medical issues) They all have insurance for that case. So he got his insurance payments and worked in a different area (teaching and consulting) where I met him.
That would suck tho for anyone who has just payed for their own training and is trying to find a job now. If airlines suddle only go for experienced and rated pilots and their own MPL trained pilots. It would make the rest of us (who already have huge depts) useless...
Wizzair also has this, as they have two academies working for them. If you are Hungarian, you can also apply for a BSc course which will give you an ATPL license, and get hired for the right front seat upon graduation. You can use the government student loans to pay for this, which has good terms. Takes 3 years for the BSc, 20-22 months for the Wizzair academy. Private price atm is 45 k€ for 0 to ATPL.
I just feel like the way they fired a bunch of people when times were hard and then just expected them to come running back when times got better sends a message to everyone that pilots are only valued when they're needed. That they can easily be tossed aside when the airlines don't want them, but they're expected to sit around and wait for them to be needed again. I know it's more complicated than that, but it couldn't have been a good feeling for the employees.
Keep employees on payroll Go bankrupt. . Furlough employees Piss everyone off and have no staff to meet demand when it’s back . There was no good decision to be made at the time. Maybe in hindsight sure. Yes, they need to pay better and offer better incentives to get them back now. But, we all need jobs. Eventually people will go back to work. We had enough people to fill jobs pre-pandemic. We just have a lot of people who refuse to work at all now.
I flew out of ZRH on Swiss Air a few Sundays ago. Fewer than half of the check-in counters were staffed, while hundreds of passengers lined up. This meant that about every 20 minutes, they would call out 2-3 destination cities and pull those passengers to the front of the line. After 2-1/2 hours in line, more passengers had been pulled from behind me, than had been served ahead of me. Ultimately, they called my destination and pulled me out, with 20 minutes to takeoff. Fortunately, the gentleman ahead of me hadn’t done his COVID test (required to check in for the US). When we got to passport control, there were only four lanes, and one was a trainee, who took twice as long, per traveler. I ran to my gate, along with most of the highly agitated passengers, to find that even though I had booked a month in advance, I found myself holding a standby ticket. Fortunately, I was able to board the completely full aircraft. Though it ended up being a middle seat from ZRH-SFO direct.
regardless of the reasons why, travel-agencies-airlines-airport, at least one of them had to know they were overselling their services. In my book that is fraud.
Thank you for your wonderful videos. I work in health care and I have watched many colleagues in that sector moving up retirement plans (although we were NOT furloughed or fired!) I heard this called ‘the great resignation’. I work in a remote fly in community in northern Canada and have flown all through the pandemic. It is chaos even here - non emergency medical travel (out for appointments, treatment if missed and we have to write bump letters. This seems to be a constant thing in the past month or so.
For US pilots if you didn't get the jab you were fired, a lot of pilots got fired and now the airlines have a huge shortage of reliable pilots not to mention playing games to have all seats full to cover overhead costs.
September last year I had a unexplainable feel that this was the right time to go for my dream. It’s been quite difficult to pay for the training, but I started in March this year. I love every single moment and this video just made my day. One day I’ll be up there. Thank you for your inspiration.
How do you get new Pilots? You train them. How do you train them? With trainers. What is industry in general short of? People expirenced and capable of training others. All industries involved with transport in any form are having the same problem. Treat people like monkies, don't be suprised if they throw...peanuts..at you.
I worked at an airport before. You not only need all the security checks and stuff, but you also have to be a citizen of the country or live there for 5 to 10 years, so hiring immigrants is basically out of the question to get the qualification for security related jobs. ( even cleaning jobs)
@@Artoooooor I don't know, it is quite ridiculous. I'm an immigrant myself, and I had to give the police every address I lived in, proof of being in the country for 5 years, with out leaving for more than a month, evry job I had, and each day I had departed or arrived from the country. It was a ridiculous long process just for a minimum wage cleaning job.
Depends on the country. Arlanda Airport just outside Stockholm, Sweden, have been employing people with criminal connections, and about a year ago it was discovered that a house cleaner without a working permit had been working in the residence of the Prime Minister.
How about if airlines only schedule flights they have planes and staff for, and only sell tickets they have seats for. Over scheduling and overbooking should be made illegal.
@@elliotoliver8679 Are you saying that Airlines don't over schedule or overbook? I've had a ticket for an overbooked flight and watched the gate personnel scramble to find volunteers to take a different flight. I work at a hotel, I we end up overbooked, we are legally required to find those guests a room at a comparable or better hotel at our cost. Not give them a cot, if they are lucky, in a corridor and say we will have a room tomorrow.
@@Thirdbase9 I think what he's saying is airlines couldn't survive if they didn't overbook. If, however, once a reservation was made the fare was charged to the passenger regardless of whether or not that person boarded the plane that would also solve the problem. What does your hotel do if a person cancels a reservation? I'm assuming they offer a refund.
@@js32257 If they cancel before the cancellation time, they are not charged, after that they are charged for the first night. People that don't show up are charged for the first night. Except for some special events hotels do not collect payment until you arrive. No other business I can think of is allowed to oversell its products. Imagine paying for an automobile and arriving at the dealership only to be told that the car you've PAID for doesn't exist. Or going to a movie, buying the tickets and finding out that all the seats are already full with others that have tickets.
if air travel has followed the trend of nearly every industry, the increase in owner profits has become a significant factor in both customer and employee disgruntlement.
Some years ago I graduated from school but many airlines at that time said to me, they would finance it but not give me the guarantee to take me in the end. That was for me a big NONO. I already know three people who did this, have biiiig debts and no job. I would still start as a pilot if the airlines would change their mind on education financing or the guarantee for a job.
I like you brought up security checking of new hires. I recently got a job myself that requires an enhanced security check and it took 6 full weeks to process and pass me, and I am a fairly simple check as these things go for various reasons. I was told a more complex case could take much longer. My start date could only be decided once this check (along with health and normal criminal check) was done. The airport near me waited and waited to hire new security staff who then require many months of training before they can begin to do the job, and a security check before they can begin training, until the last minute. So of course when the rush started most of them were still early in training. It's poor planning and cheapness, penny pinching. If they had recruited much earlier it might have at least mitigated some of the issues.
I've been made redundant during covid, airline went bust. Couldn't find a job for over 6 months. I am lucky enough to have Aircraft Maintenance Licence as well as Pilot Licence. I was unable to find a job as a pilot, but I found job at the beginning as Technical Instructor in Part-147 company, and after some time i found another job as B1/B2 engineer. Tbh working as an aircaft enginner pays much bette than being FO, or in some cases even better than a CPT. I agree it's not a flying job, but still a job. I'd love to go back to work in flight deck, but being 41 time is running out for me. AIlines don't pay enough for FO to support our families.
@bart solari when I started at Flybe in 2019 basic FO pay was £29k pa, new Flybe offers £21k pa how can one possibly live on that having family, mortgage, and loan for flight school to pay off.
@@wolfik123 £21,000 for a Flying Officer?!? Is that right? If so, that's insane - you would earn more doing literally any job this side of binman or shelf stacker
@@duncanhamilton5841 yes £21k pa for a first officer, plus flying allowence. You are correct it ie pretty much bellow shelf stucker salary, but you're doing it for love of aviation, for the prestige of the job, etc. It's a bloody joke, what the FO's salary came to. On the other hand, as a LAE i make twice as much, as CPT in a one of the cargo airline in Europe.
@@duncanhamilton5841 yes that is correct. 21k plus flight allowance, but still one month you can fly a lot, and make some money from the allowance, and next month fly very little, and not make ends meet.
This is kind of similar to what happened to global logistics during the Suez Canal blockage. Just in time inventory means any slight disruptions messes everything up. Having just barely enough employees in the airline industry is like a "just in time staffing". Every time there is a slight disruption it cascades out of control.
It seems like the airlines are facing the same issue every other struggling industry is....money. The jobs that pay decent living wages are not having trouble filling positions. So of course people are dropping the low paying jobs. I don't know how it is in Europe, but in the US these lower paying jobs don't cover basic costs of living. People literally cannot afford to work them. So of course the lower end of the pay scale is who is suffering. I know pilots make decent money, but the entry costs are prohibitive to most.
Exactly. And that is 100% a owner problem, not a worker problem and it's about time it became an owner problem, and they learned there are repercussions for treating people like disposable cups instead of human beings.
Yes, and these jobs especially here in Australian airports have all been outsourced. Jobs like checkin that used to be airline employees have been outsourced and pay and benefits from what were already lowish paid are now even lower. Add in the increasing costs of living and you have the current problem. Same thing has happened with baggage handlers etc. plus there is the vaccine mandates that would be taking a few out.
Here in NL I see a lot of young people that just finished Airtech school getting jobs outside aviation. There are so many jobs within the technical field that just pay better and have better schedules. Fixing dishwashers in restaurants will make you way more money than KLM will ever pay you.
It was a disaster yesterday in Brussels too, the waiting lines for security were huge. So many meople started running after the check, I had never seen anything like it. This video explained a problem I didn't even realize existed. The only solution is just more € to attract more people. With the inflation, the standard wages will get there anyway, lets see how the summer will go, because like you said, it's just early june.
My son-in-law is in an Aviate program for a major US airline. Presently flying Emb145 building up his required 2000 hours to move from the affiliated regional to the mainline carrier. It’s a long haul not only building up his initial 1500 hrs to qualify for the regional but getting all his ratings including his ATP which used to be for captains and now getting an additional 2000 to move up.
I’ve been through a number of international airports since travel started being allowed again most are managed and supervised well. Nothing, anywhere is anything like the sheer incompetence we experienced at Schipol. We flew out of there in March and we were misdirected by employees, found the correct queue on our own, stood in line for hours to check in and then stood in another for hours to get to security. Fortunately, we got there five hours ahead of them and barely made our flight. Here in June, another friend had the same horrible experience. Never Schipol, never again!
Wow, that's sad. I have transited via Schiphol quite a few times since 2018 and found it the best option. Better than Lisbon, Nairobi, Brussels South CLR.
While I appreciate there was uncertainty and factors outside of their control, it seems a lot of the blame lies on short-sighted management. Some of the factors raised were entirely expected and measures should have been drawn up to deal with them.
It’s always easier to save by firing people than it is to hire people “in case” of an improvement. Good operators knew that and kept their workforce. They are reaping the benefits now..
@@Denis.Collins Agree except when it comes to actually being inflight, on the ground they are totally rubbish ... and I have friends who work for them all saying the same ...
Another point about the pilot shortage and young people not wanting to get into flying is that young people are far more aware of mental health than before, and much more likely to have diagnosed mental health issues - but the aviation industry shuns these people. Even if you have no recurrence of symptoms, in the US, you can't get a first-class medical if you EVER had depression lasting longer than 6 months. That's most cases of depression. You can't be currently medicated if you want a first-class medical, either. The aviation industry is decades behind the curve on this and has not learned from Germanwings 9525 or the other dozens of similar incidents that their current attitude towards mental health encourages people to hide issues, rather than be open about them and seek treatment. And that is going to continue to hurt their ability to reach out to the younger generation.
Aw, so many young people with diagnosed mental health problems, how sad. Or, they could just get a grip, grow up and stop whinging about life not being exactly as they want it to be.
@@Rebecca_Baxter This may not totally be the fault of young people. When I was a child in the 1980's, I was permitted to leave my house and play with my friends outside without adult supervision. Unfortunately, many parents today do not allow their children to do this, even in a safe suburb. Many modern parents have to organize "play dates" to allow their children to play with other children at another family's home. When I was in elementary school, I walked to and from the bus stop by myself. However, there are elementary schools today that REQUIRE parents to be as the bus stop in the afternoon when their children are let off. It is more difficult for many modern children to "get a grip, grow up" when they are not given the freedom to do so and taught that there is overwhelming danger in daily life. Young people today did not get where they are by themselves. Our culture fosters unnecessary fear and over protection, which probably contributes to mental illness.
@@Rebecca_Baxter I just want to engage with this as I think it's essentially the mentality that has allowed these policies to continue to exist. In aviation, we do not have a blame culture. Therefore, we should not be pointing at people and blaming them for being depressed, either. If they are in good medical shape, then they should be able to fly, if they are not they should be given the help they need to return to flying status. When we encourage people to push these things under the rug or get kicked out, as your mentality does, we will continue to see accidents like Germanwings 9525, and we will continue to see promising aspiring pilots be forced to abandon their dreams.
@@Rebecca_Baxter The fact that there are more diagnosed cases is not a result of young people who are weak and lazy. It is a result of greater ability to diagnose. The fact is, there does not seem to be an increased incidence of mental illness recently, only diagnosis. Which goes directly to the OP's point about the system being out of step with the current reality. It used to be that only severe cases of mental illness were diagnosed. It may very well be true that those people who received those diagnoses should be precluded from flying. Most of the young people with diagnosed mental illness, however, do not have comparable cases. They are perfectly capable of completing the job but, due to regulations, would not be allowed to.
I recently flew to an airport where many passenger jets are stored. It was so sad to see so many planes not being used. I was so lucky to be able to travel and hope to do so again very soon.
My take from this (And coming from someone that wants to get a PPL but cant afford it- so take this with a grain of salt.) The huge cost of training for each certificate earned, and the limited amount of earnings at entry level into commercial flying is what started the shortage in the first place. Even attorneys can make enough to start paying off loans straight out of law school. Pilots however cant even get an ATP Cert without 1500 of flight time, even if they work as a CFI for a few years. This effects even GA. People are not getting their PPL due to the massive cost of it.
I worked in one of the services located in Dubai airport for 4 years. I can tell you that 2021 and beginning of 2022 were extremely discouraging for me: too many passengers and too few staff in every touch point imaginable. I saw employees coming in excited and running away in disbelief of how hectic and really not so well paid everything was. So I resigned as well and found a better paid job with less stress
I actually considered being a pilot when i was looking at career paths here in the US back in the mid 2000's ... the barrier of entry was just tooo high money wise, i went into engineering instead. Hopefully the next generation will have an easier path.
Handling agent Swissport has been offering its staff £70 (81.97 EUR / 86.22 USD) *per hour* to do overtime and work their days off because they are so short of staff. Additionally they offered staff from smaller airports with better staffing levels £100 (117.10 EUR / 123.16 USD) *per hour* to stay in a hotel and work at my larger airport for a while. We moved an aircraft from a remote stand to a contact stand and it took 40 minutes to get the jetbridge attached because there wasn't someone available to do it, where we were actually stuck on the aircraft. It's getting pretty desperate in places.
The problems in the UK seem to be a shortage of security, check in and baggage handlers. Coupled with management used to the GIGA economy, hire and fire at will - pull in people when you need. This covered the fact these managers could not organise when they were short of staff. Airlines ramping up services when you do not have the support staff and neither do the airports is very short sighted. Flying from Manchester in February I was unimpressed by the management. Someone going around saying 'We are short of staff' is no use, better employed behind the check in desk would be better.
I was flying to and from Manchester in March and it was a straight up disaster. I ended up missing my flight and having to spend the night at the airport even with everyone cutting fast check and priority lanes. Half of the security gates were empty as well.
Petter, you mentioned Schiphol Airport. The problem is not only with the security staff. Schiphol is an airport that for decades has concentrated on the policy to be the cheapest airport hub in Western Europe. That meant paying the groundworkers the absolute minimum for the rough and tough work they do. The first sign of problems was a wild strike by the baggagehandlers. They striked for more days, being paid practically the minimum wage for a job that is a severe attack on the human body. Next the securitystaff was shortstaffed, which you tell in the video. That was, taken together, reason for Schiphol to plea to the airlines to reduce their number of flights. Only KLM has responded in a affirmative way, moving several holidayflights to Rotterdam. The boss of Schiphol had to promise Dutch parliament he will pay the groundworkers more.
Schiphol needed to be cheap so KLM could fill their trans atlantic flights wirh transfer passengers. And still, KLM was never able to survive without the government (tax payer) sending shiploads of mony to KLM.
@@mwkoskamp1 As did other companies. kLM got 3.4 billion euros of government loans (with interest) during corona, which are almost all payed back. Besides that they got 1.7 billion euros of ‘NOW loonsteun’ (wage support, subsidies to keep personnel on the pay-list during corona lockdowns), a gift, like other Dutch companies got. And like other flag-carriers got in the EU. And Airport Schiphol is amongst the cheapest in Western Europe for airlines, but one of the most expensive for passengers in Western Europe, because they pay the safety and security costs themselves through the ticket price. Simply saying they got shiploads of money from the taxpayers isn’t the whole story. Air France got 7 billion euros from the French government, Lufthansa got 9 billion euros from the German government, Austrian, Finnair and SAS got between 0,6 and 1 billion euros from their governments. Your first sentence is correct though. That’s the essence of Schiphol, if you agree with it or not. I don’t, I live close to Schiphol Airport and I hardly fly, the last time was 11 years ago. So I only have the burden of airplane noise, not the direct benefits. I do find it important for Schiphol to have a hub function, but I’m not sure if it needs to be to the extent it has today.
I left the commercial aviation sector in 2016, I could see the writing on the wall at my airline. That airline had a plan, tucked away in an office drawer, just waiting for the next world event to come along where they could use it as an excuse to slash terms and conditions and get rid of older, more highly paid crew. And, that is exactly what they did. I still work in aviation, private jets, and commute via my old airline to and from my base, and it makes me so sad to see what my old airline has become even in the last 5.5 years since I left. But, someone somewhere is still making a shed load of money from it all... Despite driving down pay and conditions for everyone else.
Why anyone would want to remain being a flight attendant at 70 is beyond me. Try selling that mantra to Singapore airlines ! But cool, I am senior. Show me the £££ and I am happy to go and let someone else, younger - possibly more dynamic take my place. They won't have my knowledge by hey ho, no one is indispensable, they would muddle through. Every decade spent in the airline industry is a new lifetime. When I compare it to when I joined, they are worlds apart. The internet changed how people buy tickets, I am surprised travel agencies still exist - but that's progress. Same for real estate, you looked for a home, visited a real estate agent, picked up brochures of properties and made appointments for your viewings. Now, you search online, make your appointment online - no need to visit brick and mortar. The world is constantly evolving. You had a paper ticket, it was mailed to you, or you picked it up. Tickets are now virtual, boarding cards are now virtual ..... it's a virtual world. The next step will be for mankind to make conceiving virtual, marriages will be virtual :-)
In my opinion, also speaking from personal experience, the absolutely BIGGEST issue is the enormous cost of flight training. Taking a loan is not even the worst part, but if there is no airline backing you up during the trainng and sharing the risk of that loan, it gets hard. Unfortunately the rising interest rates and political instability in Europe don't make the situation any easier. Hopefully the airline industry will ramp up their sponsored training programs once again.
Air Canada will most definitely have to, if it wants to stay in business at all, since WestJet is now the largest Domestic carrier and absolutely destroying Air Canada in the Continental game.
@@MentourNow The problem is that setting up training programs is a cost now with a payoff in 2-3 years time. For many companies (including airlines) that investment period is simply too long.
I don't know if you are aware , few days ago a small plane has flown from Lithuania to Bulgaria (stopping in Hungary to take fuel). The plane was never in contact with ground and it had all monitoring systems off. It was chased by at least hungarian and romanian "police" fighter planes , but the pilot didn't answer to the wing signals which the planes did. Could you cover please this subject , how is possible that a plane is crossing Europe without having contact with nobody , how is possible to land it on an airport without permission and not being meet by aviation authorities , why the fighters didn't shut it down if they didn't get replied , and why the planes chasing him were not in contact with the ground police to surround straight away the area where it landed? Thank you!
It happens. Someone has flown a small Cessna from Germany and landed on the red square in Moscow without raising any concern. A huey was stolen and landed on the white house lawn after touring the area. Another Cessna was able to crash into the Whitehouse. There are many other instances that don't get reported to the public.
@@hewhohasnoidentity4377 😱 I know about the flight that I've mentioned above because in my country is a quite hot subject these days. And me and my other aviation friends are quite courious about this.
From your description it sounds like a single engine propeller aircraft. These things have about as much potential of causing damage as a passenger vehicle. In fact, there was recently a similar aircraft that landed on a roadway in Florida and hit an SUV. The pilot died, the passengers were seriously injured and the occupants of the SUV only got scratches. Very few governments are cruel enough to shoot down an aircraft that doesn't pose any risk. As far as calling law enforcement to surround it, they don't know where it will land, and again, it poses no more risk than any other vehicle or person. There is no reason to fear everything.
I wanted to ask the same. I don't know how well it is covered in international (English) press, but I read a few articles in Hungarian. Apparently they landed on a small non-public airport at Hajdúszoboszló (LHHO) without permission and threatened the caretaker of the airport when he wanted to talk to them. They quickly fueled up and took off when the police arrived.
The lack of security people has hit Toronto (YYZ) hard, as it is a major hub for traffic in, out and around Canada. And that feeds into problems with most of the major airports here in Canada.
There is one easy solution actually: increase the air fare. First, air fare has been frozen (or even dropping) for the last 25 years. I have been flying regularly (a few times a year) between Toronto and Hong Kong since 1998. I even flew the route in summer 2020 and 2021 during the peak of COVID, experiencing the empty airports and planes (with 20 pax on a B789 and then 30 pax on an A340). The round trip economy fare used to be around CAD 1,800 to 2,200 in 1998. In 2020 (before COVID), the fare was down to between 1,000 and 1,300. If I use 1,800 as the base price in 1998 and apply 1% annual inflation from 1998 to 2020, the air fare in 2020 should have been around CAD 2,300, not 1,300. The last 2 years were abnormal so I am not going to include them in the calculation. But if we apply that 22 years of inflation back to the air fare of the route to the come up with the current fare, I am pretty sure that the number of passengers would drop by some significant percentage (say 20-30%). And I am not even talking about the 8% inflation now. The same apply to almost all routes in the developed world. With less passengers, there will be less flights and less need for all levels and types of staff. The increased price would also allow airlines and airports to finally pay fair and decent salary to those security and ground staff who are paid minimum wage. This doesn't solve the problem for this summer, but it would solve it for the medium term (say for the Christmas season).
Yeah pilot shortage. I'm a new Canadian CPL Multi IFR pilot and can't find a job. Pilot shortage is only for experienced pilot ready for a regional or mainline job. Fresh flight school graduates in Canada and US are still struggling to find a job. And those entry level job also have a extremely bad pay, which is really a big struggle considering how bad inflation is. If those regionals and legacy want to solve this pilot shortage, the'd better find a way to help low time flight school graduate to get their first job and get to 1500 hours.
When I applied for my first airline job in the early 80s the airline flew me to the interview, put me up in a first class hotel and paid me per diems to attend. After I was employed, all my endorsement and ground training was paid for and I was paid a salary from day 1. Fast forward to today where you pay for everything yourself and are left with a large loan as result. To add insult to injury most airlines treat you as liability, to be worked as much as possible for the smallest amount of money they can get away with paying you. Geoff Dixon (ex Qantas CEO) when faced with complaints by pilots once said "Are many resigning?" The answer was no so therefore the problem didn't exist as far as management were concerned. Nothing has changed and the situation will have to get pretty dire/catastrophic before conditions and salaries improve. At present, despite all the difficulties, I see absolutely no sign of improvements, in Australia at least. In fact, the "war" on pilots salaries and conditions continues unabated. It's just more threats and ultimatums, just like before.
I flew from BHX to FRA a couple of weeks ago and the outbound check-in was a complete nightmare with queues to check bags (90 minutes) and through customs. I've never seen such stupidly long queues. I normally use the fast track lane (I was a frequent flyer) and that wasn't an option as it was closed. Both Lufthansa flights had no buffet services and were delayed with multiple gate changes. Plus the price for a beer at FRA was probably 2x pre-Covid. Me - I'm going to hold off flying again for a while. Webex / Zoom / Teams have changed how businesses operate. I live on Plague Island and Brexit has also made things worse with delays through customs; 30 mins to get through customs at FRA while there were 4x EU e-gates totally clear. This was what we predicted prior to the vote but I digress. We are seeing so many flights cancellations and turmoil at the moment. I wonder if a lot of the issues we are now seeing was short sightedness of airlines and ground support operators to just allow their staff to dissipate into other industries? The company I work with have a policy of asking staff to choose between a staff reduction programme based on random selection or everyone taking a temporary 10-20% salary reduction. We choose to keep the team together - and that is a $35Bn company. And the money is paid back multiple times when we come out of the dip. We have a full team when we come out of a dip and everyone can sleep at night. There are lessons to be learned by many companies. Your shareholders may be happy to see a reduction in capex when there is a crisis, but big organisations take a long time to re-gather momentum, train people and become re-operational once the talent they once had is lost and has to be replaced and retrained. That costs a LOT of money and down-time. But we are talking about bean counters rather than people that effectively run commercial organisation. And as was said - one cog breaks, the rest suffers.
I flew BCN to FRA a while back. You scan your boarding pass to access airside, security is quick if you plan ahead, flash ID to board the plane, no customs, no immigration. A lot of what you say is down to BREXIT. A Schengen/EU flight is as easy as London-Edinburgh. Post Brexit, UK to EU is the same as a flight to the US or Australia.
Something no one likes to mention is the effect of vaccine mandates on airline workers. From pilots to ground crew. It’s a staff shortage caused by wages. The work conditions are compounded by the lack of staff. Ive been a ramp agent in Austin, Texas for several years. The pay is not competitive and because of this so many people have quit. Those of us remaining are still not making a fair wage and we’re also having to do even more work to make up for loss of staff. Add to that the temperatures in Texas (the heat index is 114 F today) and it is no wonder why this chaos is ensuing. And for anyone telling me to get a new job then-I have. I’m just completing my two weeks notice. I’ve been hired at Tesla making $3 more an hour.
I've actually noticed the lack of security personnel in airports all the way in April, where only less than half of security check stations were working, and obviously temporary barriers were set up for the live queue to handle the increasing amount of people travelling. Thankfully it wasn't anywhere as bad as it's now, as the pandemic was only starting to wane, and April isn't the vacation month.
Interesting what you said on business travel changes, especially in light of Wendover's video on Airline's Business Travel Problem - will a loss of business travelers affect the financial viability of larger carriers and, although Wendover said smaller cheap carriers weren't affected by this, increases in wages across the whole industry might just finish off the cheaper carriers as well. Nice you ended on an optimistic message, just remember going from Boomers to Millennials gives you a smaller pool to recruit from... BBC did an article giving numbers to the staff shortfalls in the UK, including delays in security clearances: "Why are so many flights being cancelled?"
I was a security officer in a UK airport and even before the pandemic there was a chronic problem in the recruitment and retention of security officers. You are absolutely spot on in saying that part of the problem is a wage that is only just above the minimum wage, so there is very little incentive to work at an airport where the hours are so unsociable and the distances to get to the airport add to stress (especially with fuel prices being so high). Plus, because of Brexit, we have lost tens of thousands of very hard working EU workers who have left the UK since 2016. We have more vacancies than unemployed at the moment, so why for such low wages in such a demanding job?
Great content! On this channel you should really talk about the "phantom flight" that took place a few days ago: a small Beechcraft Twin Bonanza took off from Lithuania, flew under the radar through Poland, have been intercepted by fighter jets in Hungary, flew over Romania and was abandoned in Bulgaria. Up to this day, the pilots have not been found...
One issue I'd like comment on is the planned changes in Europe, such as in France and Germany where theres possibility of routes being cancelled where there is an alternative high speed rail option available, and whether this becomes a trend will this reduce the staffing needs of domestic airlines?
Perfect. I would love the opportunity of avoiding airports and getting in my car in Germany, with 9 borders, and driving to where I wanted within Europe. My only cost is fuel. Try living in the UK, an island. Where decades exploring a tunnel to connect it to continental Europe became a reality. Except one thing - it still costs more to go through it than to fly over it. Where are all the eco warriors to jam out that old cherry !?!
@@paant5025 Being in the UK, it's nicer getting the ferry if you're not in a rush, so no problem there since 1928! I know quite a number of people who drive from UK to Poland every year cause flights are too expensive. It would be a shame for you to have all those countries to go to...but no fuel to get there...
I think the issue that people are not realizing is that the "Work/life" factor has been warpped a lot especially with my own generation (90's kids) let alone the millennial generation. It's not 50/50 any more that is desired but 20/80 or 30/70 a "workaholic" might be 40/60. The fact is that we have now at least two generations that have been raised with "work to live" instead of "live to work" as the basis of their education. This means jobs that require a lifestyle be built around them like being a pilot or a ground worker or other jobs like a truck driver aren't appealing even with raised salaries, this is even before talking about industry conditions. Automation is I think going to be forced to the forefront out of necessity simply because we now lack the cultural work ethic to take up jobs like flying.
I do think a lot of young people don't have the same work-dedication ethic that previous generations had, but baby boomers and the silent generation post-war also enjoyed a certain level of prosperity that allowed many families to live off of just one income, which reduced a lot of stress for the remaining family members. The $ from productivity gains have not been shared equally between executives and workers, and many employers treat their employees as disposable commodities so it is easy to see why many are becoming resentful of having to work their behinds off and not be able to achieve the same standard of living that their parents did. Also, young people are more likely to get crappy jobs and lower pay than workers with more experience and longer resumes. I wasn't in love with most of the jobs I had in my 20s. I became a workaholic later in life and am now flirting with burnout all the time and debating what I need to sacrifice in order to retire early, so I'm not going to pretend my work/life balance is healthy.
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The US just pulled out of Afghanistan. There should be plenty of Air Force reserve pilots to recruit from. Perhaps they're just not making it worth their while.
@@jonathanperry8331 The 'RULERS' don't want us to travel around...while they take their own jets to travel anywhere ....!! Bad luck we were born 'sheeple'..!! They just want us out of planes and in our one room appartments, stacked upon each other, without cars, only one train or bus.to travel to work .!! WE MAKE YOU OWN NOTHING...BUT YOU WILL BE HAPPY !!!.
@@jonathanperry8331 question....did you come out healthy from there...??
Glad that you even got out....alive..!!
@@gerdiealbers7788I apologize. by we I meant America. I wasn't trying to claim that I was in the military. The point I'm trying to make is there's a lot of surplus military pilots around that could use jobs. Not only that if they are reservists they can work full time unless they get deployed. All they have to do is give them a salary that's worth their time. I follow a lot of pilots on UA-cam including Blue Angels and combat pilots you name it. A good one is a guy called c. W. Lemoine. Call sign mover. This guy is nuts. He's flown f-16s f18s Air Force and Navy. He's also an airline pilot a police officer and author and is learning how to fly helicopters. I don't know how he has the time. You should check his channel out he's a pretty cool guy. What's funny is the reason he got the call sign mover was because he was on a live fire training mission out on a range and he mistaked a bunch of cows on his infrared for the Targets. Not intentionally they just happened to be there. So he was given the name mover. Short for moo-ver. Get it? Call signs are funny because every call sign that someone has is supposed to be embarrassing although it sounds cool. For example there's this one guy called slag. Slag sounds like a badass call sign but he got that because the first time he took off from the carrier they said he Screamed Like A Girl hahahagahaha. I'm going to have to edit my first comment I have no intention of people thinking that I served when I didn't. I do know a lot of people that were at some of the biggest battles in Afghanistan and Iraq because I graduated in 2003. Fortunately everyone came home safe at least physically. I knew one guy that was in Fallujah in the Marine corps and it was like you could see it in his eyes it's like he never left. Haven't seen him in a few years hope he's okay. Sorry for ranting I went down memory lane for a second.
@@jonathanperry8331 No man...I loved your story......,! We need fun in our lives aswell!! Thanks for 'our conversation.....it was enlightening...!! Bye..!!
It's not a staff shortage, it's a wage and conditions shortage. Why would I take an offer from Dublin Airport when I can just earn more working at Aldi
Correct
The pay and conditions Dublin Airport are offering are nothing short of scandalous.
@Lookup2Wakeup if you don't think flying the nation is essential, you don't understand how the current economy works.
Southern Bogland needs to leave the European Union to fulfil its economic potential.
@@mcenglishbros.drivewaytarm8367
Aaah a brexit idiot !!!
Back to the daily mail website with all of the foaming at the mouth gammons!!!
I am a fit, healthy ATPL holder with 20k airline hours and an impeccable career behind me. The management of my airline decided to offload me last year, luckily paying me handsomely to go. In fact, they gave me about double what I would have earned if I had continued working to the end of my career, as a tax free lump sum. I cannot comprehend how this was a sound business decision for them, but now it seems it was also a disastrous strategic decision as well. Effectively, they lost me at huge expense! I have learned over the years that the root of all the problems in aviation lies within airline managements. These companies are run by self serving, self important and often corrupt people who refuse to be criticised or even advised by those with valuable (and invariably much longer) experience in the industry. Disgracefully, in my case, even safety was subordinated to mindless compliance with all the irrational and often illegal diktats being forced by governments. So in fact, I will be happy never to return to the industry that I loved for 35 years, despite the idiots running it. Their arrogance is everyone’s downfall. Their loss, my gain.
Listen to this guys…
Same in Air Traffic Control.
most larger corporations (not just airlines) are run by people who know little to nothing about how their industry works. It's a general problem with publicly traded companies where anyone can buy themselves a part and then pick friends or whoever they like best to take on the management, with no concern for their experience or abilities. The general misconception is that the people at the top only need to know how to do business and don't require any knowledge of the product or service the company provides, and thus you end up with bad decisions, poor planning, and a failure to predict which direction the industry is going (evident by the enormous amount of big old companies that went bankrupt in the past 10 years).
We have tons of companies that are mostly owned by hedge funds, holding companies, banks, and other money people who just want to make money and generally don't care what the company is doing as long as the money come in. Granted many of them stay out of the business, but usually the CEO and top management is picked by the owners and all the problems trickle down from there
Congrats to you on ending your career with such a golden parachute!! That is a rarity in the industry. And as you stated so clearly, a stupid and idiotic decision by management. I’ve seen such moronic management in many industries and always hoped it would not happen to aviation, but alas greed knows no boundaries. ENJOY YOUR RETIREMENT!!
Same for bus companies here Europe.
The one thing that I find laughable is that an organization that treats its employees like a number (by firing them during the greatest uncertainty in a generation) is absolutely shocked when those same employees treat the organization as just any old job. Trust flows both ways and the organizations that realize that are the ones that are best suited to survive times like these.
Chief Executive, of many buisness. Why are the Monkies throwing ...peanuts ..at us?
All big companies function more or less in the same way, its not just aviation.
You can’t blame them for firing people after the entire air traffic industry comes to a stop… what if it took 5 years instead of 2 to get back to the industry normal? In that case almost every airline would have gone bankrupt and nobody would have a job. This is just a reality it is hard to plan for events like Covid.
100% true
@@Thatguy-mo8jd then they need to push back on apalling, destructive and stupid narratives
I just got home from a flight from a small regional airport in Wisconsin to Mumbai and back. This was my first time flying since pandemic happened & flew on United, Lufthansa & Vistara. Something I noticed was that there were a lot more really difficult people that the airports & airlines had to deal with but also noticed how much more a smile, a word of appreciation & joking with people from every department of aviation during my trip- meant to people. I’ve always been respectful and thankful to everyone when I fly but those actions definitely were much more appreciated this time around.
I picked up a couple $10 Starbucks gift cards and when noticed someone going above and beyond or with a really good attitude, I gave them a gift card. It was such a small gesture on my part but being appreciated brought tears to almost everyone that I gave one to, even the luggage handler guy that was singing a song and joking with passengers while unloading our carry on bags teared up.
It’s easy to forget that it’s not only us passengers that struggle in the airports or on the planes, it’s everyone and that’s important to remember.
A small gesture of appreciation and thankfulness goes a long way and can make the worst situations a little bit better for everyone.
@@Hope4all2
What a great response you had, loved reading it and love seeing that there’s people like you out there!!!♥️♥️
My airline has noticed a significant rise in 'Disruptive passangers' in the last 6 months.
Crazy stories that used to be oblnce a summer are becoming every 2-3 weeks.
@@MrBizteck
That’s really concerning. You’d think people would be better behaved now. I’ve never seen a FA have to threaten to call police on passenger b4 but saw it 2x on way to India and once on way back.
It’s like some people have forgotten how to act in public.
What a marvelous idea!
I love that!
5:14 Speaking as a stubborn something too. If my workplace fired me because of reasons other then my performance, then asked me to come back two years later. I'd kindly tell them where to put it
I used to work for a big bank and I saw some long term guys get laid off. They did a critical job supporting old software, something you couldn't just retrain someone for, they did it for 30 years.
One of the guys came back and I assumed he was in a tough spot. I said hope everything is ok, sorry you got laid off.... And he said oh don't worry, they've been calling me frantically since the week they laid me off begging me to come back and I told them to screw off or pay me and meet my demands.
It was funny, I was happy for him. Long story short they laid him off as he was close to retirement to offshore his job to people who also got paid absolute garbage (I talked to them and they were underpaid too... I always thought a big us company in a place like India would pay good, but it didn't... They didn't want to pay for skilled workers, and simply hired anyone for bottom dollar and tried to train them).
@@volvo09 Somehow these managers never think about the part where you need someone qualified to train someone up to anywhere near that same level.
That's called dignity, not stuborness.
I am an RN. Management laid me off with a nice payout in 2018, before the pandemic, because I had been there the longest and made the best money. They were cutting costs. So I retired earlier than planned. One of the docs (we were a doctor owned organization) expressed concern, saying I would be able to find another job. I told her “nope, I’ve piled up a nice retirement already. I’m out.” I burned my license. Needless to say, it was a blessing in disguise.
"pilot shortage" is usually an abbreviation for "shortage of people willing to accept the diminished wages and working conditions of modern airline flying"
You missed out the part of shortage of people with the financial means to pay for training.
@@darkgalaxy5548 yes, that is true. Perhaps as our society regresses to a feudal state, and the middle class disappears, pilots will become like a kind of knight, with the profession passed along hereditary lines by titled landowners. Or, flying will become almost 100% automated, with office people able to learn to operate aircraft over the weekend from a tablet.
If airlines want pilots they are going to have to train their own while on contract.
No debts, straight up pay. Sign them for 5 or 10 years, leave before that and you have to pay part of the education back.
Its not an abbreviation for $143,741 average wage? And an average salary of $257,000 at retirement? But your words sound cool, even if there is no actual basis for them.
@@msromike123 ahh yes. Average 143k with a high of 257k means on the low end people make 29k.....
To be honest, these problems existed already prior to the pandemic. I startet working as a ramp dispatcher in August 2011 and every year it got worse and worse and worse. People only getting part time contracts of about 100 hours, so that your employer can let you work minimum hours in the winter and up to 190 hours in summer. Most people need one or two other jobs beside their main job to get along in their daily life because of only getting paid minimum wage. So a propper work life balance cannot exist. There is so much pressure to cut costs that a lot of new employees have bad training because every day of training cost money because these trainees are not productive when they are in the classroom instead of working at the check-in desk or on the ramp. In my opinion we could encounter major safety issues in the future because not everyone who is loading airplanes knows what a center of gravity is or what influence a certain way of loading or seating might have to the CG. As an employee you are under constant pressure because your employer makes you responsible for delays instead of protecting you. Often it is not even possible to do a break and eat or drink something because your next aircraft landed already. Then you have complaining crews who yell at you because you were late at the aircraft or passengers who yell at you even if you didn't do anything wrong. Those circumstances only make people sick and with minimum wage I personally don't see a chance to hire enough people to get along during this summer. Luckily I quit my job as ramp dispatcher and I am now working as an apron controller at Frankfurt Airport. And we encounter problems with shortage of parking stands because the aircraft on the stands don't depart because of big delays but other aircraft which were supposed to get on those stands landed already, so they have to wait with running engine on the taxiways until their parking stand becomes vacant.
So the question I ask myself is. Why is there so much pressure to cut the costs? Who is responsilbe for that? Who is responsible for these ridiculous low ticket prices?
In think that there is no chance to improve the situation as long as it is possible to fly through Europe for 10€. In the end the people who pay those prices are the employees who are working their asses off because aviation is their passion. Flying has to cost a propper price in my opinion in order to pay every party who is involved in the process with a fair amount of money, so that companies can pay a fair wage to their employees and to provide propper and secure working contracts and to have the chance to hire enough people and give them a propper training to improve safety.
Absolutely! I remember a time when even tickets for charter flights to holiday destinations within Europe would cost the equivalent of 200 euros. Ticket prices are simply not realistic anymore.
You´re right. But it´s not only the "Low-Price-Ticket-Policy" - and btw.: especially in Germany most selled tickets are far away from being selled for cheap money. It´s mostly a question of the Shareholder-Value-Management-Policy who made the core point in generating as much benefit for the shareholder´s as possible - and that means to cut costs as much as possible - and that means to cut money payed for the staff and the equipment as much as possible because both are costs. That is not only a problem for the airline industry - it has ruined whole branches.
on the other hand tickets that used to be 1000 are 1500 and increasing... so i dont really feel that 10 euro problem.
Good rant. I agree with you.
There will be a disaster for badly loaded luggage. Ramp dispatchers will have to have a certification. There will be a normal contract and it will not be possible to hire certified ramp dispatchers just for the Summer months, so the industry will have to adapt. Ramp dispatchers must just wait for the aerial disaster ;-)
Similarly, new pilots will have a wage increase under the form of loans for training at favourable terms, or of wage increase.
Airport security personnel will also have to have a wage increase if the scarcity has to be remedied. Ticket prices will go up. Marginal airlines will get out of the market.
Imagine someone in their 20’s, having already bearing school debt, you'll need to build even more debt to get into a cadet program that takes years and not guaranteed to pass, and having recent example where they can just fire you if some crisis hits and left you be hung you to dry, it's just too much risk to pursue a career like this.
For airport workers it's even worse. Long and unstable work hours and remote locations, and they still only offer wages no better than minimum pay, and then complain about not able to hire anyone. I wonder why.
In the UK some airline staff reportedly moved into haulage and the rail industries. I suppose for airport workers it depends on location, in the UK, at least at Heathrow, there's a high reliance on local immigrant communities for staffing -- and if you can't retain staffing levels from that pool of resources you're going to be in trouble long term. I think we could see the end of the low-cost airlines sooner rather than later, especially in Europe.
By 'school' do you mean college/university? If so, I would ask our host here whether he thinks that a degree should be demanded of anyone wanting to learn how to fly commercially. My view is that it shouldn't be - and I would rate stall-recovery more important than dissertation-writing.
I know Dublin airport laid off a load of ground workers during the pandemic era and is now struggling to recruit anyone to work for them, causing endless issues. The thing is they are offering far worse pay and conditions than pre-pandemic. They recruit staff on a pathetic 20 hours per week-guaranteed contract, and expect them to then be 'on call' for the entire rest of the week. And they offer a measly 14 Euro per hour for this. In a city where the cost of living is INSANE, rents are far in excess of London at this point. So nobody can literally afford to work for them. 20 hours at 14Euro p/h isn't nearly enough to pay rent, let alone feed yourself in Dublin, and having the block out the rest of the week in case they need you precludes picking up other work, and you'll effectively be living a financially precarious to unsupportable and socially utterly miserable lifestyle working unsocial hours and likely 7 days weeks, having to pay part of said low wages in transport costs to work and never having a proper 2-day weekend. The staff they're getting in Dublin are quitting fast too, due to the horrible conditions and turnover is huge, causing issues due to a lot of staff with zero experience, having driven off the experienced ones. Those who recruit need to understand NOBODY wants to live like this. Not people with families, not single people, nobody. They're better off stuck on the dole or working for similar low wages in the back end of nowhere where living costs are lower than getting into debt working in a major city ina dead end, go-nowhere job where they will be fired the moment the company feels the pinch. The same issue is actually effecting the hospitality industry too. They aren't paying bar staff enough for them to pay rent in Dublin. So there's a 'shortage'. A shortage that would be remedied if the owners put their hands in their pockets and paid a LIVING wage. which is way higher than they think.
@@pekirt I went through school knowing that I was studying something I would enjoy. I didn't get my degree because I expected to make money.
The same may well be true for pilots, but I'd be surprised if it held true for most other positions in aviation.
I have an uncle who worked baggage for United for over 40 years. He didn't like his job, neither did his co-workers. But, when he worked, it was steady. It isn't now.
Who knew that it would be a tough sell to get someone smart to dedicate years of their life and hundreds of thousands of debt, without guarantee of a job, and a starting salary that won’t pay half their rent, and a certification that is useless if they get injured in any way, develop any mental health issues, can’t pass background checks, or they simply can’t find a job in this ONE highly specialized field. Not a gamble that anyone should take honestly.
With a pilot shortage the industry and safety regulators need to be very careful about overworking those crews they have remaining, we've seen so many major crashes and incidents where crew fatigue has been a major factor. Another excellent video there Petter, thanks.
Very true!
I'm not comfortable flying at the moment. There WILL be safety problems, not only due to overworked crews, but also because of the lack of competent security personnel on the ground.
I hope I'm wrong, but I fear we are in for some very unpleasant incidents in conjunction with air travel in the next months...
Somebody ought to remind the CEO of Wizz Air…
A earlier video of Petter’s concerned the Air Canada San Francisco incident. The flight time limitations in Canada were highlighted and have since been changed as a result. With holiday flights from Canada to the Caribbean leading to 14 hour duty days, possibly 15 with Captains’ discretion, it’s no fun landing back in bad weather in Canadian winters when you’ve been on duty 14 hours. They now need an augmented crew. It would have helped with employment if not for the pandemic but we are now seeing the same issue as in Europe as things pick up.
@@GorgeDawes Yes.
My spouse was employed by Air Canada. When the pandemic hit they were laying off staff. Even though the position held was fairly high, my spouse, who had stayed on longer than necessary, decided to retire. When travel picked up again, they called begging for a return to work. A number of friends had done the same. Very few returned to work. The airlines were having trouble getting staffing who were already trained. Also because it was 2 years of not working, anyone who returned would have to be retrained on changed sops. My spouse was laid off during 9/11 and worked as an escort for airside services escorting employees who were waiting for security clearances. This is a major problem. It used to take 3 months to complete the clearance, I have no idea how long it takes now, but, I imagine that they are very backed up. Therefore it is hard for airlines and airports to get qualified to secure employees to fill the spaces that are needed. I know for a fact that the salaries have been increasing because people have more choices and don’t have to go through all the rigamarole just to get paid what an untrained job would pay. The rules have made it difficult for airlines to get cheap labour that requires security and training. Too bad that they didn’t recognize this a long time ago. They might not have had to go back to the beginning, if they paid their staff decently to begin with.
They also want you to work in areas that you are not sufficiently trained to do. If you say yes, if anything happens, they will blame you. I remember them trying to get staff to work on machines and areas, without training just before he retired. He knew enough to say I don’t have up to date training. Others who didn’t would do it. He said training had gone from a week long course to a day of following someone around. Having been through the process before, he was not willing to take the legal responsibility, without any of the appropriate training. I would not work for an airline these days. The lack of sufficient support and making sure that people know what they are doing, is scary and appalling.
@@flightforensics4523 One: I note that many people are making comments longer than mine. Two: Certainly not your sweet cheeks.
Simply stated underpaid, under appreciated, workers have found other ways of making a living.
In short, yes
Also still a lot of people getting sick with Covid, being sick for weeks and sometimes for months. Covid isn't gone, people just got used to it and try to ignore it. The truth is, were still in the middle of the pandemic and there is no real idea how to get out of it. In a few months, numbers will rise again massively.
Those same people who are now complaining about rises in holiday costs, crap restaurants, etc...
While China virus era, here in the UK government told pilots to rebrand and maybe go on field to harvest 🍓 🍓
I wonder with this cattle herding whether travelers want the whole pie for the half.
I got let go after 32 years in the business and many of my friends have taken £10-15k pay cuts to stay in work and seen their roles in security dumbed down so the employer can pay lower rates, ignoring the fact that there still do exactly the same safety-related process ... For years airports, airlines, handlers have all been paying less and less and reducing benefits, and now this is coming back to bite them on the ***!!! Glad I'm out as the industry does not treat people well, and only the top execs kept their high pay and benefits and screw the employee... And it's more than just about pilots!!
This exact same scenario is happening in every occupation the Almighty Dollar is rampantly ruling the world!
@@pozzee2809 uhm, what has that comment got to do with anything?!?
@@nooboftheyear7170 hypercapitalism. Simply hypercapitalism. The fields hit by worker shortages now are those that are notorious for abusing their employees.
@@Argosh but you blame that on the dollar and by extension america, whereas this is economics and it seems to me that the pilots / crew and staff need to organise and get employment lawyers to firm up contracts while they have bargaining power, and this time around, they should hopefully realise that selling out your colleagues / the agreement for what would appear to be a job leads to the very conditions that you are berating as everyone races to the bottom.
@@nooboftheyear7170
Dollar, Euro, Pound whatever currency you prefer, the fact remains that wages are not keeping up with inflationary pressures and that affects every field of employment where employers are screwing their staff down on pay rates in order to build profits and satisfy their share holders. The airline industry is not immune to the same pressures.
I always laugh, when I hear about staff shortages due to low wages. As a Danish unionized citizen I know that businesses can afford paying a decent wage without going bankrupt, no matter how much they whine. If you really need unskilled staff to move stuff around, you can find them, provided you pay them well. And if you need skilled workers, then educate them yourself. What Lufthansa and Ryan Air is doing is just common sense.
Denmark has the 2nd highest personal tax rate in the world.
@@salyoutubepremium7734 ...and...?
@@salyoutubepremium7734 Maybe one way to look at this is to compare countries to vacation resorts. Denmark is like an all-inclusive resort where you pay one advertised fee, which may be higher than its competitors, but everything is included. Conversely, countries like the United States have a lower advertised fee, but most things cost extra. Depending on the circumstances, the all-inclusive resort, while seemingly more expensive in the beginning, actually costs less than having to pay for each incidental product or service.
@bart solari it is a question of supply and demand - if you really want something that is in short supply, you will have to pay extra
@@Eternal_Tech Such a great way of putting it! It's the same old, same old argument we hear in the healthcare sphere too - but apparently "tax is theft", and everything else is interchangeably "socialism" and/or "communism"!😉 The facts are, that despite the US paying literally *twice* the GDP on healthcare than the UK does, it still gets outperformed on every metric - for instance, Brits have a longer life expectancy, suffer lower infant mortality rates, lower maternal mortality, etc, etc, but hey - that's American exceptionalism for ya!
One of my parents is a pilot for one of the big 3 in the US. It goes back to a big culture problem in the US of needing workers for jobs that need an incredible amount of training but pushing the cost of the training onto workers, then not paying them enough to make the training worth it. It's easily $100,000 to go to a premiere aviation college for a bachelor degree, and then another 6 figures to pay for additional flying time, certifications, aircraft rental, insurance, etc. Then you're frequently expected to work flying jobs for small regional companies that pay minimum wage equivalent. Then if you're lucky, you'll get picked up (or apply to and be hired by) a large company. So after having enough debt to buy a house, *then* you can start a job at a big airline. Some companies have started programs to train pilots from the start and cover most the cost of flying time, but it's too little, too late at this point. The culture of having to "put in your dues" = working in shitty conditions and pay for a number of years in the hopes of it working out like everyone else had to go through. it's not good for the people, and not good long term for the companies. It's more of shunting the costs from companies to employees.
Conversely, the Air Force and Navy can't keep pilots in either because those pilots can fly in the military for 6 years, get trained on the military's budget, leave with no debt, then go fly for an airline where the job is easier (less multitasking/task saturation), pays better, doesn't risk your life, and you can see more of the world.
So I guess USAF training is the No1 way to go!
@@elliotoliver8679 The way to go is for airlines to train their own pilots, not rely on them being ready made at taxpayers expense. This is the trouble with industries today, they expect to be able to just employ from a pool of skilled people because they are too stingy to train their own staff, something industries used to do as standard.
@@elliotoliver8679 of course, but probably a lot more difficult to get in.
From what I can see, the airlines still sold seats on aircraft that they knew they could not run. If these passengers where told the truth ‘sorry we can’t offer you a flight’ they could have made other arrangements
Exactly, clever as it gave them ‘cash flow’ to do whatever with & keep the business going
Yep! The airlines treating its customers like garbage. Same old, same old.
@@jamesr1703 What absolute GARBAGE - and sorry, Americans are worse than the British for shouting a company down. Highly demanding - want bread, butter and jam, but do not want to pay. What happens - yes, the airlines are to blame to a point - by spoiling passengers. Then, when they don't get their upgrade, they kick off. Pay for the f*****g seat if it matters that bad. Besides which, hound the airlines - want want want and I tell you what happens, they go bust. The greats, Pan Am, TWA, Eastern - but that is ok, the public cry for a day then move their allegiances to the next kid on the block, then repeat the whole sorry saga until they go bust.
You don't walk into a restaurant and demand lobster when you're paying for chicken. The worst concept for airlines are frequent flyer miles and they're past their sell by date.
Airlines do not sell seats on aircraft they knew they would not be able to operate. Airlines have slots at airports, no one will give a hoot about losing a slot at Wichita, but they do care about losing a slot at JFK or London Heathrow, Frankfurt etc. If they did not operate the flight within a specified time limit, the government/airport authority would 'force' the airline to give up the slot. Try getting a slot at one of those airports. Besides which, very smart people work in scheduling at airlines and there are sophisticated analytics built in.
The pandemic was new to everyone and no one had a crystal ball to predict a bounce back. None the less, if airlines were able to forecast a rebound in travel based upon 'news', airport authorities were in the same position and should have started recruitment much earlier. We all lost 2 years of our life through covid, it looks like we are on our way to a 3rd. Next year will be better - we hope.
As observed, the chaos starts in the departure hall prior to check-in, with long queues. Yet the management response here in Australia has been to tell people to arrive earlier. Since that doesn't in any way increase the speed of processing, the result is just that the queues are longer. In a situation like this, telling people to arrive two hours before departure just guarantees that they'll have to queue for nearly two hours.
Tell people that they cannot even join a check-in queue until half an hour before departure, and the queues will shorten, as if by magic, without affecting throughput at all.
Not a new problem. I looked at becoming a pilot 20 years ago. The math was to spend (borrow) £100k to train and become a pilot, or spend £15k to train and become an engineer. Was really an easy decision to become an engineer, so here I am. 20 years into it and senior engineer of a large tech company. I have a UK PPL and am quite content with that. I won't have been alone in my decision making back then.
Far more intellectually engaging to be an engineer than a stick monkey. You made the right choice.
Same story here but in the US.
Great editing!!!!
Thank you Juan! 💕 great to have you here.
Nice to see another great personality of the aviation world here on Mentour.
Have my regards, Blanco Lirio...
@@MentourNow one thing I thought of that seems relevant here is that I've noticed over and over a certain specific detail in the work histories of pilots you've talked about. Not ALL of them but quite a lot... this being that they learned basic flying in military aviation. I'm not sure how much that reduces their cost of education, but it does make me wonder.
This is a familiar story of companies not making provision for the future. When I graduated in 1986 I got a job as a metallurgist at a firm making steel pipe fittings for the oil and gas industry. I had an office and a lab but my building also included the apprentice training workshop. That workshop was abandoned as they no longer trained apprentices. I suppose someone had decided they could save some money, not considering what impact that would have as skilled workers got older and retired. The American approach of expecting pilots to fund there own accumulation of experience is typical of such short term gains mentality.
Yeah I've noticed in the UK constant moaning for years of not enough skilled workers in *X* industry, but basically no training programs until the problem becomes acute. Why not just constantly train a steady rate of people all the time? I think some exec types look at the accounts and think "we have enough workers and it costs quite a bit to train them, so we'll stop training and I'll look good to the shareholders as our profits go up. By the time it has a seriously bad effect it will be the next guy's problem anyway, or maybe the government will come to our aid."
This only applies to some industries (manufacturing for example) but a more sinister reasoning is "oh no we just can't get skilled staff in this country anymore, we're going to have to shut down our main operations here and move somewhere else." When the truth is that they haven't been training anyone or hiring anyone for many years.
I say this because we hear those things on the news all the time, but last time I was looking for a job I'd find nothing advertised (or eventually find something but it was very badly advertised) in those very industries - it's very weird.
This, in my view, is a very astute analysis of the current situation [ and, not just pertaining to flight-crew, I might add ], vis-à-vis 'employment within the aviation-sector'. Keep it coming, Mentour-Pilot. #SupplyAndDemand
Over the past few years airlines have been truly despicable with their treatment of pilots. Many have had to put up with base closures, salary reductions, attacks on pensions, longer hours, poorer hotels and a general reduction in terms and conditions. Many pilots have had enough and left the industry. Combine this with a lack of ab-initio training and airlines are finding that they have insufficient pilots. This is called an own goal. Top tips to the wastes of space in airline HR: 1. Pay for your pilots’ training. 2. Pay them as much as you can afford. 3. Allow them to live where they want. 4. Make sure they have a good pension 5. Make sure they have drinks and meals at your expense. 6. Treat them as part of the solution, not as the problem. 7. Say thank you every now and again.
ps. Treat the rest of your staff they same.
Exactly the same issues with Engineering staff. They don't want to pay decent wages nor assist with ab initio training nor any further training once you have paid your own way through 3 years of full time ab initio training i.e. 5 days a week 7 hours per day with a requirement of 95% attendance. over the entire course
@@melyvaldez3311 Let me guess… There is a shortage of qualified engineers and HR can’t understand it. These arseholes are sitting and nice warm offices working 10-4, Monday to Friday and just can not understand why qualified engineers object to being treated badly and don’t to work in the pissing rain for a below average set of terms and conditions.
It takes more than a pilot to run an airline. I admit, it makes refreshing reading to hear a pilot crib about money, usually it is a flight attendant. I accept, an airline will not get an aircraft into the air without a pilot. But if there are no reservations staff, ticketing staff, check in staff, sales staff, marketing staff, finance staff [ to name but a few ], you don't have a passenger to occupy said seat of said aircraft. So let us say that conditions for employees 'generally' at airlines could be improved. By the same token, look at the longjevity of careers in airlines and compare it to other industries. An employee at United, American, British Airways, Lufthansa etc will generally be there for life compared to an employee at Bank of America, Walmart, Asda.
Turns out having ZERO loyalty to your employees makes them return the favour!
You lay off your employees and expected them to go into debt and become poor only to return to your companies?
Government should never be allowed to intervene in business like this again!
How many companies have loyalty towards their employees? A company exists to make money, or what is the point. You're there, you do a job - you get a salary. Tomorrow, you have a triple heart bypass, everyone shows concern for a week. You're a memory and the business carries on. It's called life. To digress, I once heard someone at British Airways make a statement ' we could offer a salary of £1 an hour for a flight attendant and still have more applicants than we need '. There will always be 'young' candidates who think the job is glamorous and ready to fill those positions.
If airlines did not shave jobs, how would they survive. It is unfortunate for any one to lose their income, someone had to fall within those numbers, some were lucky and dodged the bullet, some were not. I mandate, unprecedented times - a situation like never before and no one knew if/when we would ever get back to normality.
But as life bounces back, jobs become available and if you were so poorly treated where you were, you can pick a different career path, someone else will fill the place you left !
They relied on a surplus of labor and desperation. Industries have brought on the "Great Resignation". It is very difficult to summon pity for them.
It’s basically a showcase of bad management. I see it eeeeeverywhere. My wife is an independant doctor and many of them, even though they had contracts, were simply sacked. She always finds work, but due to that treatment, maaaaaany simply didn’t help out those that now suddenly needed them back. “Tough luck” and “increase my payment” were super simple statements of those workers due to their treatment and because it happened all over the place, many think the same. So they now wait patiently for people to increase the pay etc and then they’ll come back, costing businesses way more money then they would have lost if they had a better agreement in place back then. The new generation doesn’t have this “having a heart for the business” anymore, they want to work hard and well (I hope), but they’ll not just swallow everything anymore.
Yep, that pretty much sums it up.
Nailed it
I'm not crying for the greedy airlines. They turned this into a terrible job and when a friend who was a Captain at a major US carrier for 30 years was offered an early retirement package at 60, she jumped on it and has never been happier and feels lucky to get out. I'm sure they did this reduction to save her very high seniority salary.
As a member of an older generation, I grew up with this idea that if I was loyal to a company, they would be loyal to me in return. But that completely stopped in the 80s. We were the first to start getting screwed over in the name of profit at every company we worked for. I was actually diagnosed with PTSD a few years ago from getting fired so often. It was soul crushing. I'm no longer working because of this. I'm really glad the younger generations are not as deluded about what companies will do to them.
If the airline has a cash flow crisis and they are not getting enough revenue to support the payroll, they have to make short term decisions to let people go. Management know that the cost of recruitment in an upturn will be higher and there will be lost skills, but what do they do? If they don't solve the problem in the short term there is no future for the company.
Looking through a large number of TripAdvisor reviews it seems that more than a few airlines have been cancelling tickets and then selling the seats at higher prices to other customers.
I've been lucky so far. Having taken four flights in May and June, with easyJet and Royal Jordanian, all have gone without drama. But I won't fly again until after the summer rush.
Good idea
@@Stettafire Thanks - but that represents some £2000 of lost business to the air-travel and tourism industries. My travel plans in the autumn won't be increased. Who is mainly to blame? Governments, I think. They locked-down too hard and too often.
Disaster capitalism in a nutshell. Of course the people who got their trips cancelled will have to wait for a while until they can get a fair refund
@@well-blazeredman6187 Gov and a lot within the aviation sector (airlines, handlers, airports) - all took the chance to save ££$$ and now are wondering why people don't want to work for them...
Oof. That ought to be illegal and punishable with massive fines, tbqh.
I'm a student pilot here in the U.S., in Los Aneles, and the struggle is finding the time and the money for training. It costs on average around $60,000-$80,000 to get from zero to you're ATP License, and just the cost of living here in LA is expensive on it's own. It would be great if there were programs that paid your way through flight school.
Lots of trades offer apprenticeship programs in which your school is free as long as you agree to work for a lower rate afterwards for a set amount of years. I don't understand why airlines can't do the same.
There are some programs in Las Vegas much cheaper than in LA. Also the housing is cheaper over there.
Great video !! Here is my two cents . After having been a commercial airline pilot for over 22 yrs and being laid off by a legacy carrier I find myself basically starting from scratch as a yr 1 Capt . My experience counts for zilch !! The scourge of low cost airlines and the modus operandi is to charge and bond abintio pilots right up to when they have enough hours to become a Capt . They even have a program where you can pay 18000 usd to upgrade to a Capt . So basically low cost airlines ( and their bean counters ) want to invest nothing in their crew and pilots . This shortage is only going to get worse as airlines don’t find anyone to join their cadet programs and the experienced lot retire earlier than normal . Imagine investing between 150k USD to 200 k USD as a cadet before u get your 1st paycheck and then having to get minimum wage and then be bonded to the airline for the next 5 yrs . Having recently joined a low cost airline I am appalled as to what extent the airline will go to cut corners just to save on costs . They will try and use every loophole just to cut costs . The charm and glamour of being an airline pilot has long been killed off through this short term thinking . I wish everyone who enters this industry all the very best . Our T & C will only get worse . Personally I would never encourage my child to even think about taking up commercial airline flying as a career .
My generation, far removed from the boomers, has seen the way the world was heading. It's so difficult to even be able to afford most of the things they took for granted. They were able to get cheap education, get benefits from their jobs, actually buy a house out of university... and yes this is a US perspective that I have. But it's all down to the eroding of benefits and stakeholder mentality here. Companies have continually 'cut costs' by trying to pay less and not invest in their employees. They cut jobs, making people do the job of two previous people. They expect people to work longer, not get paid sick leave, not get any kind of consideration for the work they put into the company. And it's no wonder people are still not wanting to work because it's not enough. I've seen companies like gas stations suddenly trying to pay for workers twice what they did a few years ago just to get workers. And somehow they're able to do that. It makes you wonder why they weren't already. Of course the answer is so they can have more profit for the top people, but it's clear that the aviation industry is falling apart because they don't want to spend on the most important investment that they can make-their people.
And we are stupid enough to keep voting for it
As far asI can see from figures collated by local unions, erosion of worker power vs company-owner power clearly correlates to ongoing reductions in working conditions & wages keeping up with living costs. Not to sound like a rabid socialist or anything, but it's not really rocket science... Companies that put worker wellbeing & engagement ahead of constantly growing shareholder profits (& who may even move tieards more of a fully or partially employee co-op model) will naturally find it easier to hire and maintain staff? The underlying problem seems to me to be the capitalist expectation that every firm must put shareholder profits first and that constant rapid growth is a realistic business model, rather than just a reflection of how cancer operates... 😔
I’ve been following you for a few years now and love your channel and content. I am a Physical Therapist working in a hospital and have seen huge staff turn over in the past few years. Kind of similar to the pilot shortage in that many of the older nurses, therapists, etc have decided the job just isn’t worth it anymore. Why expose yourself working on the Covid units when you didn’t get paid a differential, and if you got Covid you ended up burning thru your own sick/vacation time? And for whatever reason, patients and family members (now that the are allowed back in to visit ) have also become more aggressive and ill behaved like the airline passengers have ! And staffing ratios continue to go the wrong direction .
I’m lucky I’m that I can retire in a few years, if I had to become a PT now, I wouldn’t do it!
This is insane, no other industry has ever seen a shortage this bad other than the aviation industry! This actually is a great motivator because the airlines are wanting new pilots and since I’m an aspiring pilot I’m looking forward to starting my pilot training as soon as I have the opportunity
I think you mentioned some key points: compensation and work/life balance.
If they want prospective pilots to see it as a career with work/life balance, it needs to *have* work/life balance. If they want it to be seen as "worthwhile", it needs to *be* worthwhile. A decent wage, paid for the *entire* time that you're working. They need to stop the "you're only paid when the doors are closed" BS.
I wonder how they can not pay employees unless the door is closed or the airplane is airborne. I would think that is a Department of Labor issue.
@@kd5you1 Especially when they are performing critical tasks before the doors are closed.
I agree with other commenters, alot of this boils down to terrible mgmt decisions in the early days of the pandemic, who let valuable skilled people lose ALL trust in the industry as a whole - not only in the airline industry but everywhere. Now fully justified, the work force are laughing at an industry that are begging staff to return, having unceremoniously back stabbed them alongside receiving govt subsidy to survive - had they instead kept them on, had they not been so greedy and suffered financial loss in order to keep staff, this situation would not have happened. All across many industries, the same story is playing out.
I agree completely. Airline management are arrogant, selfish, mindless idiots who treat staff like s**t, always for the short term gain and screw the long term consequences. The other issue they suffer from is what I call “mindless compliance”. Government applies restrictive, often unlawful and harmful mandates, and airline management fall over themselves to comply, regardless of the rationale or real safety issues behind the diktats. Just keep flying, keep earning us the money! We don’t care if the injections might disable you, just take them to comply. We don’t care to check if there might be severe health and safety issues if you wear a mask non stop for 12 hours. Just keep flying, keep earning us the money! Shameful.
Not as simple as that, so many more Baby Boomers than younger workers that when Boomers leave the work force there are fewer people to fill those job vacancies across all industries, the answer is to balance the number of jobs with number of workers - to reduce jobs with technology, to promote faster even if unready, etc.
Yes, definitely saw a similar issue in the tourism industry here where some operators just flat-out fired their staff when border closures started. Purely self-interest and shareholder protection - other firms have stood by their staff instead and found alternative solutions to hold them until duration of the crisis became clearer & the government could put wage supplement/replacement scheme in place. Where employers show no loyalty to their existing staff, it's obvious why new prospective employees may hesitate to take contract with them?
Petter, thanks for a thorough explanation of this problem. So many LEAD TIMES involved that have to be satisfied and meshed together - new airplanes being delivered, trained pilots and cabin crew, ground crew and security. The part I am still confused about is, in the short term, the airlines still seem to be scheduling an over abundance of flights considering the available pilot pool. I know the carriers want to make the most of their post-covid market. However, when an airline cancels 1,400 flights in one day, it seems they need to rethink their schedule and pare it back until they have the crews and TSA staff to get the job done. With cancellations of this magnitude, they are not making friends of the flying public.
IMO, Another great way the airlines could attract newer pilots, could be by implementing some sort of scholarship or paid-for flight school, where the newer pilots would have to sign a fixed term contract (3 -5 years) with the airline upon completing it. It adds an extra layer of security for the pilots as well as the airlines. I know that this is already implemented by many airlines, but making it more mainstream codul be the way to go.
Yes, I’m hoping for something like that to take hold as well.
Yes, this model has worked before. As Petter already mentioned, Lufthansa has their own flight school. In the late 1980s, Norway had a flight school owned by the government. It was free for the students, and when they had passed all checks and tests, they are hired by Scandinavian Airlines System.
In the past Lufthansa gave their prospective pilots a credit which they paid off when actually hired. I don't know what happened to drop-outs.
But I know a former LH pilot who couldn't fly anymore at age 40. (AFAIR medical issues) They all have insurance for that case. So he got his insurance payments and worked in a different area (teaching and consulting) where I met him.
That would suck tho for anyone who has just payed for their own training and is trying to find a job now. If airlines suddle only go for experienced and rated pilots and their own MPL trained pilots. It would make the rest of us (who already have huge depts) useless...
Wizzair also has this, as they have two academies working for them. If you are Hungarian, you can also apply for a BSc course which will give you an ATPL license, and get hired for the right front seat upon graduation. You can use the government student loans to pay for this, which has good terms. Takes 3 years for the BSc, 20-22 months for the Wizzair academy. Private price atm is 45 k€ for 0 to ATPL.
Great video as always. And it is actually motivation for me to study hard and finish ATPL finally
I just feel like the way they fired a bunch of people when times were hard and then just expected them to come running back when times got better sends a message to everyone that pilots are only valued when they're needed. That they can easily be tossed aside when the airlines don't want them, but they're expected to sit around and wait for them to be needed again. I know it's more complicated than that, but it couldn't have been a good feeling for the employees.
That's every job...
Keep employees on payroll
Go bankrupt.
.
Furlough employees
Piss everyone off and have no staff to meet demand when it’s back
.
There was no good decision to be made at the time. Maybe in hindsight sure.
Yes, they need to pay better and offer better incentives to get them back now. But, we all need jobs. Eventually people will go back to work.
We had enough people to fill jobs pre-pandemic. We just have a lot of people who refuse to work at all now.
I landed in BRS and it took 50 mins for someone to bring the steps to the plane, then the bags took 2.5 hours to come out…
Love your videos, Petter!!! Big thank you for all yo do from Detroit MI!
Thank you for simplifying a very complex set of circumstances that brought us all here. I have a much better understanding now
Glad to hear that you liked it! Feel free to share it with your friends.
Fantastic analysis Petter! I always appreciate your take on the industry.
I flew out of ZRH on Swiss Air a few Sundays ago. Fewer than half of the check-in counters were staffed, while hundreds of passengers lined up. This meant that about every 20 minutes, they would call out 2-3 destination cities and pull those passengers to the front of the line. After 2-1/2 hours in line, more passengers had been pulled from behind me, than had been served ahead of me. Ultimately, they called my destination and pulled me out, with 20 minutes to takeoff. Fortunately, the gentleman ahead of me hadn’t done his COVID test (required to check in for the US). When we got to passport control, there were only four lanes, and one was a trainee, who took twice as long, per traveler. I ran to my gate, along with most of the highly agitated passengers, to find that even though I had booked a month in advance, I found myself holding a standby ticket. Fortunately, I was able to board the completely full aircraft. Though it ended up being a middle seat from ZRH-SFO direct.
regardless of the reasons why, travel-agencies-airlines-airport, at least one of them had to know they were overselling their services. In my book that is fraud.
Thank you for your wonderful videos. I work in health care and I have watched many colleagues in that sector moving up retirement plans (although we were NOT furloughed or fired!) I heard this called ‘the great resignation’. I work in a remote fly in community in northern Canada and have flown all through the pandemic. It is chaos even here - non emergency medical travel (out for appointments, treatment if missed and we have to write bump letters. This seems to be a constant thing in the past month or so.
For US pilots if you didn't get the jab you were fired, a lot of pilots got fired and now the airlines have a huge shortage of reliable pilots not to mention playing games to have all seats full to cover overhead costs.
Or you died suddenly like the health AA pilot inflight
September last year I had a unexplainable feel that this was the right time to go for my dream. It’s been quite difficult to pay for the training, but I started in March this year. I love every single moment and this video just made my day. One day I’ll be up there. Thank you for your inspiration.
How do you get new Pilots? You train them. How do you train them? With trainers. What is industry in general short of? People expirenced and capable of training others. All industries involved with transport in any form are having the same problem. Treat people like monkies, don't be suprised if they throw...peanuts..at you.
I worked at an airport before. You not only need all the security checks and stuff, but you also have to be a citizen of the country or live there for 5 to 10 years, so hiring immigrants is basically out of the question to get the qualification for security related jobs. ( even cleaning jobs)
Some people became crazy after 9/11 attacks. But why these fearful individuals have anything to say about anything?
@@Artoooooor I don't know, it is quite ridiculous. I'm an immigrant myself, and I had to give the police every address I lived in, proof of being in the country for 5 years, with out leaving for more than a month, evry job I had, and each day I had departed or arrived from the country. It was a ridiculous long process just for a minimum wage cleaning job.
Depends on the country. Arlanda Airport just outside Stockholm, Sweden, have been employing people with criminal connections, and about a year ago it was discovered that a house cleaner without a working permit had been working in the residence of the Prime Minister.
@@JanBruunAndersen cool! It was helsinki airport. I'm surprised since Nordic countries can be very conservative sometimes.
Come to Canada
How about if airlines only schedule flights they have planes and staff for, and only sell tickets they have seats for. Over scheduling and overbooking should be made illegal.
I am surprised you are on this page with so little understanding of how things work
@@elliotoliver8679 Are you saying that Airlines don't over schedule or overbook? I've had a ticket for an overbooked flight and watched the gate personnel scramble to find volunteers to take a different flight.
I work at a hotel, I we end up overbooked, we are legally required to find those guests a room at a comparable or better hotel at our cost. Not give them a cot, if they are lucky, in a corridor and say we will have a room tomorrow.
@@elliotoliver8679 be nice
@@Thirdbase9 I think what he's saying is airlines couldn't survive if they didn't overbook. If, however, once a reservation was made the fare was charged to the passenger regardless of whether or not that person boarded the plane that would also solve the problem. What does your hotel do if a person cancels a reservation? I'm assuming they offer a refund.
@@js32257 If they cancel before the cancellation time, they are not charged, after that they are charged for the first night. People that don't show up are charged for the first night. Except for some special events hotels do not collect payment until you arrive.
No other business I can think of is allowed to oversell its products. Imagine paying for an automobile and arriving at the dealership only to be told that the car you've PAID for doesn't exist. Or going to a movie, buying the tickets and finding out that all the seats are already full with others that have tickets.
if air travel has followed the trend of nearly every industry, the increase in owner profits has become a significant factor in both customer and employee disgruntlement.
Absolutely
Looking at you Qantas.
Some years ago I graduated from school but many airlines at that time said to me, they would finance it but not give me the guarantee to take me in the end. That was for me a big NONO. I already know three people who did this, have biiiig debts and no job. I would still start as a pilot if the airlines would change their mind on education financing or the guarantee for a job.
I like you brought up security checking of new hires. I recently got a job myself that requires an enhanced security check and it took 6 full weeks to process and pass me, and I am a fairly simple check as these things go for various reasons. I was told a more complex case could take much longer. My start date could only be decided once this check (along with health and normal criminal check) was done. The airport near me waited and waited to hire new security staff who then require many months of training before they can begin to do the job, and a security check before they can begin training, until the last minute. So of course when the rush started most of them were still early in training. It's poor planning and cheapness, penny pinching. If they had recruited much earlier it might have at least mitigated some of the issues.
I've been made redundant during covid, airline went bust. Couldn't find a job for over 6 months. I am lucky enough to have Aircraft Maintenance Licence as well as Pilot Licence. I was unable to find a job as a pilot, but I found job at the beginning as Technical Instructor in Part-147 company, and after some time i found another job as B1/B2 engineer. Tbh working as an aircaft enginner pays much bette than being FO, or in some cases even better than a CPT. I agree it's not a flying job, but still a job. I'd love to go back to work in flight deck, but being 41 time is running out for me.
AIlines don't pay enough for FO to support our families.
@bart solari when I started at Flybe in 2019 basic FO pay was £29k pa, new Flybe offers £21k pa how can one possibly live on that having family, mortgage, and loan for flight school to pay off.
@@wolfik123 £21,000 for a Flying Officer?!? Is that right? If so, that's insane - you would earn more doing literally any job this side of binman or shelf stacker
@@duncanhamilton5841 yes £21k pa for a first officer, plus flying allowence. You are correct it ie pretty much bellow shelf stucker salary, but you're doing it for love of aviation, for the prestige of the job, etc.
It's a bloody joke, what the FO's salary came to.
On the other hand, as a LAE i make twice as much, as CPT in a one of the cargo airline in Europe.
@@duncanhamilton5841 yes that is correct. 21k plus flight allowance, but still one month you can fly a lot, and make some money from the allowance, and next month fly very little, and not make ends meet.
Time is running out at 41???
Excellent timely topic and summary! Reveals your ability to see beyond the cockpit. Thanks for this presentation.
This is kind of similar to what happened to global logistics during the Suez Canal blockage. Just in time inventory means any slight disruptions messes everything up.
Having just barely enough employees in the airline industry is like a "just in time staffing". Every time there is a slight disruption it cascades out of control.
It's like we have "just in time everything" in our economy now, there's never any buffer in case something goes wrong.
It seems like the airlines are facing the same issue every other struggling industry is....money. The jobs that pay decent living wages are not having trouble filling positions. So of course people are dropping the low paying jobs. I don't know how it is in Europe, but in the US these lower paying jobs don't cover basic costs of living. People literally cannot afford to work them. So of course the lower end of the pay scale is who is suffering. I know pilots make decent money, but the entry costs are prohibitive to most.
Exactly. And that is 100% a owner problem, not a worker problem and it's about time it became an owner problem, and they learned there are repercussions for treating people like disposable cups instead of human beings.
Yes, and these jobs especially here in Australian airports have all been outsourced. Jobs like checkin that used to be airline employees have been outsourced and pay and benefits from what were already lowish paid are now even lower. Add in the increasing costs of living and you have the current problem. Same thing has happened with baggage handlers etc. plus there is the vaccine mandates that would be taking a few out.
The airlines manage to pay shareholders and the CEO’s millions of dollars while cutting salary for the staff
The problem is too much money! Too many people at the airports with their government handout cheques.
Here in NL I see a lot of young people that just finished Airtech school getting jobs outside aviation. There are so many jobs within the technical field that just pay better and have better schedules. Fixing dishwashers in restaurants will make you way more money than KLM will ever pay you.
It was a disaster yesterday in Brussels too, the waiting lines for security were huge. So many meople started running after the check, I had never seen anything like it. This video explained a problem I didn't even realize existed. The only solution is just more € to attract more people. With the inflation, the standard wages will get there anyway, lets see how the summer will go, because like you said, it's just early june.
Yep
My son-in-law is in an Aviate program for a major US airline.
Presently flying Emb145 building up his required 2000 hours to move from the affiliated regional to the mainline carrier. It’s a long haul not only building up his initial 1500 hrs to qualify for the regional but getting all his ratings including his ATP which used to be for captains and now getting an additional 2000 to move up.
I’ve been through a number of international airports since travel started being allowed again most are managed and supervised well. Nothing, anywhere is anything like the sheer incompetence we experienced at Schipol. We flew out of there in March and we were misdirected by employees, found the correct queue on our own, stood in line for hours to check in and then stood in another for hours to get to security. Fortunately, we got there five hours ahead of them and barely made our flight. Here in June, another friend had the same horrible experience. Never Schipol, never again!
Wow, that's sad. I have transited via Schiphol quite a few times since 2018 and found it the best option. Better than Lisbon, Nairobi, Brussels South CLR.
I work at EWR in Newark for a big Airline, the pay is absolutely ridiculous and they force everyone to work overtime because of the lack of employees
While I appreciate there was uncertainty and factors outside of their control, it seems a lot of the blame lies on short-sighted management. Some of the factors raised were entirely expected and measures should have been drawn up to deal with them.
It’s always easier to save by firing people than it is to hire people “in case” of an improvement.
Good operators knew that and kept their workforce. They are reaping the benefits now..
@@MentourNow 100% in agreement. They are rightly reaping the benefits, as they actually put some thought into their decisions.
@@MentourNow espeically if people know that you fired everyone at the drop of a hat last time the going got difficult...
Yeah but if they kept the people, the poor management wouldn't get their "well earned" bonus. You reap what you sow.
@@Denis.Collins Agree except when it comes to actually being inflight, on the ground they are totally rubbish ... and I have friends who work for them all saying the same ...
Great watch and great breakdown as always 👊🏿
Another point about the pilot shortage and young people not wanting to get into flying is that young people are far more aware of mental health than before, and much more likely to have diagnosed mental health issues - but the aviation industry shuns these people. Even if you have no recurrence of symptoms, in the US, you can't get a first-class medical if you EVER had depression lasting longer than 6 months. That's most cases of depression. You can't be currently medicated if you want a first-class medical, either. The aviation industry is decades behind the curve on this and has not learned from Germanwings 9525 or the other dozens of similar incidents that their current attitude towards mental health encourages people to hide issues, rather than be open about them and seek treatment. And that is going to continue to hurt their ability to reach out to the younger generation.
A very good summary of a much-needed change of attitude.
Aw, so many young people with diagnosed mental health problems, how sad. Or, they could just get a grip, grow up and stop whinging about life not being exactly as they want it to be.
@@Rebecca_Baxter This may not totally be the fault of young people. When I was a child in the 1980's, I was permitted to leave my house and play with my friends outside without adult supervision. Unfortunately, many parents today do not allow their children to do this, even in a safe suburb. Many modern parents have to organize "play dates" to allow their children to play with other children at another family's home.
When I was in elementary school, I walked to and from the bus stop by myself. However, there are elementary schools today that REQUIRE parents to be as the bus stop in the afternoon when their children are let off.
It is more difficult for many modern children to "get a grip, grow up" when they are not given the freedom to do so and taught that there is overwhelming danger in daily life.
Young people today did not get where they are by themselves. Our culture fosters unnecessary fear and over protection, which probably contributes to mental illness.
@@Rebecca_Baxter I just want to engage with this as I think it's essentially the mentality that has allowed these policies to continue to exist. In aviation, we do not have a blame culture. Therefore, we should not be pointing at people and blaming them for being depressed, either. If they are in good medical shape, then they should be able to fly, if they are not they should be given the help they need to return to flying status. When we encourage people to push these things under the rug or get kicked out, as your mentality does, we will continue to see accidents like Germanwings 9525, and we will continue to see promising aspiring pilots be forced to abandon their dreams.
@@Rebecca_Baxter The fact that there are more diagnosed cases is not a result of young people who are weak and lazy. It is a result of greater ability to diagnose. The fact is, there does not seem to be an increased incidence of mental illness recently, only diagnosis. Which goes directly to the OP's point about the system being out of step with the current reality. It used to be that only severe cases of mental illness were diagnosed. It may very well be true that those people who received those diagnoses should be precluded from flying. Most of the young people with diagnosed mental illness, however, do not have comparable cases. They are perfectly capable of completing the job but, due to regulations, would not be allowed to.
I recently flew to an airport where many passenger jets are stored. It was so sad to see so many planes not being used. I was so lucky to be able to travel and hope to do so again very soon.
My take from this (And coming from someone that wants to get a PPL but cant afford it- so take this with a grain of salt.)
The huge cost of training for each certificate earned, and the limited amount of earnings at entry level into commercial flying is what started the shortage in the first place. Even attorneys can make enough to start paying off loans straight out of law school. Pilots however cant even get an ATP Cert without 1500 of flight time, even if they work as a CFI for a few years.
This effects even GA. People are not getting their PPL due to the massive cost of it.
I worked in one of the services located in Dubai airport for 4 years. I can tell you that 2021 and beginning of 2022 were extremely discouraging for me: too many passengers and too few staff in every touch point imaginable. I saw employees coming in excited and running away in disbelief of how hectic and really not so well paid everything was. So I resigned as well and found a better paid job with less stress
I actually considered being a pilot when i was looking at career paths here in the US back in the mid 2000's ... the barrier of entry was just tooo high money wise, i went into engineering instead. Hopefully the next generation will have an easier path.
Sounds familiar... although in the 1990s
Unfortunately things tend to become harder to become a part of. One day its gonna become a major sticking point.
You and another story teller ( Mr. Ballen) are amazing ty so much for the great stories u tell
Handling agent Swissport has been offering its staff £70 (81.97 EUR / 86.22 USD) *per hour* to do overtime and work their days off because they are so short of staff. Additionally they offered staff from smaller airports with better staffing levels £100 (117.10 EUR / 123.16 USD) *per hour* to stay in a hotel and work at my larger airport for a while.
We moved an aircraft from a remote stand to a contact stand and it took 40 minutes to get the jetbridge attached because there wasn't someone available to do it, where we were actually stuck on the aircraft. It's getting pretty desperate in places.
Wow
I guess you are in MAN =)
Like the travel nurses in the US. Travel nurses can get up to 165 USD per hour contracts these days.
Excellent explanation,thanks indeed,the best way to fix things is understand
The problems in the UK seem to be a shortage of security, check in and baggage handlers. Coupled with management used to the GIGA economy, hire and fire at will - pull in people when you need. This covered the fact these managers could not organise when they were short of staff. Airlines ramping up services when you do not have the support staff and neither do the airports is very short sighted. Flying from Manchester in February I was unimpressed by the management. Someone going around saying 'We are short of staff' is no use, better employed behind the check in desk would be better.
I was flying to and from Manchester in March and it was a straight up disaster. I ended up missing my flight and having to spend the night at the airport even with everyone cutting fast check and priority lanes. Half of the security gates were empty as well.
Great video! You're right about the cost to enter into this career, and change is needed if airlines want to get enough people.
Petter, you mentioned Schiphol Airport. The problem is not only with the security staff. Schiphol is an airport that for decades has concentrated on the policy to be the cheapest airport hub in Western Europe. That meant paying the groundworkers the absolute minimum for the rough and tough work they do.
The first sign of problems was a wild strike by the baggagehandlers. They striked for more days, being paid practically the minimum wage for a job that is a severe attack on the human body.
Next the securitystaff was shortstaffed, which you tell in the video. That was, taken together, reason for Schiphol to plea to the airlines to reduce their number of flights. Only KLM has responded in a affirmative way, moving several holidayflights to Rotterdam.
The boss of Schiphol had to promise Dutch parliament he will pay the groundworkers more.
Schiphol needed to be cheap so KLM could fill their trans atlantic flights wirh transfer passengers. And still, KLM was never able to survive without the government (tax payer) sending shiploads of mony to KLM.
@@mwkoskamp1 As did other companies. kLM got 3.4 billion euros of government loans (with interest) during corona, which are almost all payed back. Besides that they got 1.7 billion euros of ‘NOW loonsteun’ (wage support, subsidies to keep personnel on the pay-list during corona lockdowns), a gift, like other Dutch companies got. And like other flag-carriers got in the EU. And Airport Schiphol is amongst the cheapest in Western Europe for airlines, but one of the most expensive for passengers in Western Europe, because they pay the safety and security costs themselves through the ticket price. Simply saying they got shiploads of money from the taxpayers isn’t the whole story. Air France got 7 billion euros from the French government, Lufthansa got 9 billion euros from the German government, Austrian, Finnair and SAS got between 0,6 and 1 billion euros from their governments. Your first sentence is correct though. That’s the essence of Schiphol, if you agree with it or not. I don’t, I live close to Schiphol Airport and I hardly fly, the last time was 11 years ago. So I only have the burden of airplane noise, not the direct benefits. I do find it important for Schiphol to have a hub function, but I’m not sure if it needs to be to the extent it has today.
Just signed up to Morning Brew.. fantastic.
I left the commercial aviation sector in 2016, I could see the writing on the wall at my airline. That airline had a plan, tucked away in an office drawer, just waiting for the next world event to come along where they could use it as an excuse to slash terms and conditions and get rid of older, more highly paid crew. And, that is exactly what they did. I still work in aviation, private jets, and commute via my old airline to and from my base, and it makes me so sad to see what my old airline has become even in the last 5.5 years since I left. But, someone somewhere is still making a shed load of money from it all... Despite driving down pay and conditions for everyone else.
Why anyone would want to remain being a flight attendant at 70 is beyond me. Try selling that mantra to Singapore airlines ! But cool, I am senior. Show me the £££ and I am happy to go and let someone else, younger - possibly more dynamic take my place. They won't have my knowledge by hey ho, no one is indispensable, they would muddle through.
Every decade spent in the airline industry is a new lifetime. When I compare it to when I joined, they are worlds apart. The internet changed how people buy tickets, I am surprised travel agencies still exist - but that's progress. Same for real estate, you looked for a home, visited a real estate agent, picked up brochures of properties and made appointments for your viewings. Now, you search online, make your appointment online - no need to visit brick and mortar. The world is constantly evolving.
You had a paper ticket, it was mailed to you, or you picked it up. Tickets are now virtual, boarding cards are now virtual ..... it's a virtual world. The next step will be for mankind to make conceiving virtual, marriages will be virtual :-)
You have a talent for discussing news/current events, too - good job
In my opinion, also speaking from personal experience, the absolutely BIGGEST issue is the enormous cost of flight training. Taking a loan is not even the worst part, but if there is no airline backing you up during the trainng and sharing the risk of that loan, it gets hard.
Unfortunately the rising interest rates and political instability in Europe don't make the situation any easier. Hopefully the airline industry will ramp up their sponsored training programs once again.
Yep, that’s what I hope and believe will happen.
Air Canada will most definitely have to, if it wants to stay in business at all, since WestJet is now the largest Domestic carrier and absolutely destroying Air Canada in the Continental game.
I was told the Australian airforce will pay for your training. You just have to sign a contract for X years
@@MentourNow The problem is that setting up training programs is a cost now with a payoff in 2-3 years time. For many companies (including airlines) that investment period is simply too long.
Nice info. Nice editing. Easy to watch. Thx
I don't know if you are aware , few days ago a small plane has flown from Lithuania to Bulgaria (stopping in Hungary to take fuel). The plane was never in contact with ground and it had all monitoring systems off. It was chased by at least hungarian and romanian "police" fighter planes , but the pilot didn't answer to the wing signals which the planes did. Could you cover please this subject , how is possible that a plane is crossing Europe without having contact with nobody , how is possible to land it on an airport without permission and not being meet by aviation authorities , why the fighters didn't shut it down if they didn't get replied , and why the planes chasing him were not in contact with the ground police to surround straight away the area where it landed? Thank you!
Perhaps the story of Mathias Rust who landed near the Red Quare in Moscow will be of interest too?
It happens. Someone has flown a small Cessna from Germany and landed on the red square in Moscow without raising any concern. A huey was stolen and landed on the white house lawn after touring the area. Another Cessna was able to crash into the Whitehouse.
There are many other instances that don't get reported to the public.
@@hewhohasnoidentity4377 😱 I know about the flight that I've mentioned above because in my country is a quite hot subject these days. And me and my other aviation friends are quite courious about this.
From your description it sounds like a single engine propeller aircraft. These things have about as much potential of causing damage as a passenger vehicle. In fact, there was recently a similar aircraft that landed on a roadway in Florida and hit an SUV. The pilot died, the passengers were seriously injured and the occupants of the SUV only got scratches.
Very few governments are cruel enough to shoot down an aircraft that doesn't pose any risk. As far as calling law enforcement to surround it, they don't know where it will land, and again, it poses no more risk than any other vehicle or person.
There is no reason to fear everything.
I wanted to ask the same. I don't know how well it is covered in international (English) press, but I read a few articles in Hungarian. Apparently they landed on a small non-public airport at Hajdúszoboszló (LHHO) without permission and threatened the caretaker of the airport when he wanted to talk to them. They quickly fueled up and took off when the police arrived.
The lack of security people has hit Toronto (YYZ) hard, as it is a major hub for traffic in, out and around Canada. And that feeds into problems with most of the major airports here in Canada.
There is one easy solution actually: increase the air fare. First, air fare has been frozen (or even dropping) for the last 25 years. I have been flying regularly (a few times a year) between Toronto and Hong Kong since 1998. I even flew the route in summer 2020 and 2021 during the peak of COVID, experiencing the empty airports and planes (with 20 pax on a B789 and then 30 pax on an A340). The round trip economy fare used to be around CAD 1,800 to 2,200 in 1998. In 2020 (before COVID), the fare was down to between 1,000 and 1,300. If I use 1,800 as the base price in 1998 and apply 1% annual inflation from 1998 to 2020, the air fare in 2020 should have been around CAD 2,300, not 1,300. The last 2 years were abnormal so I am not going to include them in the calculation. But if we apply that 22 years of inflation back to the air fare of the route to the come up with the current fare, I am pretty sure that the number of passengers would drop by some significant percentage (say 20-30%). And I am not even talking about the 8% inflation now. The same apply to almost all routes in the developed world. With less passengers, there will be less flights and less need for all levels and types of staff. The increased price would also allow airlines and airports to finally pay fair and decent salary to those security and ground staff who are paid minimum wage. This doesn't solve the problem for this summer, but it would solve it for the medium term (say for the Christmas season).
Not the case in Europe. Fares now are 2x to 3x what they were 10 years ago.
Thank you very much for taking up this very important topic - and for providing practical assistance.
Yeah pilot shortage. I'm a new Canadian CPL Multi IFR pilot and can't find a job.
Pilot shortage is only for experienced pilot ready for a regional or mainline job. Fresh flight school graduates in Canada and US are still struggling to find a job. And those entry level job also have a extremely bad pay, which is really a big struggle considering how bad inflation is.
If those regionals and legacy want to solve this pilot shortage, the'd better find a way to help low time flight school graduate to get their first job and get to 1500 hours.
When I applied for my first airline job in the early 80s the airline flew me to the interview, put me up in a first class hotel and paid me per diems to attend. After I was employed, all my endorsement and ground training was paid for and I was paid a salary from day 1. Fast forward to today where you pay for everything yourself and are left with a large loan as result. To add insult to injury most airlines treat you as liability, to be worked as much as possible for the smallest amount of money they can get away with paying you. Geoff Dixon (ex Qantas CEO) when faced with complaints by pilots once said "Are many resigning?" The answer was no so therefore the problem didn't exist as far as management were concerned. Nothing has changed and the situation will have to get pretty dire/catastrophic before conditions and salaries improve. At present, despite all the difficulties, I see absolutely no sign of improvements, in Australia at least. In fact, the "war" on pilots salaries and conditions continues unabated. It's just more threats and ultimatums, just like before.
I flew from BHX to FRA a couple of weeks ago and the outbound check-in was a complete nightmare with queues to check bags (90 minutes) and through customs. I've never seen such stupidly long queues. I normally use the fast track lane (I was a frequent flyer) and that wasn't an option as it was closed.
Both Lufthansa flights had no buffet services and were delayed with multiple gate changes. Plus the price for a beer at FRA was probably 2x pre-Covid.
Me - I'm going to hold off flying again for a while. Webex / Zoom / Teams have changed how businesses operate. I live on Plague Island and Brexit has also made things worse with delays through customs; 30 mins to get through customs at FRA while there were 4x EU e-gates totally clear. This was what we predicted prior to the vote but I digress.
We are seeing so many flights cancellations and turmoil at the moment. I wonder if a lot of the issues we are now seeing was short sightedness of airlines and ground support operators to just allow their staff to dissipate into other industries?
The company I work with have a policy of asking staff to choose between a staff reduction programme based on random selection or everyone taking a temporary 10-20% salary reduction. We choose to keep the team together - and that is a $35Bn company. And the money is paid back multiple times when we come out of the dip. We have a full team when we come out of a dip and everyone can sleep at night.
There are lessons to be learned by many companies. Your shareholders may be happy to see a reduction in capex when there is a crisis, but big organisations take a long time to re-gather momentum, train people and become re-operational once the talent they once had is lost and has to be replaced and retrained. That costs a LOT of money and down-time. But we are talking about bean counters rather than people that effectively run commercial organisation. And as was said - one cog breaks, the rest suffers.
Absolutely true!
I flew BCN to FRA a while back. You scan your boarding pass to access airside, security is quick if you plan ahead, flash ID to board the plane, no customs, no immigration. A lot of what you say is down to BREXIT.
A Schengen/EU flight is as easy as London-Edinburgh. Post Brexit, UK to EU is the same as a flight to the US or Australia.
@@stephengrimmer35
Flown once this year to Lyon. Not too bad at LHR. Ferry to Normandy loads of times. 26 stamps in passport...
Very illuminating. Nice work
Something no one likes to mention is the effect of vaccine mandates on airline workers. From pilots to ground crew.
It’s a staff shortage caused by wages. The work conditions are compounded by the lack of staff. Ive been a ramp agent in Austin, Texas for several years. The pay is not competitive and because of this so many people have quit. Those of us remaining are still not making a fair wage and we’re also having to do even more work to make up for loss of staff. Add to that the temperatures in Texas (the heat index is 114 F today) and it is no wonder why this chaos is ensuing.
And for anyone telling me to get a new job then-I have. I’m just completing my two weeks notice. I’ve been hired at Tesla making $3 more an hour.
Congratulations
Well done, well said.
I've actually noticed the lack of security personnel in airports all the way in April, where only less than half of security check stations were working, and obviously temporary barriers were set up for the live queue to handle the increasing amount of people travelling. Thankfully it wasn't anywhere as bad as it's now, as the pandemic was only starting to wane, and April isn't the vacation month.
Thanks for all the helpful and insightful videos Petter! :)
Interesting what you said on business travel changes, especially in light of Wendover's video on Airline's Business Travel Problem - will a loss of business travelers affect the financial viability of larger carriers and, although Wendover said smaller cheap carriers weren't affected by this, increases in wages across the whole industry might just finish off the cheaper carriers as well. Nice you ended on an optimistic message, just remember going from Boomers to Millennials gives you a smaller pool to recruit from... BBC did an article giving numbers to the staff shortfalls in the UK, including delays in security clearances: "Why are so many flights being cancelled?"
Really great overview on this subject Petter. Thanks for the insight. Best wishes from Cape Town South Africa 🇿🇦
Thank you for watching.
glad you liked it!
Thanks great video, a really thought provoking analysis of the current situation that hasn't been well explained in the main stream media.
Thank you! Feel free to share the word.
Mainstream media is just going "OMG {airline} has cancelled flights!!" With no real context :(
People still watch mainstream media?
Really love your unique insights into the industry
I was a security officer in a UK airport and even before the pandemic there was a chronic problem in the recruitment and retention of security officers. You are absolutely spot on in saying that part of the problem is a wage that is only just above the minimum wage, so there is very little incentive to work at an airport where the hours are so unsociable and the distances to get to the airport add to stress (especially with fuel prices being so high).
Plus, because of Brexit, we have lost tens of thousands of very hard working EU workers who have left the UK since 2016. We have more vacancies than unemployed at the moment, so why for such low wages in such a demanding job?
As always you are describing a difficult problem in a way the grass roots understand. Tack skall du ha!
13:08 lol I thought you were going to say that trained pilots were coming up to you to ask... "How do I get into youtube content creation?" haha;)
Great content!
On this channel you should really talk about the "phantom flight" that took place a few days ago: a small Beechcraft Twin Bonanza took off from Lithuania, flew under the radar through Poland, have been intercepted by fighter jets in Hungary, flew over Romania and was abandoned in Bulgaria. Up to this day, the pilots have not been found...
One issue I'd like comment on is the planned changes in Europe, such as in France and Germany where theres possibility of routes being cancelled where there is an alternative high speed rail option available, and whether this becomes a trend will this reduce the staffing needs of domestic airlines?
Nah, the routes affected by this are very few.
Perfect. I would love the opportunity of avoiding airports and getting in my car in Germany, with 9 borders, and driving to where I wanted within Europe. My only cost is fuel.
Try living in the UK, an island. Where decades exploring a tunnel to connect it to continental Europe became a reality. Except one thing - it still costs more to go through it than to fly over it. Where are all the eco warriors to jam out that old cherry !?!
@@paant5025 Being in the UK, it's nicer getting the ferry if you're not in a rush, so no problem there since 1928! I know quite a number of people who drive from UK to Poland every year cause flights are too expensive. It would be a shame for you to have all those countries to go to...but no fuel to get there...
A great commentary and explanation- thank you
I think the issue that people are not realizing is that the "Work/life" factor has been warpped a lot especially with my own generation (90's kids) let alone the millennial generation. It's not 50/50 any more that is desired but 20/80 or 30/70 a "workaholic" might be 40/60. The fact is that we have now at least two generations that have been raised with "work to live" instead of "live to work" as the basis of their education.
This means jobs that require a lifestyle be built around them like being a pilot or a ground worker or other jobs like a truck driver aren't appealing even with raised salaries, this is even before talking about industry conditions.
Automation is I think going to be forced to the forefront out of necessity simply because we now lack the cultural work ethic to take up jobs like flying.
I do think a lot of young people don't have the same work-dedication ethic that previous generations had, but baby boomers and the silent generation post-war also enjoyed a certain level of prosperity that allowed many families to live off of just one income, which reduced a lot of stress for the remaining family members. The $ from productivity gains have not been shared equally between executives and workers, and many employers treat their employees as disposable commodities so it is easy to see why many are becoming resentful of having to work their behinds off and not be able to achieve the same standard of living that their parents did. Also, young people are more likely to get crappy jobs and lower pay than workers with more experience and longer resumes. I wasn't in love with most of the jobs I had in my 20s. I became a workaholic later in life and am now flirting with burnout all the time and debating what I need to sacrifice in order to retire early, so I'm not going to pretend my work/life balance is healthy.