I expect a major pilot shortage in recent years. Not too long ago many of them were on strike [1] [2], due to apparently bad pay and high burnout. It really is a thankless profession.
Sadly it's a bit like game development. Pilots love to fly, that's why they went through all the time and effort to qualify and unfortunately, the corporations that hire them know and abuse that fact.
It's a high skill profession in an industry that largely competes on cost. One will find similarly thankless jobs in manufacturing, agriculture, and any other industry where the push is to squeeze margins as much as possible.
Everything about flying has become substantially worse except safety. The only way the industry is able to maintain its safety record is by being heavily regulated and never changing anything.
The difference of course, is that pilots can squeeze airlines almost infinitely if they want to, because without pilots, the whole operation stops. They're the difference between flights happening and not happening, and they aren't easy to replace, and certainly not easy to replace quickly
Honestly, I'm surprised they haven't flexed this more.
They probably have less power than you think. If they actually shut down all aviation and didn’t have a very convincing PR strategy, they’d find an infuriated public (you can’t go to your daughter’s wedding, your grandpa’s funeral, etc.), which the airlines (and the government, which has a serious interest in seeing air commerce working smoothly) would absolutely use to their advantage.
Don’t forget that when ATCs actually followed your logic, Reagan responded by firing them all, and even though in more recent years this has been cast as the horrible beginning-of-the-end for American unions, at the time he had broad public support, because people were incensed that one profession could shut down air travel.
All this is to say that I think pilots’ unions do have a good sense of how hard to push and not push. They don’t have infinite leverage.
It is also illegal for them to strike without going through mediation, etc. Pilots are allowed to vote to go on strike at any time (and they can have picket lines as if they were on strike) but they cannot stop showing up for work.
Pilots are one of the few professions that are covered under the Railway Labor Act, so federal mediators have lots of power to reach an agreement between airlines and pilots
Right, that’s what I mean: pilots are not legally permitted to stop showing up for work. They could stop anyway in an illegal strike, which is what the ATCs did in 1981, but this would be a very high-risk gamble.
ALPA would never allow that - you can start flying a 737 or similar in Europe with a wet 200-hour commercial license. In the US you need an R-ATP with 1500 hours before you can even be considered and even then you're going to start on something smaller. For context, I've been flying recreationally since 2017 with two or three long pauses (6+ months) and have well over 200 hours. You could hit 200 hours in the first 12-14 months if you were dedicated, picking up your instrument and commercial on the way.
Commercial airline pilots - ones for the planes you typically fly on - make great money, have a strong union that negotiates well on their behalf, have tons of job protections, hours protections, and lots of control over their schedule once they have seniority.
It is a good job in most people's estimation, they are not victims.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/29/southwest-pilots-union-lays-...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/united-ai...