The motivating factor for airline wages is experience, and availability of airplanes to fly. Experienced pilots come primarily from the US military. For a civilian trying to get into that market you are essentially a liability the first five years of flying. Military guys come out with 8-20 years experience... And thousands of hours, And Uncle Sam paid all their practice time. As a civilian you are only worth $16k per year because that's what the military pays junior flyers. (Which sucks because jet instruction is hundreds of dollars per practice hour to fly the smallest little Lear, easily $20k out of pocket) There are are only a fixed number of jets in commercial service.. There are far more entry level pilots than available jobs, several times over.
At the Top end, the number of qualified pilots thins out dramatically... It takes thousands of flight hours and hundreds of instruction hours. So those pilots are worth $300k... Probably more except a fair number of them would be living off Military retirements.. Which forces wages below the actual cost of acquiring the skills.
Commercial piloting is an MLM scheme... Lots of people are willing to work for crap wages just to get wings and a shot at the bigger planes you can ONLY get from airlines. There is zero leverage for new employees.
Also, if airline are only paying pilots 5% of operating expenses, then pilot wages were NEVER the problem... They're just easy to blame. If you are running a business so close to the red you cannot have 5% wiggle room your business model has far bigger problems than Unions wanting slightly better wages. Blaming the employees because you cannot pay a fair wage is just being a pussy of a business owner.
The motivating factor for airline wages is experience, and availability of airplanes to fly. Experienced pilots come primarily from the US military. For a civilian trying to get into that market you are essentially a liability the first five years of flying. Military guys come out with 8-20 years experience... And thousands of hours, And Uncle Sam paid all their practice time. As a civilian you are only worth $16k per year because that's what the military pays junior flyers. (Which sucks because jet instruction is hundreds of dollars per practice hour to fly the smallest little Lear, easily $20k out of pocket) There are are only a fixed number of jets in commercial service.. There are far more entry level pilots than available jobs, several times over.
At the Top end, the number of qualified pilots thins out dramatically... It takes thousands of flight hours and hundreds of instruction hours. So those pilots are worth $300k... Probably more except a fair number of them would be living off Military retirements.. Which forces wages below the actual cost of acquiring the skills.
Commercial piloting is an MLM scheme... Lots of people are willing to work for crap wages just to get wings and a shot at the bigger planes you can ONLY get from airlines. There is zero leverage for new employees.
Also, if airline are only paying pilots 5% of operating expenses, then pilot wages were NEVER the problem... They're just easy to blame. If you are running a business so close to the red you cannot have 5% wiggle room your business model has far bigger problems than Unions wanting slightly better wages. Blaming the employees because you cannot pay a fair wage is just being a pussy of a business owner.