Are Pilots in demand or are they in Excess?

October 31, 2021

Are Airline Pilots in Demand

or are they in Excess?

There are a lot of Commercial Pilots (like myself) that would love to return to fly but will not. The working conditions are absolute crap!

For a Regional Airline you will be paid for flight hours but will be on duty for much longer. You will have flight time limits and duty time limits every day and often you will run out of duty time well before you run out of flight time. What this means is if you are earning say $25/flight hour and fly get 4 flight hours but are on duty for 12 hours you really are only earning $8/hr!

Now to make it worse, you might fly 6 hours but only get paid for 4 hours since each route will have a predetermined flight time associated with it for pay purposes. Now add in a schedule that makes it near uncommutable: i.e., you finish on a Friday night at 10pm, next flight out is at 12pm Saturday and you are supposed to work 9am Monday but the last flight to your base is Sunday at 2pm.

Your two days off just ended up seeing you at home for a touch over 24 hours!

Many Pilots will be living very, very frugally balancing their student loan debts with their miniscule wages and will do all they can to maximize flight times that for myself translated into refusing to fly a leg due to a maintenance issue as a first officer just to have the captain agree to fly it because they needed the pay!

I flew in this environment for a year before quitting, expanding my own business and using my hard-earned skills to buy and fly my own twin.

If I could have a flying job that made it so that I was home most nights, flew well-maintained Aircraft, duty times no longer than 12 hours, a fixed salary independent of flight time, I’d have signed up long ago along with thousands of other qualified Pilots that are not working currently as a Pilot.

There is no demand for Qualified Pilots that insist on workable conditions.

There is an excess of Pilot job openings for Pilots willing to work for less than they are worth.

Capt Mic Heynekamp

Commander

Regional Airline SA