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commercial pilot shortage coming?

wink said:
Totally agree. I think all but one of the Company Chief Pilots ( a VP posting) I have had over the last 20 years at what was once (alas) the biggest airline in the world was a military guy. The very best, in my estimation, was a Navy VF alum. I think all of the chief pilots at my crew base have been military, including a VS guy who was a RAG classmate. As Cat said, somewhat true for our union, including some guys that worked either before or after in the chief pilot's office. That may seem odd as Kbay's question suggests. One has to wonder how a bunch of generally conservative independent minded individuals with management experience, who eat and and breath personal responsibility and merit, would end up as baseball bat wielding union thugs working for a COLLECTIVE. Fallonflyr's answer is not completely satisfying.
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In general, I've observed that people are much more apt to be politically idealistic when it comes to other people's affairs and much less so when it's their turn to get bennies from the government, union, etc. Human nature, I reckon.
 
ProwlerPilot said:
How does the union handle bad pilots? They are everywhere and after a discussion with a union pilot recently, I was surprised to hear how a union of pilots will end up protecting a unsafe or bad pilut because of the union itself. Have any of you in "the show" had any experience with this. Seems to me it would be pretty hard to swallow protecting a guy I'm afraid to fly with just because we hate the corporate bean counter.
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Rarely if ever are things so black and white. And where I worked, although some pilots were obviously a bit better than others, we never had any "unsafe or bad" pilots to "protect." It just never happened! We all were pretty standardized as far as flying skills and performance.

I suppose if it did ever happen that we had someone so bad, we would refer the individual to our union's professional standards committee, get him removed from flying, find out why he was having problems, have the company provide extra training, etc. Just like one learns in the military, you are a team. You take care of your troops. You motivate and pull up the weakest link, and you leave no one behind or abandoned if at all possible.

Bottom line: In any dispute between two entities, it is always better to have someone with knowledge and expertise to represent you and protect your rights, rather than trying go it alone... regardless of whether you are in the right or wrong... and regardless if your rep. has to hold his nose while representing you too, I suppose.
 
Catmando said:
Bottom line: In any dispute between two entities, it is always better to have someone with knowledge and expertise to represent you and protect your rights, rather than trying go it alone... regardless of whether you are in the right or wrong... and regardless if your rep. has to hold his nose while representing you too, I suppose.
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I have never done union work. Years ago I did fly with our local domicile chair for a month and we had quite a few beers. While he didn't have to represent anyone that was a truly unsafe pilot, he did have to stand up for some guys that did or said really stupid things that in his opinion, needed to be spanked. He basicly agreed with the company. The union, however, has a fiduciary duty to represent every member and like Cat said, he held his nose. The way he reconciled it was to compare it to a criminal defense attorney representing someone they know is guilty. They do it to ensure the system is honest, fair and has integrity so the next guy, truly innocent, can take advantage of it.
 
ProwlerPilot said:
How does the union handle bad pilots? They are everywhere and after a discussion with a union pilot recently, I was surprised to hear how a union of pilots will end up protecting a unsafe or bad pilut because of the union itself. Have any of you in "the show" had any experience with this. Seems to me it would be pretty hard to swallow protecting a guy I'm afraid to fly with just because we hate the corporate bean counter.
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There is a Professional Standards committee. they look at incident reports, training failures, etc. to monitor these types of situations and to try and work with the pilot to correct problems. At Hawaiian, It's rare, but there have been Pro-Standards recommendations at various airlines to let the company fire a pilot. At Hawaiian, there is one case in the eleven years I've been here that this has happened and it was well deserved. There have been two cases where Pro-Standards told a pilot to accept a medical retirement (valid reasons for the medical but could have been fixed) because they weren't going to fight for their jobs.
 
:mad: No luck on the search tab:mad: but....
Is it possible to join the Navy reserve as a pilot or nfo just like joining the AF reserve/ANG ?
I know there are some navy C-9 and C-130 reserve squadrons out there but i'm not sure if their flight crew went straight to the reserves after getting winged/patched. It would be a nice gig to fly in the airlines and be a C-9 or 130 weekend warrior especially with the inevitable pilot shortage;)
 
I think there historically have been guys on a very limited basis who have gone from flight school to VR, but that is not currently an option. You do flight school on the USN or USMC as an active duty officer and will have an 8 year active duty obligation starting the day you wing, plain and simple. We have no program such as the ANG does
 
Top_Gun_101 said:
:mad: No luck on the search tab:mad: but....
Is it possible to join the Navy reserve as a pilot or nfo just like joining the AF reserve/ANG ?
I know there are some navy C-9 and C-130 reserve squadrons out there but i'm not sure if their flight crew went straight to the reserves after getting winged/patched. It would be a nice gig to fly in the airlines and be a C-9 or 130 weekend warrior especially with the inevitable pilot shortage;)
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Nope. You have to have had some sort of military aviation undergrad training before they'll even look at you.
 
Thats why I'm not flying for a job..

I can get by on poverty year wages at a,major. I can't even pay my student loans at a regional, nevermind eating or mortgage.

Sent from a van down by the river via Tapatalk
 
I can't imagine Retiring at 20 just to sign up for a job that you are on duty 16 hours a day and get paid pretty much minimum wage. Plus having to most likely commute. Sorry but I don't love flying that much.. Oh wait you are only on duty up to 15 hours now, well that's way better...
 
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