Aviation Downturns

jhugz

jhugz

Well-Known Member
*First off, I’m typing this on my iPhone so excuse any grammatical mistakes, spelling errors, and run on sentences.*

As many know, I do a good amount of work mentoring pilots both within my legacy airline’s ecosystem but also outside of it too. I’ve been noticing a trend throughout those in the industry that have less than 10+ years of experience that is a little troublesome that I wanted to talk about. That is dealing with the aviation industry down cycles. Over the past couple of years we’ve seen unprecedented growth. People going from CFI to legacy in 5 years or less. Street CA’s being hired at the regionals and jobs galore. Many in the industry only know the good times. Things have slowed down over the past year or so, but we are still seeing amazing growth. Most of the legacies are still hiring or plan to in the near future. Not all regionals are hiring but some still are. Things are getting more competitive but pilot hiring and progression are still very healthy.

Things may have slowed down some, but the amount of “depression” in mentees and others in the industry doesn’t seem proportional. Things can and will get worse at some point in your career. You need to accept that, and figure out how you will cope with that or you will be miserable in this profession for the rest of your life. Ask older pilots about Age 65, the recession, 9/11, etc. These were dark, dark, times in the industry. I hope we never see these events again in our life time, but statistically it’s probably unlikely. If you’re unable to cope with the industry now, how will you for one of these black swan events?

Take care of yourself, especially your mental health. That’s first and foremost. Stop comparing your career to someone else’s. It’s not a race. Have a life outside of aviation. If your whole identity is aviation and your career is suffering in a downturn, it’s incredibly difficult to maintain any resemblance of positivity in your life. Have a support network with friends and family. When things get tough, lean on them.

I’ve seen/heard/read too much talk about how awful this industry is. It’s a tough business but also incredibly rewarding. Not everyone is cut out for it and that’s ok.

Looking back on my career to this point and it’s been a wild, crazy, stressful, infuriating, rewarding ride. I loved every second of it and would do it again in a heartbeat.

/endrant
 
Not a rant, the truth.

Everything happens in a season. Yeah, LeBron James got drafted out of high school and signed-on at $19 million.

But you're not LeBron James. You're still going to get on a team, but the career you have today is unlike the career from five, ten, twenty almost thirty years ago.

"How fast is the upgrade time?" Well, it's not. Will it return? Maybe, maybe not. Besides are you even ready to be a captain or you just saw that guy on IG filming selfies an it looks fun?

"I have 3000 hours and I can't get GlobalJet Airways to call!" — Congratulations, you'd just be about ready to leave AmeriFlight and head to Skywest about 25 years ago because now you finally have competitive times.

The next five years will be like the previous five years and that changes… every… uhhh… five years.
 
I wonder if a lot of these folks got into this industry, or are at least trying to get in, for the wrong reasons. I'm sure someone will take offense to pretty-new to 121 me saying that there are wrong reasons, or "what the hell were your reasons man?". But I'd say that you should have an interest in aviation first. And you shouldn't be doing this job to get rich. That's it. Nothing wrong with trying to get wealthy doing it, but that isn't the vast majority of pro aviation. It just happens to be the life that aviation influencers popularized in the last decade, probably inaccurately in a lot of cases, that young kids are emulating. Maybe an unpopular take
 
///AMG said:
I wonder if a lot of these folks got into this industry, or are at least trying to get in, for the wrong reasons. I'm sure someone will take offense to pretty-new to 121 me saying that there are wrong reasons, or "what the hell were your reasons man?". But I'd say that you should have an interest in aviation first. And you shouldn't be doing this job to get rich. That's it. Nothing wrong with trying to get wealthy doing it, but that isn't the vast majority of pro aviation. It just happens to be the life that aviation influencers popularized in the last decade, probably inaccurately in a lot of cases, that young kids are emulating. Maybe an unpopular take
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I wanted to go into the Navy because of Top Gun and I wanted to fly F-14’s or F-18’s and didn’t really think about… well, the military. And having to be a Naval officer first and an aviator almost as a tertiary or quaternary priority. It would have been a disaster.

Influencers have their role, somewhere, but it appears that it seems all about jumping onto beds at the end of the day, “this is myyyyyy day in the life” and selfies from the captains seat so a lot of people got invovled with it not realizing there’s a lot of grunt-work, it being cyclical in nature and for every one “OMG! I’m a widebody captain at X years” are probably 100 others out there grinding in the right seat, or the left seat in a much more challenging, lower-paid and unglamorous position in the middle of the night.

So many social media posts about “I can’t believe I’m still an FO” or “narrowbody for life, that last system bid was a DISAPPOINTMENT” or “I should have gone elsewhere”.

Entitlement and irrational exuberance. Few people are broke and we’re really the last island of high pay for minimal effort, once established, in the country.
 
derg said:
Not a rant, the truth.

Everything happens in a season. Yeah, LeBron James got drafted out of high school and signed-on at $19 million. $100 million @ 17 years old

But you're not LeBron James. You're still going to get on a team, but the career you have today is unlike the career from five, ten, twenty almost thirty years ago.

"How fast is the upgrade time?" Well, it's not. Will it return? Maybe, maybe not. Besides are you even ready to be a captain or you just saw that guy on IG filming selfies an it looks fun?

"I have 3000 hours and I can't get GlobalJet Airways to call!" — Congratulations, you'd just be about ready to leave AmeriFlight and head to Skywest about 25 years ago because now you finally have competitive times.

The next five years will be like the previous five years and that changes… every… uhhh… five years.
Click to expand...
FIFY.. Don’t insult king James like that 😂
 
///AMG said:
I wonder if a lot of these folks got into this industry, or are at least trying to get in, for the wrong reasons. I'm sure someone will take offense to pretty-new to 121 me saying that there are wrong reasons, or "what the hell were your reasons man?". But I'd say that you should have an interest in aviation first. And you shouldn't be doing this job to get rich. That's it. Nothing wrong with trying to get wealthy doing it, but that isn't the vast majority of pro aviation. It just happens to be the life that aviation influencers popularized in the last decade, probably inaccurately in a lot of cases, that young kids are emulating. Maybe an unpopular take
Click to expand...

I mean regional pilots are making good money, even before you make it to the big leagues.

I hate to come off all “damn kids need to get off my lawn” but the industry as it sits today (could change tomorrow) is in a really good place. Pay, progression, and QoL are all above the curve yet I’m still hearing a ton of complaints. When I try to explain this to some of my mentees I can hear the eye rolls through the phone and the subconscious “ok grandpa”.

I do agree that $$ shouldn’t be the number one motivator of this career path. You need to have a passion for aviation and the career otherwise you’re going to be miserable just chasing the $$.
 
jhugz said:
I mean regional pilots are making good money, even before you make it to the big leagues.

I hate to come off all “damn kids need to get off my lawn” but the industry as it sits today (could change tomorrow) is in a really good place. Pay, progression, and QoL are all above the curve yet I’m still hearing a ton of complaints. When I try to explain this to some of my mentees I can hear the eye rolls through the phone and the subconscious “ok grandpa”.

I do agree that $$ shouldn’t be the number one motivator of this career path. You need to have a passion for aviation and the career otherwise you’re going to be miserable just chasing the $$.
Click to expand...

Some are literally making over 10X in a year than I made as a new captain at Skyway. But they're... broke. Hmm.
 
jhugz said:
I mean regional pilots are making good money, even before you make it to the big leagues.

I hate to come off all “damn kids need to get off my lawn” but the industry as it sits today (could change tomorrow) is in a really good place. Pay, progression, and QoL are all above the curve yet I’m still hearing a ton of complaints. When I try to explain this to some of my mentees I can hear the eye rolls through the phone and the subconscious “ok grandpa”.

I do agree that $$ shouldn’t be the number one motivator of this career path. You need to have a passion for aviation and the career otherwise you’re going to be miserable just chasing the $$.
Click to expand...

I guess this was kinda my point, to anyone who has lived it or perhaps just been a casual student of history. It is a bang/bust cycle. We are probably in the waning years of the bang, for this cycle, I'd guess. Like you say, this is kinda the wrong place to chase money, cause you're gonna get burned eventually while overextending oneself in the process. And if you do decide to play the game for a career, you have to play the long game, like quite a few of the older guys here at JC have. That's the only way to truly (as the gen Z broccoli heads would say) "build wealth", at least the lasting kind where you aren't a couple paychecks away from financial ruin.
 
I think people have become less resilient. There’s so much “Am I cooked?” responses to everyday events like nails in the tire, cracks in the Sheetrock, or weeds in the yard. It’s weird. When folks act like little things are a big deal I can only imagine the meltdown that will come if there’s a furlough. Stuff happens: deal with it.
 
Making $13 per hour as a J31 FO. We all lived in a crashpad 2 or 3 to a room. The gas station across the street had a deal for a hotdog, chips, and a soda for $1.99

At the airport, the Sbarros would sell us a meatball for .99 cents and the AuBonPain would sell us a hard roll for .50 cents. So for $1.50 we could make a little meatball sub. So we'd spend about $5 a day. Every now and again somebody's dad would send $20 for pizza and we would live like kings for a night

When I was furloughed by AirTran in October of 1998 I went back to Chautauqua and back to the bottom of the list. But I had burned through my savings while in training at AirTran so I had no dollars.

I rolled into Pittsburgh on fumes with no money for a hotel or a crashpad. So I parked the car in a garage on Flagherty Run road, and I slept in the car. Took showers at the YMCA. If it was cold during the day, I went to the laundromat because they had heat and a TV.

That's when I met my wife. Didn't want to tell her I was homeless. But didn't have money to date, so we would walk dogs at the humane society. She thought I was a real gentleman for not pressuring her to come back to my place. Little did she know I was living in my car.

I didn't tell her the truth until we were engaged 3 years later. (I had since been hired by a major and managed to get an apartment)

The best part was in November of 1998. Nobody had cell phones yet. But the chief pilot, called me on the gate phone at work.

"Hey I heard you're living in your car"

"I'm just sleeping there until I have the money to get a crashpad. It's all good. Don't worry I'm showered"

"Well, (sigh) Mike if I let you sleep in your car in Pittsburgh in the winter, I think you're gonna die. So I'm going to put you on TDY in Syracuse and give you a hotel room for a couple months"

Probably saved my life.

Three months later I was in new hire at USAir where I'd work for three more years before my next furlough.

This job... it's truly feast or famine, a roll of the dice decided by luck and timing. Best you can do is be persistent and prepared for whatever may come.

I have lots more stories about too many more furloughs, mergers, bankruptcies, and choices that I won't bore you with. But listen to Derg. If you think you're special and deserving of an upgrade or a job at the majors because a few before you did it lightning fast. Think again. It was 26 years from my first job as an airline pilot until my first part 121 upgrade. Sometimes you just keep getting dealt a bad hand.
 
It's real easy to preach down, but everyone faces their own challenges, and while every journey is different, it's easy to project your experiences on others without really understanding them.
 
🦈💜 said:
Stop treating numbers as if they're constants. Inflation.
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Just because I’m the kind of nerd that keeps track of it, the CPI was half of today’s value back on 1998 Q2 (27 years ago 50¢ was worth a dollar today).
 
🦈💜 said:
It's real easy to preach down, but everyone faces their own challenges, and while every journey is different, it's easy to project your experiences on others without really understanding them.
Click to expand...

I want to quote this for mother-lovin' truth that it is. It will be debatable on my deathbed whether this was good fortune or not, but I watched the struggles of many of you from the outside for years before I joined the fray. The money - at the regional level - is definitely better. And the schedules and QoL are better as well. Near as I can tell, this is mainly because of the ATP rule and Colgan 3407.

But the world has also changed.

@ZapBrannigan - that gas station with the $1.99 hot dog, chips and soda still has the special, but it's $10.99 now. The costs of training and the barrier to entry are easily 3x what they were then. The house they might have been able to afford when they got to Captain pay is maybe still affordable but it'll cost way more to buy the money than it did.

I don't want to detract from @jhugz 's most excellent original post, because what I've observed dovetails with what he has seen and sees, which is a consistent sample set of two.

I respect - deeply - what guys like Zap and Derg and the rest of you lot have been through. At the same time, a lack of perspective isn't an indictment or invalidation of anyone else's experiences. There's ways, I think, to educate without preaching down. 'Tis a fine line.

(edits for clarity)
 
ZapBrannigan said:
I don't intend to sound preachy, just to share that the world of the last three years has not been the historical norm for airline pilot careers.
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I don't think you were. I've been reading you for years and I actually think a....book....or a podcast...about your specific experiences and decision processes would be VERY enlightening for a younger generation of pilots. You've had it about as rough as I've ever heard of anyone having it in this career and you've displayed a remarkably admirable resilience that should inspire anyone who feels like they're struggling.
 
🦈💜 said:
Stop treating numbers as if they're constants. Inflation.
Click to expand...
You're not wrong but it's also incredibly disingenuous to not act like we don't make a ton of money compared to the average person. I've seen it with my spouse's job and wondered how people with "regular" jobs are getting by. Are we as "rich" as we would have been at these rates a decade ago? No, but it would be incredibly tone deaf and insensitive to act like we aren't fortunate enough to be way, WAY better off than probably 90% of people.
 
Did these mentees go through COVID while in the business or did they mostly start their airline careers in the 2021-2023 wave? I've only been in the industry directly for a decade and 2020 was my first "here it is, my first downturn/potential furlough/industry implosion." I'm lucky enough to have been around people in the job to know that while it was the first, and probably not the last downturn I'd see in my career, commuting through IAH and seeing the airport littered with parked airplanes was the first in an "oh •" realization, compounded when I was ferrying airplanes to BFE to be stored for an indeterminate amount of time. I still can't believe how lucky we got that that whole thing was a relatively minor bump in the road, industry wise. I've always believed in having a furlough fund in the bank before that, but that really compounded the importance. Just curious if a lot of the people complaining had that moment or got hired immediately after.
 
🦈💜 said:
Stop treating numbers as if they're constants. Inflation.
Click to expand...

I think @derg is smart enough to understand the concept of inflation. Of course there’s inflation, but if you think RJ pilots even had remotely the same spending power back in the day as they do now…well then idk…maybe reread Zap’s post.
 
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