Congress agrees to 1500hr min for airlines.

Good to see it's back up to 1500 hours. There are plenty of ways to get flight time outside of part 121. Pay at those jobs will go way down. Part 135 first officers will probably be paying for the flight time. That sucks, but regional airline pay will have to go up to attract pilots and reduce attrition. Pay will have to remain higher because the supply of 1500 hour first officers will always be low. I'm guessing about a 20% pay increase at regionals if this goes into effect.
 
The 3407 Families have done amazing work on behalf of their loved ones, the industry, and US.

http://www.3407memorial.com/

That is not *my* website.. it's theirs. See what they've done- it's impressive, and they deserve our sympathies, appreciation, congratulations, and SUPPORT!

I highly recommend everybody take a look at this part of the site..

http://www.3407memorial.com/testimonials.php


An article highlighting their efforts:

THE INFLUENCE GAME: Victims' families persuasive

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100721/ap_on_bi_ge/us_aviation_safety_lobbying

WASHINGTON – Congress is on the verge of passing far-reaching airline safety legislation, and a lot of the credit goes to an unlikely band of lobbyists: the families and friends of the 50 people who died in a regional airline crash in western New York more than a year ago.
How they've come so far with few connections and little money is a lesson in wielding influence the hard way — with people power, persistence and facts.
The new safety provisions have been added to a broader aviation bill Congress has been struggling for four years to pass. The bill would speed up the [COLOR=#366388 ! important][COLOR=#366388 ! important]Federal [COLOR=#366388 ! important]Aviation [/COLOR][COLOR=#366388 ! important]Administration's[/COLOR][/COLOR][/COLOR] $40 billion program to modernize the nation's air traffic control system. But it's also loaded with other controversial provisions unrelated to safety that have repeatedly threatened to derail it.
___
EDITOR'S NOTE — An occasional look at how behind-the-scenes influence is exercised in Washington.
___
Thanks to a relentless pressure campaign by the family members, the safety provisions are now spurring the bill toward passage.
As a group, they have made more than 30 lobbying trips to Washington at their own expense over the past 17 months since the crash in Buffalo, N.Y., united them in grief — with a determination to try to fix what had gone wrong.
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timeless said:
Good to see it's back up to 1500 hours. There are plenty of ways to get flight time outside of part 121. Pay at those jobs will go way down. Part 135 first officers will probably be paying for the flight time. That sucks, but regional airline pay will have to go up to attract pilots and reduce attrition. Pay will have to remain higher because the supply of 1500 hour first officers will always be low. I'm guessing about a 20% pay increase at regionals if this goes into effect.
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20% might be a stretch. Although extremely overdue and well deserved. I dont see that happening.
 
FAYEV said:
Supposedly. Although what congressman doesn't work with lobbyists? I'm not so sure the general public would care about a congressman working with lobbyists on an FAA bill. All they care about is the ticket price.
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Sure, the public doesn't care about a lot of things. Until they see an attack ad on TV: "My opponent wants you to die on an airplane". Then they care. That's politics. What candidate wants to lose the next election because he sided with a relatively small training industry?

I disagree about the ticket price. I would say safety on an airplane is probably the number one concern. People pay less because airlines undercut each other, not because passengers have a disregard for safety or how much experience the pilot has.
 
I think pay rates at regionals will be up about 20% across the board within 3 years of the rule taking effect. If it wasn't going to cost so much there would be much less resistance. This will however be another kick in the balls to low time pilots. Just as the age 65 stagnation wears off they may still be many hours from meeting the new part 121 minimums. For everybody over 1500 hours this will equal more money.
 
mshunter said:
I seriously, serioulsy doubt this will have any effect on the wages of pilots.
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Agreed. Right now you probably have to have close to 1500 hours to get hired anywhere, yet there are still tons of people lining up to be treated like crap by Colgan and Pinnacle.
 
timeless said:
I think pay rates at regionals will be up about 20% across the board within 3 years of the rule taking effect. If it wasn't going to cost so much there would be much less resistance. This will however be another kick in the balls to low time pilots. Just as the age 65 stagnation wears off they may still be many hours from meeting the new part 121 minimums. For everybody over 1500 hours this will equal more money.
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Most 121 jobs will likely go to furloughed pilots or others with far in excess of 1500 hours.. for a while.

For the current 'up-and-comers' just getting started it likely won't affect how things play out too much. Long term, this will be good for the profession.
 
timeless said:
I think pay rates at regionals will be up about 20% across the board within 3 years of the rule taking effect. If it wasn't going to cost so much there would be much less resistance. This will however be another kick in the balls to low time pilots. Just as the age 65 stagnation wears off they may still be many hours from meeting the new part 121 minimums. For everybody over 1500 hours this will equal more money.
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How so? Low time will simply just mean they dont meet the minimums.
 
Firebird2XC said:
Most 121 jobs will likely go to furloughed pilots or others with far in excess of 1500 hours.. for a while.

For the current 'up-and-comers' just getting started it likely won't affect how things play out too much. Long term, this will be good for the profession.
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It will take 2-3 years for this to have any effect on wages.

Right now there are a bunch of pilots with experiance from the airlines, and plenty of desperate CFIs who will take any job to get out of their bad situation. Even the bottom feeders want ATP mins before they'll look at you.

However in a couple of years, the old guys HAVE to retire, and the economy will be mostly recovered. The bottom feeders will have a MUCH more difficult time recruiting pilots if they don't raise their pay. This time around, they will not be able to grab people out of the zero to hero puppy mills.


When supply hits a hard floor, and demand is climbing, then wages will have only one direction to move.
 
Lets just take a quick poll...

Who has more than 1500? ---- dont worry about it

Who has less than 1500? ---- complain and whine, but then realize once you get to 1500, you will be making poverty level income flying for a crummy regional airline.

Thats the way I see it.
 
I don't see this raising the pay for anyone. 135 pay will probably go through the floor, along with time building things, not that it already isn't.

The current mins at regionals are around 1500 anyways and they are still paying terrible, so I don't see anything changing. No one is hiring a 250/190 hour wet commercial to the right seat.

I would fully support it if I didn't see it forcing pilots into poverty for longer.
Maybe I'm wrong, if the pilot mills start cranking out 1/2 or less as many pilots, that would defiantly be a good thing. That is the only way I see wages going up - if the supply of pilots plummets.
 
I'd be interested to know what pilot's support this bill. Are they those who have over 1500 TT and stand something to gain by the pool of competitors being shrunk? Just interested to know.

I'm not sure what this will do, but I am skeptical about the driving force behind this bill. While it is regrettable and very tragic the accident in Buffalo, I can't help but wonder if Congress is taking a "knee-jerk reaction." Surely things need to be changed as was the case before the accident. I'd like to know exactly what's in the bill and whether it addresses any of the other issues that plague our industry. A minimum time doesn't solve any problems. You could be stuck reading NTSB reports for days about all the accidents and incidents involving crews with total times of well over 10,000 hrs. Until training and duty time issues are addressed we will still have problems. As well as pay.
 
as long as we are talking about it, anyone have a link to the purposed bill on the LOC's website?
 
USMCmech said:
It will take 2-3 years for this to have any effect on wages.

Right now there are a bunch of pilots with experiance from the airlines, and plenty of desperate CFIs who will take any job to get out of their bad situation. Even the bottom feeders want ATP mins before they'll look at you.

However in a couple of years, the old guys HAVE to retire, and the economy will be mostly recovered. The bottom feeders will have a MUCH more difficult time recruiting pilots if they don't raise their pay. This time around, they will not be able to grab people out of the zero to hero puppy mills.


When supply hits a hard floor, and demand is climbing, then wages will have only one direction to move.
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That's my thinking just from a purely common sense review. This law doesn't instantly create any demand that wasn't there. Chances are most currently available jobs in the sectors affected by this are receiving enough apps they can afford to be that selective anyways. However eventually the supply of 1500 hr pilots looking to move up and competition for the few around will increase and those who are available will be able to shop their skills for a fair wage.
 
As averettpilot mentioned. What about the other issues? Is there any movement to focus on those?
 
boondr said:
That's my thinking just from a purely common sense review. This law doesn't instantly create any demand that wasn't there. Chances are most currently available jobs in the sectors affected by this are receiving enough apps they can afford to be that selective anyways. However eventually the supply of 1500 hr pilots looking to move up and competition for the few around will increase and those who are available will be able to shop their skills for a fair wage.
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Unless the amount of people training goes way down, I see this happening for a few years while the low time jobs are over-saturated with pilots, but eventually it will catch up and there will be 10,000 pilots that have 1,500 hours to. I just don't see any pay increase until supply goes down. That is basic supply and demand no?
 
z987k said:
Unless the amount of people training goes way down, I see this happening for a few years while the low time jobs are over-saturated with pilots, but eventually it will catch up and there will be 10,000 pilots that have 1,500 hours to. I just don't see any pay increase until supply goes down. That is basic supply and demand no?
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I think (operative words) that there is another dynamic here, in the sense that Embry-Riddle, other colleges and the "we'll make you an airline pilot in 90 days" schools will be out a lot of students if the students realize just the flight training to get an airline job costs what a Harvard education does. The other part of this is the time building jobs are going to stay at about the same numbers so there will be a true "filter-up" system. Just my thoughts and honestly I am probably the least knowledgeable of anyone here on this subject as I have never even looked at a pilot job.
 
darthpanda said:
I can't find a revised bill just yet, it may just be an agreement yet to be put into a bill. The original Oct. 2009 bill in the House, H.R. 3371: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-3371
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Looks like Congress is in the finally stages of getting the reconciled version to the Senate. They are mentioning "middle of this week"...but they are running late as of now. The union stuff seems to be tying it up.

All in all, I think it's a great idea. I wonder how it's going to go down. Most of the articles mention changing the minimums from 250 to 1500...so what would they be doing exactly? 1500 to get a new "121" type of certificate...or just adjusting the time requirements for the ATP? There is NO way they could adjust the commercial requirements to 1500 hours!
 
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