How does this cycle compare to others?

MikeOH58

MikeOH58

Well-Known Member
I understand that aviation comes in cycles...It will have its up, and it will have its downs...My question is directed towards doug, and airtrain, deups and the likes who have been in this industry for sometime...

How is this economic downturn effecting aviation compared to previous downward cycles, ie-9/11? Can you really compare, or are things completely different? Better? Worse?

Thanks

Curious Mike-
 
I've got no basis for comparison, but I believe some of the old timers on here have mentioned periods of time where mins for the regionals (or commuters, if you will) were in the 2,000 hour plus ATP range.
 
I have no where near the experience or respect that the old-timers command, but I have read aviation-related news articles that talk about how the industry hasn't been this low since xxxx year. To me, this means that at one point or another, the industry was as bad or worse, and yet it has come back up (where people were getting hired with fresh commercial tickets) and back down to the lows they are at now.

Hope this helps
 
I don't know, it's really hard to say. When I got out of school in 1993, the market for pilots was pathetic. I literally walked into a flight school to drop off a resume for a CFI job and there was a former KC-135 pilot applying for the same position ten minutes earlier.

However, and I don't mean to scare you, but until we reach the point where operators are expecting 1500TT to fly right seat in a Navajo, we haven't gotten close to reaching rock bottom in the professional aviation business. That was pretty much the reality back in the early 1990's.

I don't know for the most part. If you're "in it to win it" and it's really in your blood, none of it should matter.

If it just looks like something "cool" to dabble in before you get a real job, run like hell! :)
 
I've got absolutely no problems with the 1500 for Navajos, and 2000 for airliners, but this thread isn't about how much time someone should have....

More of, we have x amount of pilots out of work and there are y amount of jobs available...I find myself right in between the Navajo/RJ range that was compared earlier, and see little to no room for lateral moves, let alone trying to move up right now...
 
Nah, not even rock bottom in the professional aviation biz yet. It's actually been much, much worse. Better? :)
 
So far in my career, I've seen two up cycles, and now we're in the second down cycle. And that's in less than 10 years! It's a crazy business. I believe that this down cycle is far worse than post-9/11 for the regional types. The post-9/11 cycle was absolutely horrible for the majors, but this one has really only hit the UAL pilots to a huge degree. The CAL furloughees will probably be back by the end of the year, the AirTran furloughees probably by the summer, AMR is calling back again, etc... The problem is for the regionals. After 9/11, the regionals started hiring again in less than a year, and most of them never furloughed. This cycle, a bunch of them have already furloughed, and there might be more to come. It's a bad time to be a junior regional pilot.

To answer your question, though, my buddies at ALPA that have been on the staff for 30 years say that the overall industry over the past year was the worst that they'd ever seen.
 
Thanks...PCL, sorry for calling you "Airtran". Couldn't remember your name off the top of my head :D
 
PCL_128 said:
Over 5,000 posts and you can't remember my name? Looks like I need to try for 10,000 posts! ;)
Click to expand...

It was either "airtran" or "the dude obsessed with the union and hates Jetblue", but I think a lot of people would have confused you with Velo.....

I kid, I kid....:p
 
Cycles

I have yet to go through these cycles; I'm pretty new. I was only a student during the last downturn.

But it seems pretty clear that the explosion of 50 seat jet growth has been dead for 2-3 years now and it is not going to grow any larger than it is now, and in fact will shrink for some airlines. Oil going up will make them even less desirable, with the 70-80 seat jet size not far behind.

Some of the vendor airlines with nothing but 50 seat jets did nothing but grow while the majors furloughed. In fact one of the 50 seat operators only furloughed because they had flowbacks from a mainline carrier. The fleet growth and recalls started the hiring up later on but the fleet did nothing but grow the whole time.

The opposite is now here.
 
I think opinions will differ depending on who you talk to. I remember pre 9-11. Hiring was crazy, but it didn't seem to be at the level it was a few years ago. Eagle and CoEx (pre-ExpressJet) had unofficial mins that were a few hundred hours. An Eagle pilot showed me a printout that said 400 hours and internal rec, I think. Skyway was 700/50. Air Wis was 1200/200. Flight schools were lucky to hang on to noob CFIs for 6 months. Then 9-11 hit and hiring stopped. Not immediately, but it did stop. A ton of Legacy pilots lost their jobs. Mins didn't go up that much though, as far I know. It seemed like mins kinda stayed where they were. Hiring didn't stop for too long. I got a job as a CFI on 11/7/01 and my fellow CFIs were leaving for airline jobs late winter early spring '02. Skyway furloughed a ton of people but so many left for other jobs, most were recalled pretty quick. Hiring was sporadic for a couple years, but all of a sudden, it was very common to hear about a class date. So, I would say from the late 90's till now, hiring wasn't all that bad overall.

One of my friends said that you needed 200 hours dual given to get hired as a CFI in 1990 and well over 1500 TT and an ATP to get hired on a small 135 Commuter. One of my flight instructors had 3000 TT in 1997 and still hadn't gotten on with a Regional. He finally got a job in 1998. I think he was only looking at a couple of east coast airlines, though. Others were hiring people with lower time, I think. It just shows you how the industry was evolving.
 
Doug Taylor said:
If you're "in it to win it" and it's really in your blood, none of it should matter.
Click to expand...

This quote, my friends, is what drives the dedicated pilot!

At 16 years old I wanted to be a pilot...girls, life, college got in the way. I got a 'real' job in sales for around 6 years. At 34, rediscovered that dreams are possible if you put in the hard work and have the dedication.

Left the sales job Summer 2007, got many pilot licenses and now CFI...and look forward to each $21 an hour I earn. Good or bad pilot job market, I have made the decision to fly and will do everything in my powers to continue to do so.

"Follow your dreams. You can achieve your goals; I'm living proof. Beefcake. Beefcake!!" --Cartman
 
The jobs are there, they just aren't the obvious ones. Not to say that there isn't a slowdown in airline jobs, but there are still a bunch of places hiring. I don't think that this really compares to the major collapses that the "old timers" talk about.
 
I talked to a guy Sunday at church who flew for a major corporation along with about ten other pilots. This corp. was just recently bought out by another corp. The guy told me that his whole department had recieved notification that their last check was coming in about two weeks. I don't know a lot about corporate/airline ops., but this thing is sounding bad. Out of all the corporate operations on the airport, who would have thought this would be one to fold.

I wish all of you guys the best and hope you can weather the storm.

Good luck to you!
 
ftyflyboy said:
This quote, my friends, is what drives the dedicated pilot!

At 16 years old I wanted to be a pilot...girls, life, college got in the way. I got a 'real' job in sales for around 6 years. At 34, rediscovered that dreams are possible if you put in the hard work and have the dedication.

"Follow your dreams. You can achieve your goals; I'm living proof. Beefcake. Beefcake!!" --Cartman
Click to expand...

That's the spirit! I am in the same boat. Persistence will pay off in the end.
 
Any chance of seeing actual empirical data as opposed to individual opinions on how "bad" it is out there right now?

Not that I don't mind hearing the opinions, but I've been meaning on doing a little data compiling when I have some free time to really address the "ridges" and "troughs" of the hiring environment for our industry. I just don't have any time right now.

I'm specifically looking for data that goes back to 1955.
 
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