Penair ends non-EAS Portland flying

z987k said:
If a car mechanic wore a white shirt to work that wouldn't suddenly make it a white collar job. We are labor. And like pat said, we are mostly process operators. A certain type of but none the less we are. It's not a bad thing, and I think we'd all do a lot better in the labor market if we as a whole could take the blinders off and see reality.


Blue collar is to say we are labor.
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And a "white collar" software developer is labor just as much as a "blue collar" garbageman. Shoot even a corporate drone churning out financial statements is labor. It's a dated distinction at best and the terminology has some negative connotations baked in.
 
z987k said:
Pilots will never come to grips with it being a blue collar job. Despite all evidence that it is.
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This is a big reason why the industry is the way it is.

You can start your career in aviation after a whopping 250hrs of time in an airplane - there are schools where you can go from "dude on the street" to commercial certificated pilot within 90 days.

In contrast to become an electrician in my state you have to apprentice for 8,000hrs over 4 years and do between somewhere between 960hrs and 1400hrs of classroom training.

Or if the electrician is too far out - it takes over 1,500hrs to become a hair dresser in the state.

If you don't like comparing apples to oranges, think about what it takes to get a OUPV "6-pack." That's probably on par with getting your commercial in the maritime world - its 365 4hr days at see (if memory serves). Nah - we are tradesmen and not even tradesmen that have the highest barrier to entry.

The only thing that separates us from operating engineers and charterboat captains is that it's insanely expensive to learn how to fly and there's no apprentice programs, so that naturally selects for a very specific, typically upper-middle class or higher, group of people that can enter the field. Somehow that means we think we're better than those folks - but we're really not.

I probably think differently about this because I grew up in a place filled with Pilots wearing carharts and company ballcaps to work.
 
thevideographer said:
First of all, we literally wear white collars. That aside, it's just totally different. Apples and oranges. A pilot doesn't know how to write a software program but a software programmer wouldn't even be able to unfold the jumpseat on most airliners, what's the problem? A bank manager doesn't have the lives of dozens of people riding on their decision making ability. All different things, pointless comparisons.
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This is what I'm talking about with us taking ourselves too seriously.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fo...cides-tied-to-economic-crisis-study-says/amp/

I mean - I get what you're saying, but 10,000 people didn't kill themselves because they missed their flight to DFW, and there weren't 10,000 people who killed in aircraft accidents during the last decade or or so...
 
Here's another one: there were some posts on an aircraft mechanic FB group about 1. The federal government's classification of aircraft mechanics as "unskilled labor" was holding wages down and 2. People getting their undies in a bunch about whether they're "mechanics" or "technicians" (FYI mechanics are just as petty and drama prone as pilots if not worse).

IT'S ALL SEMANTICS, PEOPLE. A stupid word in a federal wage survey is not keeping your wage down, and nobody except you gives a flip if you're a mechanic or a technician or (as is most often the case) a marginally trained gorilla that owes the Snap-On man a house payment every month.
 
Roger Roger said:
Here's another one: there were some posts on an aircraft mechanic FB group about 1. The federal government's classification of aircraft mechanics as "unskilled labor" was holding wages down and 2. People getting their undies in a bunch about whether they're "mechanics" or "technicians" (FYI mechanics are just as petty and drama prone as pilots if not worse).

IT'S ALL SEMANTICS, PEOPLE. A stupid word in a federal wage survey is not keeping your wage down, and nobody except you gives a flip if you're a mechanic or a technician or (as is most often the case) a marginally trained gorilla that owes the Snap-On man a house payment every month.
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To be fair - I think this supports my initial point that people in Aviation (emphasis mine) take themselves far too seriously.
 
Inverted said:
Look up the definition, it’s literally not a blue collar job by definition.
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Unless you are hung up about it having to be manual labor, it is by all definitions.

Included in blue collar jobs are just about every type of systems operator you can find. From truck driver to heavy equipment to cranes to oil refinery operators to nuclear reactor operators.
How we don't fall into systems/process operator, I'm not sure.
 
Inverted said:
Has nothing to do with manual labor. It’s skilled labor where high amounts of education and training are required.
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Being an electrician is skilled labor. A millwright is skilled labor, and yes, we are very much skilled labor. If skilled labor was the litmus test, everyone not working fast food or retail would be considered white collar.
And as @ppragman pointed out, the education and training level actually required is incredibly low. It pales in comparison to most every blue collar job requiring an apprenticeship. Even the experience level is. While a degree might be required by a few employers, I don't think that many people are so fooled into thinking it's needed or brings all that much to the table of actually flying a plane.
 
The education and required training is not low. It costs 80,000 dollars to go from zero to CFI at places like ATP. You then have to get thousands of hours before you can get a good paying career job.

I don’t care what anyone says about the education portion, but most of us have 4 year degrees and a lot of those degrees are in aviation fields.
 
Inverted said:
The education and required training is not low. It costs 80,000 dollars to go from zero to CFI at places like ATP. You then have to get thousands of hours before you can get a good paying career job.

I don’t care what anyone says about the education portion, but most of us have 4 year degrees and a lot of those degrees are in aviation fields.
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It costs a • ton more than 80k for a lot of blue collar job training. Most are done through apprenticeships to absorb that cost. If we had ab-initio, it'd more or less be the same.(nothing else implied about ab-initio)
It's great that a lot of people have degrees, but it has no bearing on the job. When I worked as an electrician, most of the people there did to, but due to either poor choice in field of study(sounds very familiar) or the economy being terrible at the time, there they were. A good portion of the millwrights and welders that we worked with did to.
 
Yea I have been an auto mechanic and an aircraft mechanic, and the costs of training and time to train are no where near what it takes to become an ATP rated pilot.
 
Inverted said:
Yea I have been an auto mechanic and an aircraft mechanic, and the costs of training and time to train are no where near what it takes to become an ATP rated pilot.
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To become a journeyman electrician you have to have 8,000 hours of on the job training in addition to at least 1000 hours of classroom study. That's further broken up, but it generally takes at the minimum of 4 years to complete. Afterwards you have to take an exam that has a pretty good failure rate and takes a crap ton more study than any pilot exam I've ever taken including all of my type ratings combined. There are further requirements for foreman and master electrician. The master exam takes many years of experience and an amount of study that is plain unheard of in flying or the undergraduate level. The pass rate is under 30%.
That is a skilled labor, yet blue collar job. I guess that's what I compare things to, since that's what I personally have experience in outside of flying.
 
Inverted said:
Yea I have been an auto mechanic and an aircraft mechanic, and the costs of training and time to train are no where near what it takes to become an ATP rated pilot.
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This is ludicrous.

To become an A&P mechanic takes at least a year intensely (at UAF) - most places it takes 2 years or an apprenticeship of around 36months if memory serves.

You can get your ratings in 90 days, then work as a professional pilot. It's at least (if you cram it into one year) 13 months to get an A&P.

An ATP is more like getting but easier by all accounts.
 
Ok, so are you saying that the skill, education, and level of responsibility of an airline pilot is the same as somebody can install a ceiling fan?
 
ppragman said:
This is ludicrous.

To become an A&P mechanic takes at least a year intensely (at UAF) - most places it takes 2 years or an apprenticeship of around 36months if memory serves.

You can get your ratings in 90 days, then work as a professional pilot. It's at least (if you cram it into one year) 13 months to get an A&P.

An ATP is more like getting but easier by all accounts.
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You cannot become an ATP rated pilot in 90 days. Compare apples to apples, you Can do an electrician certificate program and start apprenticeships within a few months. The time it takes to build experience to be hired at a career aviation job is several thousand flight hours and tons of technical certification and training. Every new aircraft is a month of intense training or more.

Who cares about getting a commercial ticket in 90 days? Let’s talk in reality here guys.
 
Roger Roger said:
Here's another one: there were some posts on an aircraft mechanic FB group about 1. The federal government's classification of aircraft mechanics as "unskilled labor" was holding wages down and 2. People getting their undies in a bunch about whether they're "mechanics" or "technicians" (FYI mechanics are just as petty and drama prone as pilots if not worse).

IT'S ALL SEMANTICS, PEOPLE. A stupid word in a federal wage survey is not keeping your wage down, and nobody except you gives a flip if you're a mechanic or a technician or (as is most often the case) a marginally trained gorilla that owes the Snap-On man a house payment every month.
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I have no problem with someone calling me a mechanic. It is, by definition, what I do for a living.
 
Inverted said:
Ok, so are you saying that the skill, education, and level of responsibility of an airline pilot is the same as somebody can install a ceiling fan?
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I'd say so - you could burn down someone's home or if you were a line man blow out power to essential services and people could die. Absolutely - it's just not as sexy as flying or as dramatic when things go wrong.
 
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