Blueshift wrote: ↑Wed Feb 21, 2018 12:56 pm SuperchargedRS,
Your assumption that the increased pilot salaries seen in the U.S. regional sector is entirely a function of them 'growing some balls,' couldn't be farther from the truth.
This study does a great job of outlining the key factors of the pilot shortage: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/p ... GSD351.pdf
It mostly comes down to supply and demand. As others have mentioned, the U.S. airline market is significantly larger than that of Canada. If they were to open their borders, the number of pilots that would be willing to make the move from Canada wouldn't even make a dent in their future pilot supply requirements. At the same time, it would drastically reduce the supply in the smaller Canadian market, forcing companies to increase their salaries to compete.
At the end of the day, there are a number of factors that come into play when discussing the disparity in salaries. The best thing I think Canadian pilots can do is to petition for the implementation of an ATPL requirement for all 705 F/Os. This would prevent the slow degradation of experience seen in the cockpit today, while also reducing the pilot supply chain, thus giving pilots more leverage when it comes to wage and condition negotiations.
Uh, no.
There are more qualified pilots in the US than any other country, including Canada, by a large margin, it's not that we don't have the people for the jobs, or that we couldn't turn out new pilots in mass if there was a interest, heck we are probably the pilot training capital of the world, it's a matter of the pay not matching the required ATP experience.
Show em' the money and you'll have zero problems filling the seats.
This is really easy to see with not just the lack of filling seats for classes at the regionals, but retention after you get someone hired on.
