Skies Magazine - Industry in Crisis

[PilotZum]

I was just reading the latest skies magazine edition, where they have this article covering how the 703 world is in crisis.
Interesting is that they didn’t ask the opinion of any pilots to make the article, only air operator management and owners. So it got me curious about what you all think about it.

[khedrei]

Working on call for minimum wage in (insert name of small town in northern Ontario here) after spending 100k+ on training....

We might need Sherlock holmes to help with this mystery.

[mmm...bacon]

Working on call (reserve) for just over minimum wage in (Vancouver or Toronto) after spending $100k+ on training and 10+ years in the industry...

We might need Air Canada/Jazz/Sunwing to help with this mystery....

[rando]

Minimum wage for a job that would flag you on a life insurance application as ineligible due to the risk. Expected to move thousands of kilometres away from home to find work. All of this to gain the experience for the privilege to make slightly more than minimum wage cost adjusted to live in one of Canada’s largest cities for 4 years of flat pay.

10 year initiation after 100k of education. I think it’s pretty clear you can do much much better with the same effort in another career.

One of our biggest problems is our unions and what we bargain for to begin with. The fact you leave a company and go back to the bottom of a ladder to climb is absolutely a huge advantage to every company to keep wages low. I don’t have a solution, but if a 10 year westjet pilot could pick up and go to air canada and skip flat pay and vice versa, mobility would be a huge advantage to the majority of pilots.

[North Shore]

IIRC, there's a chapter in 'Fate is the Hunter' about airlines, unions and seniority that gives a little historical perspective on why things are the way they are?

[dialdriver]

I was just reading the latest skies magazine edition, where they have this article covering how the 703 world is in crisis.
Interesting is that they didn’t ask the opinion of any pilots to make the article, only air operator management and owners. So it got me curious about what you all think about it.

The problem is pilots used to be a dime a dozen. Those operators would tell you that when they expected you to break the rules or fly for free.

These operators never make a safety case, just an economic one.

[Eric Janson]

IIRC, there's a chapter in 'Fate is the Hunter' about airlines, unions and seniority that gives a little historical perspective on why things are the way they are?

+1 for "Fate is the Hunter".

Should be mandatory reading for any Pilot imho. Details the start of Commercial Aviation in the US.

[CJ3PILOT]

I talked to a 703 operator and was told pilots are asking for to much money. Well l only have two words for him and the first word starts with F and the second Y . And as a dime a dozen well here's a dime find a dozen and they still think that.

[lawrenceloft]

Smaller companies run on different levels of crap than the bigger guys. An airline wastes its money on stock buy backs and acting like a bank instead of a transport service, and always levers out its workers for profit. The money is there, they just don't let the workers have any. A smaller operation like most of 703 can't be profitable in the way a bigger airline can and so they play a different, just as sleazy game. They run on super tight margins, taking contracts as low as possible to muscle out the competition, and making up the lost profits by taking them out of employee wages.

The result is the same, poorly compensated workers, but the root and the solution are different. An airline CAN afford to pay its employees more and stay in business. A 703 can't, because they have a business model that becomes unsustainable when they try to run it fairly. They simply didn't charge their customers a fair price for their services because they knew they could make up the profits being cheap elsewhere. Most of the lines will survive employees demanding more, but most 703 companies will have to die and make way for more equitably run operations if there is to be any meaningful change.

If a business is run in such a way it can't pay its workers fairly it should go out of business.

But, since widespread systemic change is miles away and receding faster than ever, I'd advise any negotiating pilots in 703 to get what you can, then jump your bonds as soon as possible. Eventually the industry will learn or die.

[‘Bob’]

703s can pay. Not all of them, but some of them. Some 703s have see a doubling of pay in the last 5 years. And it only paused for COVID and has started increasing again as operators struggle to keep planes flying.

This is the non-union free market working in most cases while lots of airlines don’t (or in some cases, can’t because the previous CBA isn’t up yet) pay more.

There will be casualties in 703. No doubt about it.

There will be casualties in 705 as well. Westjet with its legacy costs and high debt loads and struggles to expand and chronic labour issues and increasingly pissed off customer base while not being the “chosen instrument” of the federal government….. it looks a lot like Canadian Airlines did in the 90s.

[Big Pistons Forever]

I don't think traditional 703 operations have any future, especially the Multi IFR 703 operators. With 705 requirements dropping so fast, the old days of having a large pool of pilots who needed to build the 2000- 3000 hours it used to take to be competitive are over and not coming back.

More pay for the Navajo, KingAir 100/200, PC 12 etc won't really help if you are directly competing with regional Prop/RJ operators or even mainline jet operators and in any case all costs have to be recaptured from only 9 seats.

Its only going to get worse as 705 operators will be forced to raise wages substantially or start parking airplanes because they are losing too many of their pilots to the competition, a dynamic we are already starting to see with Jazz and Porter.

There will always be a place for nitche operations like float, bush, or medivac, but they will increasingly be a closed shop with pilots who for whatever reason, are lifers.

[Old fella]

703s can pay. Not all of them, but some of them. Some 703s have see a doubling of pay in the last 5 years. And it only paused for COVID and has started increasing again as operators struggle to keep planes flying.

This is the non-union free market working in most cases while lots of airlines don’t (or in some cases, can’t because the previous CBA isn’t up yet) pay more.

There will be casualties in 703. No doubt about it.

There will be casualties in 705 as well. Westjet with its legacy costs and high debt loads and struggles to expand and chronic labour issues and increasingly pissed off customer base while not being the “chosen instrument” of the federal government….. it looks a lot like Canadian Airlines did in the 90s.

Well now.... WJ becomes CAI of the past. AC gets pressured into another acquisition due to political reasoning(West) and Flair/Lynx or some other offshoot becomes the new "WJ".

[mmm..bacon]

I don't think traditional 703 operations have any future, especially the Multi IFR 703 operators. With 705 requirements dropping so fast, the old days of having a large pool of pilots who needed to build the 2000- 3000 hours it used to take to be competitive are over and not coming back.

Not so sure about that, BPF. The current hiring binge can't go on forever at the same clip, and if the seats are filled by the sons/daughters of the baby boomers, there's going to be a similar demographic bulge as happened in the 80's to now - seats filled by younger people with 30 years to retirement, and so, stagnation. Airline expansion and hiring can't go on at the same clip as it has for the last few years.

Its only going to get worse as 705 operators will be forced to raise wages substantially or start parking airplanes because they are losing too many of their pilots to the competition, a dynamic we are already starting to see with Jazz and Porter.

How many airlines can we support in Canada? Two mainlines and a charter/sun destination one? I kinda think that there's going to be a culling of the herd in the next while... Further, as the baby boomers retire/age/die, the slice of the population that is driving travel numbers (IMO) is going to shrink - and their kids, struggling as they are with massive mortgages, aren't going to take up the slack.