Societal Math. Colgan Flight 3407 vs. 6% on 1MM Condo.....

Wise words.

w67thstreet, that story surprised me too. What was it, $60-something for the pilot and $20-something for the co-pilot? Just assumed they all make what the unionized big-airline pilots do....

Niteline data :). Pilot was $20K, Co-pilot was $16K.... I was being generous....

Hey mimi.

I don't know..... from the admissions I heard about their lack of training it seems they didn't have much more than the average RE broker.... snark snark snark

That was one of those horrible stories that makes you just think the system is horribly flawed. w67th, kind of like what they do (and did even more of) to young doctors. setting people up to fail is not cricket. particularly when people die (well, that's a bit obvious).

its the old astronaut joke updated.

Yeah, I hang out sometimes on pilot forums. They're pretty interesting. There's such a huge pool of people who want nothing to do but fly that they'll put up with crazy conditions to do so. People pay thousands of dollars to get pilot licenses to get trained, and then hope in vain to get hired by any airline just to get their foot in the door. There's no incentive for most airlines to run pilot training programs because they have such a vast pool of trainees who already have licenses. At the other end of the spectrum, Singapore Airlines and to a lesser extent Cathay Pacific will pay over 200k US for experienced big jet pilots. This pays off for non-US pilots because they don't pay taxes back home if they are non-residents (and both HK and SIN are low tax regimes). And they have their own training programs, which they don't trust, obviously! There's an interesting book out there (forget title) about how certain cultures can produce very poor pilots (or pilots who can't handle the 1/1000 flying situations) because of the way they communicate with each other.

You guys should surf the pilot forums. Very interesting stuff.

One of the problems is that in previous generations, the vast majority of commercial pilots were retired Air Force and Navy pilots. From the Daily News: "In decades past, airlines had fleets of large jets and relied on spit-shined ex-military officers to fly them. Now, the big carriers farm out many flights to commuter or regional outfits that fly smaller planes and pay pilots as little as $19,000/year."

I can't wait till the ACLU decides that it would have been against the pilots rights if Colgan had insisted that the pilot sign a release for the airline to secure and search all documents related to his previous failures of two licensing tests. Crazy bedfellows eh? Funny how certain groups have been mysteriously quiet on this.

nyc10023 - I think you're thinking out Outliers (Malcolm Gladwell).

See this excerpt from http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/index.html:

6. What's the most surprising pattern you uncovered in the book?

It's probably the chapter nearly the end of Outliers where I talk about plane crashes. How good a pilot is, it turns out, has a lot to do with where that pilot is from—that is, the culture he or she was raised in. I was actually stunned by how strong the connection is between culture and crashes, and it's something that I would never have dreamed was true, in a million years.

7. Wait. Does this mean that there are some airlines that I should avoid?

Yes. Although, as I point out in Outliers, by acknowledging the role that culture plays in piloting, some of the most unsafe airlines have actually begun to clean up their act.

OTM: I was obsessed with airlines when I was a kid - would obsessively make lists of all the different airlines in the world, and read articles about airlines. There was an article about China Airlines' poor safety record (they're the Taiwanese flagship). Their pilots were ex-military and could not communicate effectively because of their military training (something to do with talking back to the Captain). Until a woman boss took over. I have always wondered why SIA and CP recruited foreign pilots so heavily. Maybe to maintain their (very good) safety ratings?

According to my pilot gossip forums, they blame the pilots more than the work conditions.

nyc10023: There is a heartbreaking description in Outliers of a Korean air crash that could have been easily avoided if the captain had deciphered the subtle hints of impending disaster that his first officer had made, or if the first officer had defied the cultural hierarchy that mandated deference and respect towards one's seniors and spoken out more directly about the impending disaster. What amazed me was that the first officer couldn't bring break the cultural mould even in the face of certain death.

I believe that Americans were brought in to overhaul the pilot training after the cultural attitudes were identified as causing the crashes.

I've read Outliers too. Interesting stuff. MG is a great writer, kind of wishy-washy in person. Saw him in a dialogue (live) with Barbara Ehrenreich on UWS once.

many foreign airlines can afford to pay pilots big money as they are owned by the government. Cathay Pacific is owned by the Chinese government. Cathay lost a few billion last year, but when your owned by the Chinese govt., that loss means nothing.

and I should also add that because of the problems US AIrways is facing, Captain Sully's pension got wiped out and his salary was cut in half.

When did the Swire group (largest shareholder of Cathay) get taken over by Red China?

I don't know. I was just reading in my latest issue of Ariways, which I subscribe to, that nearly every airline in China is owned by the govt.

Alpine: Cathay Pacific is not a "Chinese" airline. Founded in HK, when it was a British colony. Owned by Swire (which was private for a very long time) - Swire is one of those legendary HK-British cos. that together owned 100% of HK. Google Swire, Jardine Matheson.

Young pilots are missing one key element on their road to the dream job with a big airline -flying hours. Its all about time in the seat and an airline won't look at you unless you have paid your dues flying shit routes in shit aircraft for peanuts. New pilots are so used to paying so much for their training that 16k a year in the other direction to pad your logbook seems like a gift from heaven. And who's going to pay $500 to fly to Syracuse anyway just so a young pilot can afford to by a used car and rent her own ground floor studio in Queens?

Spin: exactly.

Alpine: From Wiki.

On 9 June 2006, Cathay Pacific underwent a shareholding realignment under which Dragonair became wholly owned by Cathay Pacific but continued to operate under its own brand. Air China, and its subsidiary, CNAC Limited, acquired a 17.5% stake in Cathay Pacific, and Cathay Pacific doubled its shareholding in Air China to 20%. CITIC reduced its shareholding to 17.5%, and Swire reduced its shareholding to 40%.