I gotcha. I’m here at the Jacksonville location, which is also a CFI training center, meaning even more students. I do my studying at home anyways so that part won’t affect me. Group grounds didn’t even become a thing until very recently, so people have obviously been successful without it. I’m curious to see how this will play out.
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I can’t think of a better way to socially distance yourself than by being thousands of feet above the rest of the population.
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This video was pretty interesting. Are the other Legacy carriers following suit?
Clint,
I could not get through that video as there was way too much wasted time watching snow fall at the beginning of it, but yes, it seems that most of the majors are taking similar steps, although American’s is the most developed at this point.
Chris
Well it’s been slightly less than 2 weeks since the last reply, and things have changed a bit. The stimulus bill has been announced, Air Canada is furloughing about 600 pilots or roughly the bottom 20% of the seniority list, no US furloughs until the end of September, and the predictions about the economy all appear to be dire. How does this change your outlooks on the impact of this pandemic?
It does not change my long term outlook. The virus will end, the airlines will recover, as will the rest of the economy, and those who trained will be able to be hired.
Chris
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Dan,
I’m with Chris. Unfortunately if you’ve just hit 1500hrs, just got hired, etc this is definitely going to put the brakes on things and that will probably continue for a while (I’m thinking 6mos to a year). Long term everything will be fine. The airlines will recover and pilots will continue to retire creating positions. It’s just lousy now but there are people going through much worse so none of us should really be complaining.
Adam
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Here’s the thing is that AC doesn’t appear to have an excessive amount of retiring pilots in the coming years like the US airlines. You can easily find information about attrition at the US3, not so much about Air Canada, which I think says a lot. Furthermore, the US has a far more developed domestic network than Canada, so the US3 are going to receive far more revenue than Air Canada could ever dream of. Add in this stimulus bill, and the US3 have it far better than the rest of the world. The optimist in me (and people don’t hear much from this side) wants to add that the people who will come out of this largely unscathed, the ones who didn’t lose their jobs and aren’t going to have issues with their homes or cars, they’re going to not just want to travel, they’ll be hungry for it. They’re not traveling now because of the disease itself, but once it passes (estimates seem to indicate that it’ll peak this month, and in my state, NY, the number of cases is slowing down somewhat) they’re going to be begging to get out of the house and they’ll be more than willing to fill the seats.
Dan,
ATP trains pilots in the US and we mentors all fly for US carriers. Not that I’m unsympathetic to our friends up north, it’s just literally there’s nothing we can do as their situation is their’s.
We’ve be answering this question for a few weeks now and everyone is slightly freaking that the airlines might catch up and the pilot shortage will diminish. While I don’t see that happening let’s just say it did. ATP has been training pilots for the airlines for over 35years and I can tell you over the last 35 yrs this nation has had its share of ups and downs. Granted this one is severe and global but there also was NEVER a shortage of pilots like there’s been over the last few years. Throughout the cycles pilots have always gotten hired. Sometimes it’s a challenge, other times all you need is a pulse but if you work hard you’ll get there. If you don’t and you see the fact that getting hired is no longer a given and quit than you probably shouldn’t have done this in the fast place.
Adam
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