TPT July 2016

G LOBA L MARKE T P L AC E

W AITING IN THE WINGS Making plain her position on this change, Ms Murphy asserted that it “translates to years of flight instructing or flying on the often hair-raising fringes of aviation” – aerial pipeline inspecting, banner towing, corpse transport, and the like – for meager wages and often in poorly maintained equipment, before earning accreditation to fly for a regional airline. Other reasons advanced by Ms Murphy for slippage in the appeal of a once-glamorous career – “all mirrored sunglasses and swagger” – include several more years of low pay (about $26,000); unpredictable schedules and undesirable routes; and the surrender of nights, weekends and holidays before “gaining a shot” at employment with a major airline like Delta, United, Southwest or American. “Even those pilots living the dream of flying for a mainline carrier say that in reality it’s a highly automated, button-pushing kind of job with advancement based on seniority rather than merit,” wrote Ms Murphy. › Tim Canoll, a Delta pilot and president of the Air Line Pilots Association, summed up what this means for the commercial airlines of the United States: “The real problem the industry is facing is, young people aren’t making the decision to become an airline pilot.” › Putting the developing pilot shortage in a time-frame, Faye Malarkey Black, president of the Regional Airline Association, said that hiring is not yet a huge problem for the major carriers because regional carriers serve as their pilot

pipeline. But, she told the Times ’s Ms Murphy, “The number of pilots the majors are going to need in the coming years will burn through our entire work force unless there’s some sort of intervention.”

Briefly noted . . . › The low-cost European airline Norwegian Air Shuttle has won preliminary approval to expand its no-frills operations into the United States. The April announcement from the Transportation Department is a victory for the airline, which started flights to the US three years ago but whose application to certify its Irish subsidiary was bitterly opposed by domestic airlines and labour unions for more than two years. The issue rapidly became a major test case, pitting proponents of the open skies agreement between European Union countries and the US against those worried that Norwegian’s business model would lower wages and labour standards for American and European pilots and flight attendants. As noted by Jad Mouawad in the New York Times (15 April), the effort by Norwegian to introduce low-fare flights over lucrative long-haul routes is shaking up the global airline industry. It flies the latest generation of planes and outsources some of its flight crews.

Dorothy Fabian, Features Editor (USA)

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J ULY 2016