What the future holds for pilots and other air crew post-Covid-19
Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, airlines have been struggling as passenger traffic has reduced to about 94 percent.
In the United States, carriers were estimated to have lost around $350 and 400 million dollars a day even with government support funding in the areas of expenses and payroll. It is quite inevitable that there will be massive job loss and top executives of airlines are sure that pilots are about to face serious job loss.
The paid points for most pilots in the aviation business is simply the fear of losing their jobs and having to start all over again!
One pilot who was interviewed has this to say, “should a pilot get laid off or the airline goes out of business, you cannot simply slide over to another [airline] and pick up where you left off. The way airline seniority systems work, there is no sideways transfer of benefits or salary. If you move to a different company, you begin again at the bottom, with probationary pay and benefits, regardless of how much experience you have. You’ve lost all you got”
The disaster is even worse for newer pilots who just got into the industry.
Many flight attendants will also face a similar situation as they will have to either look for other means of survival. This is scary!
The pandemic has negatively affected many industries as well, but for the aviation industry, it would take years to recover.
Most travelers are scared to travel again and most airlines are cutting down their staff just to ensure they don’t fall of the market.
After the September 11 case, the airline industry became more inconvenient as security measures were upgraded – the Covid-19 is a similar case that could leave the aviation industry struggling for stability for more than a decade.
Most passengers believe in the capacity of the airline companies to put structures in place that would keep them safe – this is a herculean task for airline companies coupled with the fact that more than half of their revenue is still lost and out of reach due to the pandemic.
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