You are among thousands of victims of one of the worst coordinated frauds in American history. There never really was a pilot shortage. There was instead an entirely foreseeable bubble of pilots who were going to reach their mandatory retirement age. The airline industry knew this was temporary.

So, what did they do? They coopted every single entity from media to organizations like AOPA, to peddle the fiction that there was going to be a long term hiring frenzy for pilots. This was done to encourage thousands of young people to pay out the nose for pilot training, adding to the insane public debt level America already suffered from.

So, what happened was also entirely predictable. The temporary hiring boost quickly was filled and suddenly there are thousands of people who spent these enormous sums of money to earn all your certifications, and you cannot find a job! Good luck paying back all the costs you incurred for those licenses.

The military used to be the primary hiring pipeline for the airlines. The Air National Guard and AF Reserves never had a challenge finding pilots because their ranks were filled with former active duty pilots who hooked up with the airlines after separation from active AF, but who wanted to keep flying on the side part time.

Then, two things happened. The military got tired of paying the average $2 million per pilot training costs just to see them separate after three years in the cockpit and walk to the airlines ready to hire. So, the signing commitment contracts for military pilot training increased to ten years. Now, there would still be people separating from active duty with pilot wings, but after ten years vice just five.

The second issue was airline expansion. It created more pilot requirements but came at the cost of market oversaturation, causing a lot of blood letting within the airline industry, including a large number of these budget carriers who went into the fare wars with the idea of pricing their tickets at ridiculously low levels and then bury extra fees in the print. It was equally stupid, because it predictably caused a lot of customer ire, with the expected public relations black eyes.

The airline industry is a tone deaf group of executives who cannot see two inches in front of their noses. The idea that it's somehow a long term benefit to put thousands of young people in debt between $50,000 to $120,000 with questionable employment options, is a notion that only the mentally insane could hold. What each airline should have done is create their own flying cadet training program, and trained their own future pilots. They could have set up something similar to universities, with dormitory housing and a campus setting. Charge a reasonable tuition fee that defrays some of the costs, but wouldn't put the students in lifetime debt.

The challenge for the airlines would be to tailor their cadet numbers to match their expected losses from retirement and other causes, minus those pilots they expect to hire from the military. Then get with the FAA and in return for guarantees that as an industry, the airlines will pay living wages to FO's with commercial AMEL's, and have them work the same schedule as the captains and FO's for the majors, the FAA will remove the ATP requirement for the right seat.

Then, the airlines can pay around $40,000 a year compensation for a Commercial AMEL pilot to fly the right seat, and learn the ropes under tutelage of their best captains. That's called leadership. And the problem is there is frightfully too little of it in the CEO world today.