CTV news story on foreign pilots in Canada

[Skyhunter]

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/critics-sa ... -1.1175248

[Panama Jack]

Fear-mongering, sensationalist article. We aren't talking about EU Black-Listed carriers or carriers from FAA IASA Category 2 countries.

It is like argueing that people are safer flying on some European Airlines rather than Canadian and US airlines because of the more restrictive Flight Duty Time limitations mean that European pilots are less fatigued than their North American counterparts.

So I guess I would be safer on British Airways than Air Canada.

[teacher]

Inaccurate publicity unfortunately in this case is better than none.

[Gino Under]

Unfortunately, the report only mentioned wet leases.
I think the opportunity to get to crux of the real issue was missed. This is simply about providing foreign pilots with the documentation necessary to punt Canadians over the fence because of some lame excuse like a shortage of pilots.
Spare me.
Wet lease ACMI has gone on for years. I don't have an issue with that except when it's abused like this. But SWs claims are a joke and they should be at least, partially grounded.
We can always hope it has the travelling public concerned about who they choose to fly with though.
Hitting SW in the pocket is the only way they'll take notice and not before.

Gino Under

[Colonel Sanders]

I assume that all the people who think that no
foreign pilots should fly in Canada, also think that
no Canadian pilots should fly in foreign countries?

Once that is achieved, I guess the next step would
be to get rid of all international flights?

[ahramin]

The problem isn't foreign pilots flying in Canada. The problem is claiming a pilot shortage in order to circumvent the labour laws which require people working in Canada to be legally entitled to work in Canada.

If it's ok to lie and say that there aren't any qualified pilots who are legally entitled to work in Canada, why wouldn't it be ok to lie and say that there aren't any qualified miners, or welders, or traffic wardens, and replace them all with minimum wage workers from poor countries? There are at least 4 billion people on this planet who would happily take any job available in Canada for minimum wage. The only thing that stops them are the laws. Why is it okay to lie to get around these laws just because the job title is pilot?

I am forced to agree though that going after it from a safety angle is weak at best. But in this case, trying to get any government body to enforce the laws of this country has proven to be a waste of time so I'm not surprised it's come to this bs.

[Chaxterium]

I assume that all the people who think that no
foreign pilots should fly in Canada, also think that
no Canadian pilots should fly in foreign countries?

Once that is achieved, I guess the next step would
be to get rid of all international flights?

No Colonel. That's not what anyone's saying. If it was reciprocal no one would have a problem with that but that's not what they're doing. Sunwing only wants to hire type rated pilots because they're too cheap to train them so they've convinced the government that there's a shortage of trained pilots and the government has allowed them to bring in foreign type rated pilots. That's complete crap. If they put an add out today they'd have 500 resumes in their inbox tomorrow.

I didn't have a type rating when I started with my company. They sucked it up and paid for my sim. We don't have a shortage of resumes I can promise you that.

Cheers,
Chax

[Colonel Sanders]

Let me see if I understand this.

I have an ATP and many thousands of hours, but
no time on Boeings or Airbuses. If Sunwing springs
the $12k to send me down to Texas to get my
737 type rating, then it will improve safety (and
will be fair) if they drop a Canadian like me in the
left seat of a B737, as compared to a European
with 1000 hrs as PIC on type?

I'm not very bright, but perhaps more of you
should take Doc's advice.

[photofly]

Not allowing foreign pilots to fly Canadian aircraft is a barrier to trade, just like tariffs on imported milk or wheat. They always benefit a minority (such as Canadian milk or wheat farmers or in this case Canadian pilots) at the expense of the economy as a whole.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff

It's basically "me-first, and screw everyone else" politics. It's not unusual, or blameworthy, and it's impossible to avoid when you are a Canadian pilot who isn't being advantaged because the government isn't really applying its own rules. I feel the same way. But let's recognize it for what it is.

[Colonel Sanders]

I had noticed how expensive milk was in Canada.

I also noticed this:

[photofly]

I had noticed how expensive milk was in Canada.

If you live in Canada and you're a fan of pizza, then you might be interested to know the import tariff on mozzarella cheese is a whopping 245.5% - and no, that's not a typo. It adds a huge percentage to the price of each pizza you buy.

Of course it's marvellous if you're a Canadian dairy farmer.

[BTyyj]

There's a big difference in my mind between globalized trade and foreign workers taking local jobs, but that might just be me.

[photofly]

It's all a bit f*cked up really. The whole "foreign pilots" debate is about the government being taken to task for not enforcing its own rules. And rightly so, on a first reading. But, again, broadly speaking, Canada as a whole would benefit if those rules had never been enacted or if, as now, they are ignored.

[photofly]

I also noticed this:

Your point is that SWA expects pilots to pay for their own type ratings, and that this is not considered by the pilot community to be a criminal position for a US airline to take, correct?

[BTyyj]

To an extent. The farming industry in Canada is f*cked up, with many local farmers holding a five times greater debt to earnings ratio than their American counterparts. Agriculture is a big issue in Canada, and the majority would benefit from a healthy farming industry, one which can compete in international trade, increasing Canada's exports and providing stable economic growth in that industry. If what's required is an extra buck for 4 litres of milk, I personally have no issue.

Conversely, I fail to see how the majority are benefiting from having foreign workers in Canada. For an operation like Sunwing, paying for a pilot's type rating would represent $0.003/hour/passenger, assuming the pilot works for the company for five years, which is hardly a noticeable number. This pilot would also contribute quite a bit more to the Canadian economy in comparison to their foreign counterpart, on top of being a Canadian taxpayer.

[photofly]

For an operation like Sunwing, paying for a pilot's type rating would represent $0.003/hour/passenger, assuming the pilot works for the company for five years, which is hardly a noticeable number. This pilot would also contribute quite a bit more to the Canadian economy in comparison to their foreign counterpart, on top of being a Canadian taxpayer.

I know we've argued about the same topic (in the context of the mining industry and foreign labour) without reaching any agreement. I won't repeat what I said there, except to say that classical economics doesn't support your opinion. But you're quite correct to point out that the benefit to (say) 500 Canadian pilots of restrictive trade practices has a cost which is spread out over a lot of hours of flying and a lot of passengers, and doesn't cost each one of them very much.

However - there are many hundreds or thousands of special interest groups, each of which can make the same argument: that the benefit to the few hundred of "us" is balanced by a cost spread out over so many people that "you won't notice it". When you add it up over all those thousands of groups, each of which has a union, lobbyists, votes etc, it will come to an appreciable cost on all of us.

Can you honestly say that pilots are more deserving of protectionist trade tariffs than, say, chocolatiers, truck drivers, watchmakers, landscape gardeners, paviors, taxidermists, dental assistants ...

[BTyyj]

The idea that all interest groups, unions, etc. getting their way would be detrimental to our society and represent a measurable cost is one that I can certainly agree with. However, in the case of foreign pilots, I believe the amount the type rating would cost for the pilot balanced out over a given period would be less than what the pilot pays the government in taxes over that same period, as long as that given period was over a certain length. Thus the argument in my mind still stands that having foreign pilots is detrimental to the majority of Canadian citizens, even in a very small way.

I see what you're getting at with your final comment, and no, I cannot say pilots are any more deserving of protectionism. As you noted, it should come down to representing the majority's interests economically. Personally, I see the foreign pilot issue characterizing a much larger issue with our current global economy, one that signifies a major shift in economic structure, and which recent history has shown us, isn't a path we should continue to follow. This battle is one I feel is worthwhile to fight, and if it's pilots who decide to fight it, that's fine with me.

As we both have contending ideologies, it'll be difficult to come to a resolution over this matter.

[Masters Off]

I guess I'd be happy if I could easily get that job for Air New Zealand I've always wanted, but alas, they don't take foreign pilots. Stiff requirement to be a kiwi or at least allowed to work there. And no, they don't help get you the ability to work there.

I wonder why I don't like foreigners getting the great opportunity to work here...

Or I could just ask the question, if it's not wrong, why isn't everyone else doing it?

[Panama Jack]

I guess I'd be happy if I could easily get that job for Air New Zealand I've always wanted, but alas, they don't take foreign pilots. Stiff requirement to be a kiwi or at least allowed to work there. And no, they don't help get you the ability to work there.

I wonder why I don't like foreigners getting the great opportunity to work here...

Or I could just ask the question, if it's not wrong, why isn't everyone else doing it?

I find it humorous whenever the usual "no-foreigners nazis" come out of the woodwork to (correctly) point out that the pilot employment market is saturated in Canada and that prospects need to have their immigration paperwork and Canadian licenses in order before sending out resumes to people writing us from Delhi, Dubai or Düsseldorf, yet when somebody posts "G'day, I'm an aussie (or kiwi) pilot and I really wanna fly in Canada" they line up like a bunch of teenage schoolgirls eager to express their affection for antipodians and how cool they think they are.

Just sayin', "mate".

[Colonel Sanders]

"Protectionism is the crack cocaine of economics", says Chairman of Dallas Federal Reserve.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/econom ... k_coc.html

"It provides an immediate high that leads to economic death. We cannot afford to go down that route," said Fisher.

Protectionism leads to high tariffs and those lead to retaliatory tariffs from other nations, driving up the cost of goods, shutting down the flow of goods and extending recessions.

Many economists point to the disastrous Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, which not only prolonged the Great Depression in the U.S., it did the same to the rest of the world, thanks to a tariff-happy President Hoover and a Congress eager to try to help Americans at the expense of the rest of the world without thinking about the long-term consequences.

It's too bad that nobody learned anything from the Great Depression of the 1930's, which of course let to the rise of Hilter in Germany and World War II.

That was easy, wasn't it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

Back on topic:

we both have contending ideologies

Ok, but I'd be just as happy if you took an economics 101 course.

As I have said before, I personally think that some
knowledge of finance, economics and marketing -
just one course in each - should be a prerequisite
to obtaining an ATPL, which allows you to be PIC
of a big important plane in a commercial air service.

Heck, just read one book in each of those
three subjects. It's not too much to ask a pilot
to read three books, is it? They even have some
nice pictures in them.

[Colonel Sanders]

SWA expects pilots to pay for their own type ratings

I know this will bring howls of outrage, but ...

If you have an ATPL and 3000TT, if you take Doc's
advice and put a $12k trip to texas on your line of credit
and get a 737 type rating, I think you would be virtually
guaranteed of a right seat.

[trey kule]

Maybe for the next short while, CS. The new multi crew licenses will apparently be airline sponsored, so those boys and girls are going to jump to the front of the que for right seat jobs at the airlines...besides the fact they will no doubt be on a kd pay scale....
The poor young career streamers going through the colleges now are going to have a big surprise very soon when the airline right seats dry up for them..You can bet the airlines are going to be all over this..Cheap, virtually indentured labor force. We wont need to worry about foreigners, as there will be a huge surplus of cheap right seaters, and there are lots of Captains with 20 years left, and present FOs to fill the left seats for decades.
And you can bet all those career right seaters will tell you they will get to the left seat..the regulations will change.....they might be right about the regulations changing , but not in the way they are dreaming.

[photofly]

we both have contending ideologies

You can accept the general validity of economic theory without having to prefer the policy that's best for the economy. A lot of people want a world with less "globalization" and less global trade (in which economics says we'd all be poorer on average) because they think we'd be more equal and also happier overall. I won't argue with that preference. But I'll disagree with someone who says that less international trade will make us richer.

Economic science is not the same as Politics: it can help you work out the effect of policies but it can't tell you whether the effect is one you'll want to live with or not.

[RogerCheckCopy]

As much as I disagree with the very imbalanced reciprocity scheme some airlines are engaged in, the safety approach is weak at best. My understanding is that all foreign pilots flying for CJ or Sunwing are current and experienced on the NG, and from what I hear, some have 20,000-30,000 hours on 737's. Crewing seasonally with returning pilots that may not have flown for 6 plus months, or hiring new pilots off the streets every year, many without jet experience is safer how exactly?

[CID]

I used to like watching those news shows that "exposed" the great injustices in the world through "investigative reporting". Then I watched a few that had to do with aviation. A subject that I know a great deal about. The "facts" presented were so often incorrect, presented out of context or designed to just meet the agenda of some shady "whistle-blower" or program producer that it placed ALL similar shows in question.

If reporting was so abysmal for aviation related shows, how about all those shows dealing with government or medicine or current affairs? Are they all just sensationalistic crap designed to boost ratings rather than provide a public service? Yes.

Unfortunately, many people take the bait and shows like W5 or The Fifth Estate or 60 Minutes etc. benefit by increased ratings and corresponding funding from advertising clamouring to buy time on the latest "story".

I don't even bother watching these shows any more. I put them in the same category as other fictional drama or daytime talk shows like Jerry Springer. (Is that even still on??)

Absolute rubbish.