1,400 flights were canceled and 17,000 were delayed on July 4 according to FlightAware. Smaller cities are no longer served by American, Delta, or United.
Due to Obama's new laws and the epidemic, air travel will only get worse.
Pilots over the age of 65 are retiring. In aviation, age restrictions for pilots are often arbitrary. Pilots who served in the Vietnam War have resigned. Although the government spent $50 billion on pandemic help, some workers were forced to retire early due of the failure of Covid.
According to some pilots, the need that prospective employees be immunized is a hindrance to employment. Pilots are quarantined for 10 days by the FAA, but the CDC recommends only 5 days.
Recruitment can be a challenge. Retirements and vaccines are tough to handle because of other regulatory changes. Before Obama, pilots needed 250 hours of training for both passenger and freight flights. As of January 1, 2015, the federal minimum wage has been raised by Obama to $1500.
Pilots with military training required an additional 750 hours of flight time. There is a shortage of pilots due to the retirement of veterans of the Vietnam War.
Reforms were possible because Democrats held sway in Congress and the Senate, where they held commanding majorities. In Buffalo in 2009, Colgan Air Flight 3407 went down. There were 49 people killed. As a result of this unusual occurrence, further precautions have been implemented.
Despite a 1,500-hour limit, Flight 3407 crashed in 2009. He put in 3,379 hours. Rebecca Lynne Shaw logged 2,200 hours of flight time, including 772 of those in the wreckage of her own plane.
Training did not cause the crash; skill did. When the stall alarm sounded, Captain Renslow raised the plane's nose. Renslow was unable to pass five out of six "check rides" he took.
Expert: "Five is a red light." Neither Colgan Air nor the FAA were aware of Renslow's failed check rides.
Renslow was disqualified from the competition after three errors. After two more tests, Colgan was certain Renslow wasn't a good pilot. There was support from the labor movement for the Renslow family. Union power without restraint.
The cost of becoming a pilot is high. For the first 250 hours, the fee per hour was $200. It would cost $150 per hour to fly for the next 1,250 hours in a single-engine plane. Single-engine training costs $237,500. A multi-plane training course is expensive. A week of training is not enough, but years of training are.
The cost of further training for pilots is a mystery. The airlines don't train pilots who may leave the company. Airlines are having a difficult time.
Because licensed pilots can only fly for a maximum of 2.7 hours per day, finding one for a day trip is more difficult. Pilots in their late 60s and early 70s are increasingly choosing to hang up their wings.
For towns with populations many times bigger than Wichita, losing scheduled flights is a real possibility absent a sea change in the availability of trained aviation professionals, particularly pilots. In a world where air travel is as essential as the Internet, this might isolate local economies from the rest of the world.
Who stands to gain from the new curriculum? Pilots who have earned their wings and are authorized to fly. Because of the increased demand for pilots, wages will rise. Passengers from the United States were subject to the rule. More planes would fly to smaller cities if the 2010 rule hadn't been implemented.
Clearly, there is a shortage of pilots. Senior pilots, according to some, should be exempt from vaccination requirements and the upper age limit should be loosened. There is a test for older pilots. Take into account the training requirements of 12-year-olds.
People need a place to vent.
The preceding is a summary of an article that originally appeared on TheFederalist.
