In an effort to fight a local epidemic of obesity, and to hide from a pouring rain, I visited the MIT gym yesterday and ran into a guy wearing an “ailerons make the world go ’round” T-shirt. He is a pilot at an airline that operates quite a few 37-passenger Embraer regional jets. These have become uneconomic as airliners in a world of expensive fuel. Thirty-seven average Americans simply can’t afford to pay enough to keep the thing in the air with oil at $100+/barrel. The efficient way to run an airline when fuel prices are high is to operate fewer flights per day, each flight in a larger plane such as a Boeing 737.
How is the airline going to survive what seems to have been a very unlucky business decision, i.e., buying all of these 37-seat jets? It turns out that the planes are in very high demand and they are selling them quite easily on the used market. Who wants them? Rich people who feel the need to spread out a little. The planes get new interiors with just a handful of seats and gold-plated seatbelts, then get shipped overseas to wherever there is someone who wants to travel in comfort. What about the pilots? They are going overseas too. One of this guy’s colleagues had worked only 8 months as a airline copilot on the Embraer. He now works out of Kuwait at triple his old salary. He pays no income tax or living expenses.
I cant speak for the generic rich folks craving room for adipose space as I dont have the means to mingle at their parties. The pilots are a bit different.
Don’t forget the numbers of folks taught to fly by uncle sam with IFR and RPG experience returning to civilian life. I see plenty of pilots looking for work as I help ease them back to noncombat life. They are bored by taxi work with a given money run every day and crave a new mission daily to plan for.