Airline Pilots: Is Anybody Interested in Being One?

[Slammer]

6. problems

There's hundreds of thousands of people coming out of schools each year who can't pass a written test. I used to work in the accounting department of an airline and it was shocking how many people who came in for really basic entry-level jobs who couldn't read, write, or follow simple instructions during a job interview. Out of the ones who could do all three, 70-80% of them couldn't pass a three month training program to do a repetitive job that required four steps then type out the results of what happened at each of those steps.

As for military pilots, there's only a few thousand total. Not many retire in any particular year. Not all of those want a career in commercial aviation when the industry has the habit of downsizing pilots at the drop of a hat. And pilots are increasingly getting hassled by TSA like ordinary people are and it doesn't sit well with many of them.