China Needs To Hire 100 Pilots a Week For The Next 20 Years

'Air traffic is set to almost quadruple over China in the next two decades' and relatively unknown Chinese airlines are offering experienced pilots with preferred Western accents upwards of US$26,000 a MONTH in pay to get them to switch companies or come back out of retirement.

I don't know about you, but this level of hiring mania is worrisome for safety issues. At what point will they cut corners on training and experience just to make their numbers? From the look of the air in the photograph at the attached link, it won't soon be thin enough to fly through.

Bloomberg

It's not as bad as it sounds. Most of China's airspace remains closed to civilian air traffic and is for military use only. They've recently started easing those restrictions to allow for greater commercial flight. Probably just airlines moving in to compete with the new and easier-to-access real estate and the growth that comes with it.

a reply to: SentientCentenarian

They need Western pilots. Crew coordination is already bad the world over, but it's even worse with Asian pilots, because of the hierarchy inherent in their culture.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: SentientCentenarian

They need Western pilots. Crew coordination is already bad the world over, but it's even worse with Asian pilots, because of the hierarchy inherent in their culture.

And I presume the need for the pilots to speak understandable English the world to all airtraffic control towers? I've listened to black box recordings, often they are unintelligible.

How does 'hierarchy inherent in their culture' play a part? Not being critical, I really want to understand.

I can see this benefitting pilots that do not even make the jump. Their value will increase just by being able to operate commercial aircraft and can demand more from their employers.

26k a month?...where do i sign. Some pilots in the US and Europe aint even on that a year.

a reply to: SentientCentenarian

Crew coordination works, because one pilot is willing to call out another pilot when they make a mistake, and draw their attention to it. This was highlighted by the accident on Tenerife, when a KLM 747 took off without being cleared and crashed into a Pan Am 747 that was using the runway to taxi. The captain flying the KLM aircraft was their most experienced training captain, flying with a relatively new First Officer. The FO very timidly asked if they had been cleared the first time they began to roll, and the Captain stopped the aircraft. He started rolling again, and the FO didn't say anything to him, even though he hadn't heard the takeoff clearance.

In some Asian cultures, pointing out mistakes causes embarrassment to the person making the mistake, and is to be avoided. Especially when you are paired with someone that has a lot of experience, and you don't. Most aircrews are trained to overcome that, but it's not easy to overcome when it's been ingrained into you from a young age. A good example is Asiana 214.

When investigators started listening to the CVR, they didn't hear the crew saying anything about the fact that the aircraft was slowing, or sinking faster than they planned. The Korean culture, when speaking to an elder, more senior person, generally you are more oblique about what you're getting at. An example used in one article is instead of asking if they want water, you would say something to the effect of "It's a warm day for a nice refreshment, no?" In a cockpit, this is a bad thing. You want to point out quickly what's happening and what possible correction there is, and you want the crew to discuss back and forth, instead of the senior pilot telling the junior what they're going to do, or that they're wrong, and the junior just shutting up about it.

Sorry but do the economics actually work if you are paying crew that amount esp in Asia?. In a region that is flooded with budget air travel from many operators AirAsia,Cebu,Tiger etc etc...

Also what about the copious amounts of pilots that are being pumped out by places such as India?.. I understand the "want" for English speaking crew but honestly a majority of the enriched peoples that will partake in Commercial training in that region will have very good English as standard..

You run a airline for profit I just do not believe that sum can be correct but of course I will stand corrected if it is...

RA