<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by cpfc:
In all this turmoil, a number that has been bantered around is that the "New" Air Canada will have around 800 fewer pilots. Keeping in mind most if not all aircraft have a two member crew, and the fleet size is remaining reasonably constant, are longer pilot flying hours really going suck up the vacuum left by all these flyboys/girls being laid off? I defer to some of the experts on this forum for the answer.</font>
Okay, how about this, instead of 13 pilots for one large aircraft, you have 7 for a smaller one?
If you are doing a milk run all day long, you can get pilots who live in, say Charlottetown, to fly YYG-YHZ all day long, logging all of about 25 minutes in the air each way. Nice knowing you will be home to see the kids at night, right?
With the larger planes, you have more bouncing around, more layovers, more delays and changes, and once a pilot hits his forty or so hours, whoops - get another pilot in here.