International cargo carrier Atlas Air announced on Monday (August 19) it has formed a partnership with Spartan Education Group to create Atlas Cadet Academy at a dedicated facility in West Chicago, Illinois. The program is tailored to train pilots for Atlas’s fleet of Boeing 747, 767, and 777 widebody freighters. Atlas believes it is the only program formulated to specialize in cargo operations.
It may do little more than improve the visibility of large aircraft cargo airlines as viable carrier options. But at this time at least, it will be hard to convince them to choose the Atlas lifestyle and pay over that of the big 4 major passenger airlines. I think we are seeing, though, a high water mark of pay and benefits in the airline business. If Amazon can drive FedEx and UPS out of business, then they will set the bar for compensation as industry standard and passenger airlines will not be far behind. A generation of pilots who are young and rose to their major airline jobs relatively quickly may be willing to concede pay and benefits more readily than previous generations who invested more of their lives to get to a major. It may be easier to justify keeping a mediocre paying job than losing a high paying one. Look at how many airlines are demanding and enforcing training contracts during a “pilot shortage” as evidence that what I fear may become reality.
I too have a problem with the picture, but draw different conclusions than the unredoubtable Mr. M.:
Apparently pilots who look like the student are not suitable candidates to be instructors at Atlas Air.
I don’t recall that I’ve ever seen a flight instructor in short-shorts in Florida, much less Chicago. Too much kneeling on the ground during a preflight inspection.
Isn’t there something about teaching students to never touch the prop?
Has anyone here ever had a flight instructor (of any gender) so attractive?
Was that the reason you chose your flight school?
So let’s agree to collectively conclude that this is a promotional photo involving two beautiful and expensive models: the “instructor” and the airplane.
And that Kent’s attempt to sidetrack the discussion (literally from its start) into socio-political commentary is the reason we lost the ability to comment on the substance of AvWeb articles in the first place.
Hardly. Much of it is due to critical thinking skills.
For instance, you assume which is the student and which is the instructor. What do you use to base that assumption on? Do you have enough information in that picture to make a valid assumption?
Could it not be a student pilot explaining to the instructor what to look for when inspecting a prop?
Well, that would explain the sour expression on the shorter woman: “Hey, Legs, what did I tell you about touching the prop? And about wearing appropriate attire for climbing into and out of a C172 with any shred of dignity?” For that matter, if reductio ad absurdum is your preferred tool, they could both be aliens anticipating a meal of one of the biggest flying creatures they found on Earth.
There are “critical thinking skills”, “critical commentary”, and “political commentary”. The first is necessary to make the second worth reading. The third threatens to devolve every discussion into aspersions and name-calling.
To present the possibility that one of these pictured could possibly be a student, but not the other is so absurd, they might as well be aliens….is that critical commentary, political commentary, or lack of critical thinking skills?
If one could not possibly be a student pilot (or, just as likely to be an alien) and therefore must be an instructor, how did that instructor forego any training or certification as they could not possibly be a student pilot?
