We’ve had parts problems lately both for personal vehicles and the company plane. I’ve also run into problems finding rental cars.
With respect to airlines, the shortage has been looming for years. There was a hiring boom in the 90s and a bust that lasted more than a decade due to 9/11 and the Great Recession. As a result, a large share of airline pilots are nearing mandatory retirement. For a long time, the mandatory retirement age was 60, but the FAA increased that to 65 in 2007. Increased hiring, delayed retirement, and the pandemic pushed the crisis back, but airlines are feeling the pressure.
Add to the mix the increased cost of learning to fly as well as low compensation for introductory jobs. Compensation at the regionals is coming up, but it’s going to take time for all this to even out.
I once believed if things got really bad, I could live on peanut butter, apples and water. The peanut butter shelves were bare on Monday.
It seems to me that most business travel is overdone - especially considering the communication tools now available. I suppose personality plays a big role in sales and deal making, so in-person contact is desirable when the facts will not do the job. Executive appearances at production facilities may be useful and I accompanied our executives on a lot of them, but we never saw the night shift.
I assume most, if not all, shortages of things such as power control modules are because the modules or their components are made in Asia. I know there is also a shortage of willing workers in the USA. In northeast Georgia companies are offering extremely high wages for relatively low-tech manufacturing jobs. Even lower tech, stinky jobs in the poultry industry are unfilled despite offering $15 to $20 per hour wages. I have no doubt this situation is the result of incompetent government policy. There is no other explanation for a country with the population and resources of the USA not being able to produce resistors, diodes, chips, extrusions and castings.
We’ve had parts problems lately both for personal vehicles and the company plane. I’ve also run into problems finding rental cars.
With respect to airlines, the shortage has been looming for years. There was a hiring boom in the 90s and a bust that lasted more than a decade due to 9/11 and the Great Recession. As a result, a large share of airline pilots are nearing mandatory retirement. For a long time, the mandatory retirement age was 60, but the FAA increased that to 65 in 2007. Increased hiring, delayed retirement, and the pandemic pushed the crisis back, but airlines are feeling the pressure.
Add to the mix the increased cost of learning to fly as well as low compensation for introductory jobs. Compensation at the regionals is coming up, but it’s going to take time for all this to even out.
Scarcity is not new to us, but has not visited most of us in our lifetime. It has been the harbinger of other undesirable circumstances.
I once believed if things got really bad, I could live on peanut butter, apples and water. The peanut butter shelves were bare on Monday.
It seems to me that most business travel is overdone - especially considering the communication tools now available. I suppose personality plays a big role in sales and deal making, so in-person contact is desirable when the facts will not do the job. Executive appearances at production facilities may be useful and I accompanied our executives on a lot of them, but we never saw the night shift.
I hope.
I assume most, if not all, shortages of things such as power control modules are because the modules or their components are made in Asia. I know there is also a shortage of willing workers in the USA. In northeast Georgia companies are offering extremely high wages for relatively low-tech manufacturing jobs. Even lower tech, stinky jobs in the poultry industry are unfilled despite offering $15 to $20 per hour wages. I have no doubt this situation is the result of incompetent government policy. There is no other explanation for a country with the population and resources of the USA not being able to produce resistors, diodes, chips, extrusions and castings.