It looks as if the airlines are waking up, as they always do in the end, to the fact that stopping pilot and engineer recruitment in a recession does not freeze the number of employees precisely where it was when recruiting stopped.
There is a mathematical factor called retirement that's as relentless as gravity, but it tends to be forgotten, or even encouraged, when recession hits. It causes skilled employees to drop off the top of the pile all the time, whether the economic conditions are good or bad. Add to this the fact that as soon as there is a hint of recovery at the carriers who provide better than average pay and employment conditions, those employees who feel they could do better will make an upward move. Once this process begins, it tends to create something like panic which propagates like wildfire upward from the bottom of the feeding chain.
While this sounds good for the training industry, the lean period it has been through leaves flight and engineer training organisations low on investment and resources. The feeding frenzy also tends, eventually, to start sucking them dry of experienced instructors, many of whom will be tempted into the airlines just when the flight training organisations need them most.
Every time this happens the airlines swear they won't let it happen again. They will, unfortunately, and pilot quality in the airlines always suffers as a result.
Source: Flight International
