Agree with you on this one, these are the 3 most important things about investing in any airline at the moment:
1. The pilot shortage
2. The pilot shortage
3. The pilot shortage
Due to demographics and under-investment in pilot training and very high training costs and airlines attempt to drive down wages and conditions for commercial pilots in the past there is now a very large shortage of pilots worldwide and with nearly all parts of the world having airline growth the problem is going to be pilots.
Dosen't matter if you have the fanciest most fuel efficient aircraft in the world running on banana skins - they are just dead paperweights on the balance sheet without people to fly them....