DID YOU SEE it? USA Today splashed the following headline across its front page recently: “Demand for Pilots Set to Soar.” Charisse Jones, who did the research and wrote the piece, nailed it. Her discoveries reinforced the sentiments and predictions that have been transmitted to the readership of Flight Training for some time. Of course, the old guard will grouse, “Oh, they’ve been saying that since the Wright brothers. The so-called ‘pilot shortage’ is just a figment of imagination and a flight-school ploy to increase enrollment.”
Some of the key points of Jones’ report are worth considering. She says, “After nearly a four-year drought of job openings, the airline industry is on the brink of what’s predicted to be the biggest surge in pilot hiring in history. Boeing has forecast a need for 466,650 more commercial pilots by 2029—an average of 23,300 new pilots a year. Nearly 40 percent of the openings will be to meet the soaring travel market in the Asia-Pacific region, Boeing predicts, but more than 97,000 will be in North America.”
Jones quotes a well-used resource for Flight Training. Louis Smith and FltOps.com have filled the void of airline career and hiring information left by Kit Darby and the now-defunct AIR Inc. Smith's prognostications for the most part have been right on. He says, “Pilot hiring was severely depressed in the last three years. The next 10 years will be the exact opposite, with the longest and largest pilot hiring boom in the industry.”
Sherry Carbary, vice president of flight services for Boeing Commercial Airplanes in Seattle, says in the USA Today article: “We’re already seeing in some spots around the world a shortage of pilots…and if you were watching this a few years ago at the last peak, you had airlines stealing from other airlines. It’s a global marketplace for pilots, and…we’ll not have enough if that growth trend continues over the next few years. That’s something the industry needs to come to grips with. Where is our pipeline of new pilots going to come from, and how are we going to finance them?”
Add to the increased demand for air transportation by the public the exodus of senior pilots. The last fast-track hiring took place in 2007 and 2008, when airlines were pilfering flight schools and drafting CFIs onto the flight deck of ERJs and CRJs. Overnight, that hiring spigot was shut off when the FAA installed the “Age 65 Rule.” The major airlines were no longer losing their gray heads to retirement, which meant the first officer in a Boeing 757 did not move to the left seat and, consequently, did not make room for the RJ captain.
Les Westbrooks, a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, took note. The mandatory retirement age “is starting to catch up with us. The large-scale hiring we had then [1980s] is now turning into large-scale retirements, which will require replacements to maintain the status quo.”
Opportunities will blossom for American pilots outside of the United States. The foreign carriers’ appetite for well-trained U.S. pilots is evident in places such as Dubai. As an example, Emirates is expected to hire more than 500 pilots by next spring. Emirates already employs roughly 300 Americans as pilots and is visiting job fairs in New York City and Las Vegas to seek candidates. The compensation package for these fliers includes perks such as a chauffeur driven car to and from work, an education allowance for the pilot’s family, and profit sharing.
Speak Spanish fluently? It's said that a pilot can write his own ticket in Latin American countries.
Westbrook’s insight into the immediate challenges of luring intelligent, bright people into the industry mirrors what has already been stated in these pages. “We’ve got to attract qualified, smart people into the industry and you’re going to spend $50,000 to $60,000 on flight training, plus your college [costs]. You’ve got a guy who’ll walk out $100,000 in debt, and we’re going to tell him, ‘We’ll pay you $22,000’?” For a sharp young person, these numbers do not compute.
Case in point: Dan, a computer genius, was a college student in the northern Chicago suburbs. He was recruited out of his junior year to work for a global telecommunications firm. Starting pay: $80,000 annually.
For far too long, the airline industry relied on a simple premise that the passion for flight trumps common economic sense. Pilots will work for peanuts and accrue immense debt for the satisfaction of getting off the ground. “Will fly for food” is simply not going to cut it anymore; the industry must reinvent itself and construct a lifestyle and compensation package that make the investment in time and money worthwhile.
Sean Cassidy, a vice president at the Airline Pilots Association International (ALPA), said, “Whether or not we could meet those [hiring needs] domestically depends on how robust the hiring process is, how lucrative it is to attract new entrants into the industry, especially at the regional level.”
The pilot shortage problem is expected to reach acute proportions. The government may need to get involved. Exactly how is unforeseen. Perhaps interest-free loans for flight training? Maybe developing a pilot academy with true ab initio training as a first step to a regional airline after college, with costs funded by the industry?
It is unfortunate that, with the hiring boom about to launch with vigor, some of our aviation colleges have closed up shop prematurely— schools such as Daniel Webster College and St. Cloud State. Others appear to be on the ropes as regents and administrators question the academic value of flight-training programs. So, barring some unforeseen calamity that sets the world economy on its back, it is at last going to be a pilot’s market.
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