Flying is a wonderful malady that infects nearly 500,000 of us. The lure of winging through the sky compels many to invest tens of thousands of dollars and spend hundreds of hours aloft, bouncing through heat and turbulence to gain experience and FAA certificates. And for what? To earn a living on the flight deck.
Many pilots aiming for a flying career focus only on the next hour of flight time or the next rating. A periodic health assessment of the aviation industry is prudent. To investors—and that’s really what we are when putting so much money into our flying career—it is called due diligence.
Each year, the FAA convenes a conference involving the true movers and shakers of the industry, along with agency data crunchers. The conference has produced a report, FAA Aerospace Forecast
Fiscal Years 2014-2034. The 29-page report is available online (search for it by title at www.faa.gov), and it is required reading for anyone who hopes to earn a living in aviation. What follows is a big- picture analysis.
The forecasters predict that, as the economy recovers from the most serious downturn—and slowest recovery—in recent history, aviation will continue to grow over the long term. Fundamentally, demand for aviation is driven by economic activity. As economic growth picks up, so will growth in the demand for aviation services. The 2014 FAA forecast calls for U.S. air carrier passenger growth to average 2.2 percent per year over the next 20 years, unchanged from the 2013 forecast. After another year of slow growth in 2014, growth over the next five years will be higher than the long-term rate as we assume U.S. economic growth accelerates.
For the airlines, system capacity in available seat miles (ASMs)—the overall yardstick for how busy aviation is, both domestically and internationally—is projected to increase by 1.5 percent in 2014 after posting a 0.8-percent increase in 2013; it will then grow at an average annual rate of 2.7 percent through 2034. In the domestic market, capacity growth in 2014 is forecast to be 1.0 percent and then grow at an average annual rate of 2.1 percent for the remainder of the forecast period. Domestic mainline carrier capacity is projected to increase 0.8 percent in 2014 after rising 1.3 percent in 2013. For the regional carriers, domestic capacity growth is projected to be 2.2 percent in 2014 after declining 2.8 percent in 2013.
The long-term outlook for general aviation is favorable, even though the slow growth of the U.S. economy—plagued by uncertainties resulting from the debt ceiling crises, sequestration, government shutdown, and the European recession—has affected near-term aviation growth, particularly for the turbojet sector. While it is slightly lower than predicted in 2013, the growth in business aviation demand over the long term continues, driven by a growing U.S. and world economy, especially in the turbojet, turboprop, and turbine rotorcraft markets. As the fleet grows, the number of general aviation hours flown is projected to increase an average of 1.4 percent a year through 2034.
The report also looks at the pilot pool, which may give an indication of where shortages could develop. The number of active general aviation pilots (excluding airline transport pilots) is projected to be 484,425 in 2034, an increase of more than 35,000 (up 0.4 percent yearly) over the forecast period. (Although the report does not list the number of ATP-certificated pilots, AOPA’s 2011 estimate shows 142,650 ATPs at that time.)
Between 2011 and 2013, there was a decline of 12,659 in the number of commercial pilots, accompanied by an increase of 7,313 in the number of ATPs. Many of those commercial pilots are thought to have obtained the higher-level ATP certificate, as required by the Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2010. Taking this change into consideration, commercial pilots are projected to increase from 108,206 in 2013 to 122,000 in 2034, an average annual increase of 0.6 percent. The number of student pilots is forecast to decrease at an average annual rate of 0.2 percent over the forecast period, declining from 120,285 in 2013 to 116,050 in 2034.
There’s the snapshot. The trend is looking favorable, although not overly enthusiastic. Thus, it is pretty safe to say that jobs should be there for those who persist and are qualified. So, are you in?
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