Career Pilot: Filling seats

“The decision to cease flying is related to a 2013 change in U.S. regulations that requires first officers to have 1,500 flight hours,” the airline said. “The change has led to a significant reduction in the number of pilots available to small airlines. The inability to employ pilots caused the airline to suspend flights to small cities in the Midwest and western regions of the United States.”

The lure of flying a noisy, old 1900 twin turboprop is nil compared to a sleek Embraer E190 regional jet for most aspiring jet jocks, but to many, that tank of an airplane was fun—making “real pilots” out of its flight crews. Flying eight legs a day while dropping into exotic ports of call such as North Platte and McCook, Nebraska, and Riverton and Cheyenne, Wyoming—hand flying each segment with no autopilot—was the normal routine for pilots of Great Lakes Airlines.

In light of Great Lakes’ additional proof that the pilot shortage is real, other airlines are hedging their bets so that they will avoid getting caught with too many airplanes and too few pilots.

Regional airlines such as SkyWest, Republic, Horizon, and Envoy have reached out to aviation academia for quite some time to attract young future airline pilots while they are still toiling at aviation colleges and universities. Through job fairs and campus visits, company pilots and human resources folks have been extending conditional promises of employment to juniors and seniors. And this kind of outreach has finally caught the attention of major airlines.

One of the early major airlines in the game was JetBlue with its Gateway programs, of which there are several variants. The airline has partnered with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, for example, which has a defined pathway to the airline by first flying for Cape Air in the “minors” and then, with time, transitioning to Big Blue. JetBlue also has a track for zero timers (see “True Blue For You, Too?” September 2016 Flight Training). After completion of a four-year program and investment of a goodly sum of money, that front seat of an Airbus A320 can be attained without the usual route through the regionals.

United Airlines, another major player, has recently developed a new partnership with Metropolitan State University of Denver. This is a remarkable pairing, as United has reached out to a school that is a relatively small institution—not quite in the same stratosphere as Embry-Riddle, the University of North Dakota, and Purdue, which seem to attract the lion’s share of attention in the industry. Bravo for Metro State.

The United-Metro State program creates an opportunity for undergraduate flight students to interview with United. If accepted, the Metro grad will join one of United’s regional partner airlines. After meeting flight time requirements, participants can move on to jobs on United flight decks, all within five to seven years of graduation.

To put the United plan in perspective, Capt. Michael McCasky, managing director of United’s Flight Training Center in Denver, said, “When you do your interview with us when you are a junior in college, you have done your last United interview. Your first and only United interview.”

FedEx is also a major that has recently developed a minor league farm system. Called “Purple Runway,” it aims to support the company and its feeder operators such as Mountain Air Cargo and Empire Airlines with a “pipeline of qualified pilot candidates through universities,” said FedEx CEO Fred Smith. In his remarks at Delta State University, Smith said the intent of the initiative, in addition to providing flying talent for its smaller affiliates, is to “eventually qualify for pilot opportunities at FedEx.”

The pilot shortage is a dilemma facing other parts of the globe as well. Perhaps the domestic airlines here in America might take a close look at what Qantas is doing. Qantas is investing nearly $20 million in the Qantas Group Pilot Academy, which is expected to open its doors next year. The Qantas academy will initially train around 100 pilots annually for direct entry into the Qantas group. Depending on demand from other parts of the aviation industry, this could grow to 500 pilots per year on a fee-for-service basis.

CEO Alan Joyce has said that the academy would become a critical part of the carrier’s long-term talent pipeline. “Qantas has a proud history of having some of the best pilots in the world and we want to make sure it stays that way. By creating our own academy, we can train the next generation of pilots to the Qantas Group standards. It could train pilots for other airlines and grow into the largest academy of its kind,” he said.

The Qantas plan may deserve some consideration here in America. Recruiting collegians as future airline pilots is a good plan, but the talent pool is finite. What about those mid-life career changers who would gladly transition from their cubes to flight decks? Could a domestic airline flight academy sponsored by the industry itself provide an entry point to an airline career?