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Why the World is Running Out of Pilots

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I believe that a big factor is the high cost of entry - 4-year degree, followed by 10s of thousands of dollars for training and licensing, then maybe a low paying job for years before getting on with one of the regional carriers who also don't pay much.

This is a result of the price wars between the airlines which followed deregulation.  The benefit is that millions of people can now afford to take a flight.  The downside is, in my opinion, that quality has suffered greatly, which is why I haven't flown commercially in almost 10 years and don't ever plan to again if I can help it.

Dave

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Mario hit the nail on the head.  No one wants to pay the equivalent of becoming an MD, and then get stuck with a low salary for the majority of your career (there are exceptions, of course).  Airlines are now offering to pay for the flight school to get people in the door.  That's not without problems either, of course.  They're requiring you to basically front the cost, and then reimburse you in installments after.  
Take JetBlue's gateway program.  Sure, you can skip the regionals and go directly to a major, however you have to be able to pluck $125,000.00 from the money tree and float it for a few years while training.

Or take a look at the Epic-Ameriflight gateway program.  It's a better deal than Jetblue's in my opinion, but you still have to front approximately $53,000.00.  That will get you a chance to go to Ameriflight flying boxes, and then Ameriflight has a flow thru program with UPS. 

Of course those aren't the only options, but either way, you're going to be shelling out a lot of money with no meaningful return for a long time.

Me personally, I got my private back in 2008, and worked on advanced ratings.  I used to want to go to the airlines, but I realized that once my hobby would become work, then I'd probably start to hate it.  Now I have a successful career where I'm home every night, get better pay, and can fly when I want to, where I want to, with who I want to.  And still enjoy it!

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    If the pilot shortage is indeed expected to become critical in a few years,  then I believe airlines world-wide will just have to caugh-up their own the money for training those men and woman who have the both the aptitude and desire to become commercial pilots.  Along with this radical change, much higher starting pay scales will have to also be in the offering.

   Airlines can keep decreasing leg room to add more seats, but that won't help too much if there's no one sitting in the cockpit seat🙄       

 

 

   

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It will sort it`s self out in the long run another airline went belly up only a few days ago pilots out of a job.


 

Raymond Fry.

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Hi Folks,

A buddy of mine from the airport - a 68 year old retired elevator mechanic GA pilot with 1200 hours - just got picked up by the FEDEX Feeder in the Northeast - - - flying G1000 equipped Caravans between Dulles and Newark... His first commercial gig - nothing against him - but due to his age it seems to show they need pilots pretty bad right now...

Regards,

Scott 

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24 minutes ago, scottb613 said:

but due to his age it seems to show they need pilots pretty bad right now...

How would you feel if the pilot was 70 and had 25,000 hours? 🙂

 


I Earned My Spurs in Vietnam

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3 hours ago, ACR said:

Or take a look at the Epic-Ameriflight gateway program.  It's a better deal than Jetblue's in my opinion, but you still have to front approximately $53,000.00.  That will get you a chance to go to Ameriflight flying boxes, and then Ameriflight has a flow thru program with UPS. 

Ameriflight has a flow thru for Omni, Allegiant (Both are complete jokes of a flow thru.  Omni for one just got bought by ATSG) and Frontier.  UPS is a gateway which is nothing more than a glorified interview process.  But now you are trying to compete with people that have heavy turbine PIC and international time and all you have is a bit of turbo prop time.  It might pay off in a few years and by few I mean atleast 5.  But right now thats hardly a reason to go there.


Brian Thibodeaux | B747-400/8, C-130 Flight Engineer, CFI, Type Rated: BE190, DC-9 (MD-80), B747-400

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My Liveries

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19 hours ago, fppilot said:

When my low draft number of 70 captured me in 1970,

Military paid for my education and flight training. One year out of flight school I had 1,500 hours and when I left active duty after six years of flying I had almost 5,000 hours.  Over half of my flight time was either night or IMC. 


I Earned My Spurs in Vietnam

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There is a myriad of reasons as to why airlines are where they are now and the trouble they face looking forward. The reasons also vary geographically.
As has always been the case it is a simple matter of supply versus demand. Historically there has always been an over supply of pilots. Over the years pay and conditions have eroded and many pilots left the airlines, especially those that got regularly furloughed or had to tough it out for a long time on the tail end of a seniority list. Budget carriers started the race to the bottom of the barrel and this had an affect on premium carriers. The lure of mega airline start ups like Emirates, Etihad and Qatar, that offered good pay and early jet commands sucked many pilots from around the globe. To this day they still take many young pilots that are disillusioned by their local operators slow career prospects.
The true pilot shortage is masked by an increasing retirement age. When I started it was 50 then 55 then 58 followed by 60 and now 65 years of age. There is speculation that the FAA may be pressured into increasing this age limit yet again and if so ICAO will follow suit. That may ease things a little but not as much as it did with previous retirement age hikes. If you have had "skin in the game" for a while then just getting to 65 can be an issue. Many of my colleagues are retiring before 65 and quite a few others forced to do so due to medical issues. Holding down a class 1 medical after 65 can be an issue. At best the increased retirement age (even if it is removed altogether) would only slow the inevitable down by 2 or 3 years max imho. The retirement age has a huge affect on airlines with seniority systems in place. A pilot leaving from the top means that many pilots below will be shifting seats and this is a huge drain on training resources that could be used for training new hires. 
The Asian aviation expansion will have a huge effect. Their pilot supply is traditionally ex military pilots but the military wont want to see it's ranks depleted so where will their pilots come from and who will train them and who will pay for it?
But on the other side of the coin there is the next GFC which, looking at the overheated states of many of the worlds economy's, is probably just around the corner. It is predicted to be significantly bigger than the last and with no tools left in the tool box to fix it (because they are still in use from the last one) will linger on for much longer. The airlines will be hit very hard in which case pilot supply will be the least of their worries..

Edited by cowpatz
Sentence structure

Cheers

Steve Hall

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GFC? Is that an acronym for "Global Financial Collapse"?


Fr. Bill    

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2 hours ago, overspeed3 said:

 Along with this radical change, much higher starting pay scales will have to also be in the offering.

This is the case in other countries outside USA. In New Zealand we don't have a shortage, the regional's start at $45,000 and it bumps up to $70,000 very quickly as you progress, but on top of that they pay pilots meal allowances, overnights and a bunch of other perks. As well you get 6 paid sick days, 10 public holidays, 20 personal holidays per year, if you don't use those they pay you out or you can bank them. This covers your basics in the beginning at least, they will make sure you eat ,sleep, and clean and dressed, and pay you for downtime from the start, makes for a healthy pilot that way

USA just has to legislate a minimum standard and something similar to this would be a good start. If that means the flight to Buffalo, NY goes up by about $50 then fine

The other advantage of starting out in New Zealand is flying ATR's in and out of Queenstown, pretty awesome way to start your career 😄

Edited by Matthew Kane

Matthew Kane

 

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When I was a mechanic at an unnamed regional,our 1st officers were told not to cash their food stamps in uniform,thought that was kind of funny.

Edited by BIGSKY

Jim Driscoll, MSI Raider GE76 12UHS-607 17.3" Gaming Laptop Computer - Blue Intel Core i9 12th Gen 12900HK 1.8GHz Processor; NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 16GB GDDR6; 64GB DDR5-4800 RAM; Dual M2 2TB Solid State Drives.Driving a Sony KD-50X75, and KDL-48R470B @ 4k 3724x2094,MSFS 2020, 30 FPS on Ultra Settings.

Jorg/Asobo: “Weather is a core part of our simulator, and we will strive to make it as accurate as possible.”Also Jorg/Asobo: “We are going to limit the weather API to rain intensity only.”


 

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Google "So you want to be an Airline Pilot" A lot of it is true.


Jim Driscoll, MSI Raider GE76 12UHS-607 17.3" Gaming Laptop Computer - Blue Intel Core i9 12th Gen 12900HK 1.8GHz Processor; NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 16GB GDDR6; 64GB DDR5-4800 RAM; Dual M2 2TB Solid State Drives.Driving a Sony KD-50X75, and KDL-48R470B @ 4k 3724x2094,MSFS 2020, 30 FPS on Ultra Settings.

Jorg/Asobo: “Weather is a core part of our simulator, and we will strive to make it as accurate as possible.”Also Jorg/Asobo: “We are going to limit the weather API to rain intensity only.”


 

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21 minutes ago, n4gix said:

GFC? Is that an acronym for "Global Financial Collapse"?

Close enough but I believe officially it is "Global financial crisis".

7 minutes ago, Matthew Kane said:

This is the case in other countries outside USA. In New Zealand we don't have a shortage,

That is about to change Matthew. The expected churn through the NZ jet fleets will be a huge drain on the regional fleets and there just isn't the required volume of ab initio pilots moving through flight school training. Many regional pilots are moving, or plan to move, offshore rather than sit at the bottom of a NZ jet operators seniority list. It is a major cause of concern.


Cheers

Steve Hall

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5 minutes ago, cowpatz said:

That is about to change Matthew. The expected churn through the NZ jet fleets will be a huge drain on the regional fleets and there just isn't the required volume of ab initio pilots moving through flight school training. Many regional pilots are moving, or plan to move, offshore rather than sit at the bottom of a NZ jet operators seniority list. It is a major cause of concern.

The place to check for enrollment numbers would be Nelson Aviation College, if they are low on enrollment then that would be trouble


Matthew Kane

 

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