Pilot shortage begins to hurt US airlines

Fewer available flight instructors means fewer pilots trained, and that is already being felt by the airlines. “We’re going to have a situation where there’s not enough pilots being put into the system to sustain the system,” says Kit Darby, president of Atlanta, Gerogia-based pilot career service AIR. “We’ve already seen airlines have to cancel a few flights at the end of the month when they’ve used up their reserves.”
Ironically, this gloomy forecast is the result of success. Half the airlines in the USA are hiring pilots as the industry grows, and many of them never stopped despite blows to the carriers after the terrorist attacks of 2001.
“Smaller airlines, carriers that fly regional jets, have been hiring more pilots per month, every month, since 9/11. It’s that group, the jet regionals and national carriers, the smaller airlines, who are really hiring a lot of pilots,” Darby says – although they in turn go on to lose pilots to the larger US carriers, which are now forecast to become profitable again. “The last time they did that, each of those airlines hired 1,000 pilots a year.”
Shortages get worse when you add the demand for pilots from the exploding markets in China, India and elsewhere, and the growth in very light jets and business jets. “The solution to it would be, of course, to train more pilots more quickly. That’s where the real rub comes,” Darby says.
Airlines have not nurtured a pool of new recruits into pilots in 50 years, he says, but it could be the only way to avert a long-lasting crisis.
The average annual recruitment total today is between 8,000 and 10,000 pilots, Darby says. The total dropped below 5,000 after 9/11, but will rise to 12,000, he predicts. “It actually picked up about three years ago. There were 10,000-plus hirings in 2005 9,000 or so in 2006.” But the same shortages that have flight schools turning over every stone for instructors are also hindering those recruitment goals.
“These bigger national carriers are trying to get 50, 60, 70 pilots a month and they’re coming up short, so they’re getting very creative about where they’re finding pilots,” says Darby, adding: “We’re seeing some strange things bonuses [between $2,500 and $5,000] being paid for captains who move from one airline to another” and an increase in hiring bonuses.
Overall, airline pilot pay is down, Darby says, but salaries are rising at mid-size and small carriers – which are the airlines hiring flight instructors as line pilots. Starting pay at regional airlines that do not fly jets is $18,000-20,000 a year and the maximum salary is $46,000. Larger carriers start between $25,000 and $30,000, rising to a ceiling of $110,000. At major carriers pilot pay starts at around $36,000 and the maximum is over $200,000.
Pay and benefits for pilots will only go up, Darby predicts, but there is still an overall pilot shortage and a shared forecast for trouble.
A new training system could require several models, but Darby believes it ought not waste resources on students who do not have what it takes.
01/07/07 Flight International