Flight Schools

[JustFly]

I was asked to see if this was true. It looks like there is going to be a pilot shortage for a variety of reasons, one being that there are less flight schools out there and that the number is shrinking. I have never given it much thought and was wondering if anybody might be able to come up with some statistics to prove (or disprove) this.

Does anybody have any info?

Thanks,

 

[SPilot]

Not entirely relevant statistic, I'm sure someone will find something better. Until then. From the FAA website.

Private Pilot Airplane Written Test Volume Statistic:
2006: 27,491
2005: 28,132
2004: 29,851
2003: 31,635
2002: 34,738
About 20% reduction in five years.

Commercial Pilot Written Tests:
2006: 7,697
2005: 8,018
2004: 8,408
2003: 8,573
2002: 10,427
About 26% reduction in five years.

Initial Private Certificates Issued:
[FONT=Univers (W1)]2006[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]2005[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]2004[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]2003[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]2002[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]2001[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]2000[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]1999[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]1998[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]1997[/FONT]
[FONT=Univers (W1)]20,217[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]20,889[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]23,031[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]23,866[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]28,659[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]25,372[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]27,223[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]24,630[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]26,297[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]21,552[/FONT]

Initial Commercial Certificates Issued:
[FONT=Univers (W1)]2006[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]2005[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]2004[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]2003[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]2002[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]2001[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]2000[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]1999[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]1998[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]1997[/FONT]

[FONT=Univers (W1)]8,687[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]8,834[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]9,836[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]9,670[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]12,299[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]11,499[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]11,213[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]9,737[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]10,042[/FONT] [FONT=Univers (W1)]8,988[/FONT]

2002-2006 reduction in commercial certificates issued: 29%
2002-2006 reduction in private certificates issued: 29%

Number of active flight instructor certificates have been increasing steadily though.

 

[rfresh]

Generally speaking, there has always been a "pilot shortage" - most of the time started by one flight school or another.

But to answer your question a pilot shortage isn't created by a lack of flight schools - it's created by the demand for pilots by the companies who hire them - the majors on down the ladder.

 

[siucavflight]

I dont think that there are less people learning to fly because flight schools are closing.
I think that flight schools are closing because less people want to learn how to fly.

 

[Lazy8]

I dont think that there are less people learning to fly because flight schools are closing.
I think that flight schools are closing because less people want to learn how to fly.

I think less people can afford to learn how to fly. In 1998 when I started you could get a Private certificate for $3000. Now it's more like $8,000-$11,000 and it's going up every few months.

 

[JustFly]

Thanks for the info, although it wasn't really anything I didn't know. My question was not why they close or do the closings cause pilot shortages. My question should have been worded differently - how many flight schools are there today compared to years past. Are there less today that a year ago or several years ago and are there statistics to back that up.

Thanks again.

 

[rfresh]

Yes there are less flight schools today than there were several years ago. For those of us who have been flying for years, we've seen it for ourselves - we don't need statistics to tell us that.

 

[NuGuy]

Heyas,

Siuc and rfresh are right on the mark. Anyone who's been around the biz more than one cycle can tell you that the number of schools has just about evaporated.

Back when I was doing the CFI thing (early 1990s), you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a school of some kind.

Sure, there was Flightsafety, UND, and Riddle. Comair was just hitting it's stride, but the really big volume came from the oversized Mom-n-pops like Bolivar, Shields, SEFA, etc. At their peak, most of these places had 40+ airplanes, and some were closer to 80+.

Riddle and UND took 4 years to put out a pilot. Flightsafety ran their program at a leisurely pace, as did American Flyers (they had a HUGE operation in Fort Lauderdale). They were faster than a 4 year school, but they had a LOT of formal academics in their programs, and it still took a fair bit to get through.

But the Mom-n-pops were squeezing out tons of people every 90-120 days. Comair, which grew out from this concept, was among the first places to go big time with it.

Another huge source of student starts were FBOs. When I was learning to fly, any FBO that didn't have 8-12 aircraft on their rental line was a rinky dink operation.

The thing to understand is that the flight training market always lags what's going on in the industry, usually by about 12 - 18 months. That's about how long it takes for the "pipeline" to change to meet whatever new demands there are. Usually in a down cycle, the people in the pipeline get pretty jacked.

But there's a number of things at work here:

The last big furlough bubble before 9/11 ran from around 91 (Gulf War 1) to around the end of 96. Towards the end of 93 and into 94, you saw the most, if not all, of the mom-n-pops hit the skids. Bolivar went bust almost overnight.

Most, if not all, of the FBOs got out of the flight training/rental business (mostly for insurance/liability reasons). Most were content to rent out space to another operator that had all the risk. Without the subsidy that fuel sales and maintenence provided, most places were on pretty shakey ground. The extra layer of separation from school to FBO made aircraft leasebacks (the bread and butter of any rental operation) a really bad deal financially for the owners, so the source of "cheap" rentals vanished. Now the schools had to OWN or finance their aircraft, and this means $$$, if they could aford it at all. This is the primary reason rental prices are large and selection stinks today.

The mom-n-pops and the FBOs never made it back in the boom times of 97 and on. The "mega" schools had come on the scene, and it was tough to compete with the media blasting that most of these places put out. And sources of cheap aircraft had dried up.

When 9/11 hit, the BIG BIG BIG spike in cost came from insurance. Not just direct insurance, but the insurance the FBO paid, your mechanic paid and on down the line. All of this added up to really blast the cost of flying into orbit.

Up until then, you could still find 152s/172s in the 45-65 dollar range. Now the bottom basement is in the high 90s if not the low 100s.

11 grand for a private is crazy. In the 90's you could just about do your full set of ratings for 12-14k

People have learned that there is NO payout at the end of the rainbow. Even if there was, there is no longer the civilian training infrastructure in place to really train lots of pilots. The previous cycles have pretty much burned through the hordes of cheap aircraft (152s/172s from the late 70s), and now everything is high dollar, so even if there were places, no one could afford it.

Plus the pipeline is empty of instructors. Sure the same old timers are still around, but they're few and far between, and concentrate on the high dollar boutiqe market.

Sorry for the rant, but the state of GA flight training is a mess. Not from a technical point of view (DVDs sure beat those scratchy old Cessna Pilot Center film strips), but from an affordibility/accessibility point of view.

Nu

 

[VW Pilot]

I think it is the cost....mst people I talk to stop somwhere along the line..their complaint? Cost....

 

[D8Ball]

One thing that I saw kill two local flight schools near me was there lack of reinvesting money into their school aircraft. One company advertised to have instrument training and all three aircraft they had didnt have a GPS in them. I used to tell students to go find a school that had decent GPS systems in their aircraft since it has become such an essential part of instrument training. Those schools suffered from issues like this and had since closed.

My response to the question is that there are less flight schools, but still lots of students. The cost has been a huge factor, such as outrageous gas prices, but sometimes the school can make fatal mistakes too!

Most students want to learn on airplanes that are modern w/ the modern digital equipment. Maybe The Cessna 162 will help manage the cost....time will tell.