Welcome to Flightinfo.com

  • Register now and join the discussion
  • Friendliest aviation Ccmmunity on the web
  • Modern site for PC's, Phones, Tablets - no 3rd party apps required
  • Ask questions, help others, promote aviation
  • Share the passion for aviation
  • Invite everyone to Flightinfo.com and let's have fun

Looming Pilot Shortage

Welcome to Flightinfo.com

  • Register now and join the discussion
  • Modern secure site, no 3rd party apps required
  • Invite your friends
  • Share the passion of aviation
  • Friendliest aviation community on the web
Register   Log in
Pilot Shortage-- I just got my private ticket and a commercial pilot guide. American is on the phone and wants me to sign now to fly the 777.
Pilot Surplus-- I have 10,000 hours, all turbine multi PIC, survived two total engine failures of all engines, and am 40 in great health. Airnet will not give me an interview.
 
somewhere in between

Publishers said:
Pilot Shortage-- I just got my private ticket and a commercial pilot guide. American is on the phone and wants me to sign now to fly the 777.
Pilot Surplus-- I have 10,000 hours, all turbine multi PIC, survived two total engine failures of all engines, and am 40 in great health. Airnet will not give me an interview.
Click to expand...
Somewhere in between, but closer to the latter
 
Last edited:
There may be a pilot shortage but they forgot to figure out how they are gong to fly. Guess Vodka works good in a jet engine.
 
I've been hearing of a coming pilot shortage for at least 50 years. I hear there is one now but I know many furloughed pilots from the various airlines who can not find work at the level they are suited. Yes, they could go the the bottom of the Regional list but they just are not ready to do that. So right now there is no real pilot shortage, except for maybe CFI's. There is a CFI pilot shortage, or at least a shortange of pilots who are willing to accept a CFI job and do the work required. If CFI wages go to $75,000 per year then maybe that would solve that problem but such wages are unlikely.

There may be a world wide pilot shortage, specifically in Asia and the Middle East soon because so few pilots are being trained worldwide. There will be enough in any event if only those pilots who are out of work in this country are willing to relocate to those parts of the world. As with the CFI's for enough money they will relocate.

Therefore the so called pilot shortage is really all about money. For enough money, there is no pilot shortage. And, yes, there is a pilot shortage if there are only minimum wage salaries for these trained professionals.
 
Publishers said:
Pilot Shortage-- I just got my private ticket and a commercial pilot guide. American is on the phone and wants me to sign now to fly the 777.
Pilot Surplus-- I have 10,000 hours, all turbine multi PIC, survived two total engine failures of all engines, and am 40 in great health. Airnet will not give me an interview.
Click to expand...


The really good jobs are far and few; I hope with those 10,000 hours you are able to find a job in some occupation other than aviation. I have seen what have happen to pilots that only knew how to fly aircraft over the last twenty-five years and it was not a pretty sight. choose wisely young man. Your life will depend on it.
 
One of the reasons the CFI shortage is here is because of a lack of people to do the initial sign off. The pay isn't there for people to stick around for 2 years.
 
Still think there's a pilot shortage, folks? Looming, or otherwise?

With airlines going out of business at the rate of one a week or more, with aircraft being parked, with furloughs coming down the pipe again, with those desperate-for-pilots countries such as India banning foreign pilots (and suspending duty times)...still think there's a shortage, by any stretch of the imagination?

There isn't.

For a shortage, a lot of good pilots are going to be having a hard time finding work. Doesn't sound like much of a shortage.
 
There is no shortage of pilots. Actually i see the future of aviation as rather abysmal personally, I would not recommend anyone get into it, and I would recommend anyone who is not in their career job (USAF, Fedex, SWA, etc), to have a plan B, and C so at least if you find yourself out of work, you have something else to fall back on

I think the glory days of the airlines, are in many respects, a relic of the past.
 
There was pilot shortage one year ago, that is why a 500 CFI, with 10 MEL hired one year ago is now flying as a DC-9 F/O under part 121. The more experienced pilots would not consider working at YIP.
 
pilotyip said:
There was pilot shortage one year ago, that is why a 500 CFI, with 10 MEL hired one year ago is now flying as a DC-9 F/O under part 121. The more experienced pilots would not consider working at YIP.
Click to expand...

Amen, at a minimum, a pilot shortage only lasts as long as it takes to train a 300 hour pilots....
 
It always does. Every five years, same cycle. Top to bottom, five years on a high, five years we hit a low. This is the low, and it's been expected.

There was never a shortage. Perhaps it's clear to everybody now.
 
Was to!

Was to, 8 months there ago was a shortage of experienced pilots, that is why I was hiring 500 hour CFI's.
 
No shortage of experienced pilots, just experienced pilots willing to work for crap wages and working conditions.
 
Give YIP a break, he was saying three years ago that it was coming and he was right on. When flight schools were paying $50K a year and requiring contracts, because they can't keep people...there was definitely a shortage. What nobody could foresee was that the price of fuel was going to more than double in less than 2 years. If it isn't obvious, oil relates to everything in our economy. Just ask construction workers how much PVC they are using these days compared to years past. PVC=plastic=Oil=very expensive. Then you throw an election year on top of it all and well, we have a slight "correction in the market" as the experts like to call it.
 
Give YIP a break, he was saying three years ago that it was coming and he was right on. When flight schools were paying $50K a year and requiring contracts, because they can't keep people...there was definitely a shortage.
Click to expand...

I've been hearing about this mystical pilot shortage for many years. Decades, in fact. It's never existed yet. It wasn't here a few months ago, or three years ago. There's been a lot of hiring, but no shortage. Some companies have had difficulty hiring pilots, but as we've discussed ad infinitum, that doesn't imply a shortage. Just a company that experienced pilots don't want to work for.

Pilotyip has been talking about the shortage for some time, and all the while passionately counseling pilots that they don't need a degree. Today we see the bottom part of the cycle, which comes every five years, when jobs are hard to come by. We're seeing an airline a week go under. Corporate departments slowing down. Record fuel prices. Cutbacks across the board, and the looming pilot shortage that forms the basis of this thread has been shown clearly to not exist.

Further, those who would forgo the degree and go after the pilot job, now they may be doubly handicapped without the job, and without the degree. For a man with a masters degree, he's been the missionary of this concept, hawking the need for lack of education among his underlings for quite some time now. Presently, his own company has been chopped in half with numerous no-notice terminations, and yet he still continues to preach the same line, with the same bad information. Now, it's no different, just all the more increadible against the backdrop of the present ruins.
 
WHen Mesa and thier ilk are offering $40k/year to start with commesurate increases, and offering decent treatment of thier pilots and they are *still* parking airplanes because they just aren't able to fill the front seats, then perhaps we have a pilot shortage. Until then we only have a shortage of pilots who were willing to put up with miserable treatment and poverty (no really, a first year F/O with dependents qualifies for public assistance at many regonals) wages. That is not a shortage by any stretch of the imagination.

When companies are offering actual poverty wages and still getting applicants and filling vacancies, there is no shortage.




Lear Wanna Be said:
When flight schools were paying $50K a year and requiring contracts, because they can't keep people...there was definitely a shortage.
Click to expand...

There were *damned* few flight schools offering $50K. I think I heard of one school with a contract to train a foreign carrier's ab-initio students. Other than a very few similar situations, you'd have been very hard pressed to find a run-of-the-mill (no pun intended) flight school paying $50K to it's ordinary flight instructors.
 
A Squared said:
WHen Mesa and thier ilk are offering $40k/year to start with commesurate increases, .
Click to expand...
We were offering close to 40K/yr still had a shortage of higher time applicants.
 
avbug said:
I've been hearing about this mystical pilot shortage for many years. Decades, in fact. It's never existed yet. It wasn't here a few months ago, or three years ago. There's been a lot of hiring, but no shortage. Some companies have had difficulty hiring pilots, but as we've discussed ad infinitum, that doesn't imply a shortage. Just a company that experienced pilots don't want to work for.

Pilotyip has been talking about the shortage for some time, and all the while passionately counseling pilots that they don't need a degree. Today we see the bottom part of the cycle, which comes every five years, when jobs are hard to come by. We're seeing an airline a week go under. Corporate departments slowing down. Record fuel prices. Cutbacks across the board, and the looming pilot shortage that forms the basis of this thread has been shown clearly to not exist.

Further, those who would forgo the degree and go after the pilot job, now they may be doubly handicapped without the job, and without the degree. For a man with a masters degree, he's been the missionary of this concept, hawking the need for lack of education among his underlings for quite some time now. Presently, his own company has been chopped in half with numerous no-notice terminations, and yet he still continues to preach the same line, with the same bad information. Now, it's no different, just all the more increadible against the backdrop of the present ruins.
Click to expand...

Yeah, because that degree was so important to get a job at places like Emory and Kalitta.
 
No Shortage-look At All The Layoffs!!

There is not going to be a shortage of pilots!!There will be a SHORTAGE of FLYING JOBS!!!
 
Last edited:
Wiggums, we never lower minimums, we just redefine competitive hiring statistics. To establish the quality standard needed in this business we use the well-known medical test know as the "Billricktomfred". That is where you hold a reflective device under a candidate’s nose and if it fogs up, he is viable candidate. Actually we are finding flight time is not the complete indicator of success, there are many other variables to look at to determine if a candidate will be successful.
Click to expand...

That was pilotyip three weeks ago regarding hiring at USA Jet. Then again, forty grand isn't generally going to do much to attract "high time" pilots, anyway. Particularly those who don't want to be on call 24/7 with a few minutes show time and only a small base wage.

Again...no pilot shortage. More of a shortage of operators willing to pay properly and treat a pilot as he or she ought to be treated.

Presently it's largely a matter of a job shortage...which is more the norm in aviation than not.
 
Pilot shortages are relative. There is not a shortage of applicants at UPS, FedEx, or SWA, there is shortage of applicants at Mesa, Capeair and Ameristar.
 

Share this page

Latest posts

Latest resources

Latest media

Carbon Cub FX-3 Shenandoah Valley
Carbon Cub at Kittyhawk
FX-3 in the backcountry
IFR Panel in a Carbon Cub FX-3
Cub-Provo-UT-c.jpg
Back
Top Bottom