Pilot Shortage (again and again)

[larry]

From http://www.dwc.edu/admissions/pilotcd.asp

It's a great time to become a pilot...


Aviation is perhaps the most dynamic and resilient industry in the world. And whether you attribute the current hiring hiatus to cyclical downturn or September 11th, don’t count on it lasting too long. Industry experts agree that there’s never been a better time to become a pilot. According to AIR Inc., the Atlanta-based career information service for airline pilots, hiring totaled over 19,000 pilots in 2000, and was on its way to 15,000 – 17,000 in 2001. And while the interruption in airline travel post 9/11 caused a dramatic slowdown in pilot hiring, industry experts anticipate hiring levels to quickly reach earlier levels.

One reason for this is that there’s a mandatory retirement from airline flying at age 60. With thousands of pilots from the Viet Nam-era and post-deregulation hitting that age, opportunities for future pilots look promising. But the majors are not the only place to fly for a living. Today, airlines are shifting more service to smaller aircraft, requiring more pilots, despite recent schedule cuts. Smaller planes that carry 50 passengers, or one-sixth of the 300-seat airliners, will obviously require six times as many pilots to carry the same number of people. Such “regional jets” are increasingly used by commuter and regional carriers and offer attractive jet jobs earlier in a pilot’s career. Don’t forget about charter and air taxi, either. Many travelers prefer charter flights because they offer greater control and flexibility in travel arrangements. Demand for these services boomed after 9/11, reports AIR Inc., and caused a shortage in some markets.



One welcome side effect in the airlines’ hiring slowdown is that colleges like Daniel Webster have been able to retain flight instructors for longer periods before they are scooped up by the airlines, building a buffer of experience that had almost been exhausted before the downturn. The lull will undoubtedly result in better-qualified and more marketable pilots.



So, it seems that the future for aspiring pilots is considerably rosier than it originally seemed, with Aviation Careers Magazine predicting a full recovery in the next year or two. If you’re thinking about a career in the cockpit, there’s no time like the present. And there is no collegiate aviation program like the one at Daniel Webster College!

 

[banned username 2]

Makes me sick!

Does anyone have a bucket?

I feel the need, the need.....

to BARF!

 

[BRA]

DWC?? Forget that!!!!!! Come tain at any of the schools in Daytona Beach...where the weather is warm, the women are pretty, and the beer ain't watered down!!!

 

[NYRANGERS]

The only pilot shortage I see in the future is a shortage of working pilots, not available pilots.

 

[NJA Capt]

It's a great time to become a pilot...

One reason for this is that there’s a mandatory retirement from airline flying at age 60. With thousands of pilots from the Viet Nam-era and post-deregulation hitting that age, opportunities for future pilots look promising.

Pilot shortage? Yea right! I've been hearing that story since 1986...stillllllll waiting.

Today, airlines are shifting more service to smaller aircraft, requiring more pilots, despite recent schedule cuts. Smaller planes that carry 50 passengers, or one-sixth of the 300-seat airliners, will obviously require six times as many pilots to carry the same number of people.

Obviously... Not. RJs aren't replacing any routes served by 300 seat airliners. They are replacing 1/2 full inefficient DC9s and 737s(classics). Same number of routes, same number of pilots on those routes, with fewer flight attendants.
6 times the pilots....pppplease! Don't even consider such a flimsy explanation.

So, it seems that the future for aspiring pilots is considerably rosier than it originally seemed, with Aviation Careers Magazine predicting a full recovery in the next year or two. If you’re thinking about a career in the cockpit, there’s no time like the present.

Full recovery in 1-2 years? It would take two years to requalify all the furloughed pilots (what 10,000+ people?) if they were all hired back today. (There are only so many simulators)


Forgive me for sounding pessimistic. I feel this is EXTREMELY misleading. If you are an aspiring pilot, the best thing you can do is did in and be patient. Things will turn around, but don't expect it in the next two years. All these ads do is get a lot of future pilots' hopes up, which fills the seats in these colleges. This in turn makes for more competition when you get out, which makes the fewer number jobs harder to obtain.

 

[350DRIVER]

There has never been and will never be a pilot shortage, supply will always exceed demand in this business. The sad thing is that quite a few flight schools use very deceptive and false marketing to puruade the general public into believing in this false statement and it is even more depressing that most from outside the loop buy into it and throw thousands of dollars away with the "promise" of a job- Unreal in a way BUT stupidity in a bigger way.......


C H E E R S

3 5 0

 

[CRJ_Driver]

Hook - Line & Sinker

Pilot Shortage draws em' in!

Big name schools help out in the job hunting process. It does feel like a pilot shortage when you are associated with one.

I don't think DWC is a big namer. Just the big 3 which form a nice triange. az-ND-fl

 

[bobbysamd]

Pilot shortage - I love it!!

CRJ_Driver is correct. "Pilot shortage" draws 'em in, alright. It draws in people like me who take every opportunity to disclaim this sophistry and decry its perpetrators.

I just hate to see people hitch their hopes and dreams on a fraud!

Of course, Kit Darby is the Pied Piper of pilot shortages. Kit's been using pilot shortage since at least the mid-'80s to prop up his pilot job-seeker support service(s). It continues to blow my mind how Kit still says that forty-thousand pilots will be needed during the next ten years. My G-d, Kit was pushing this same line of bull in 1987!! How about it, Kit? Are those seats still empty? I don't think so.

Consider it logically. Of course, there are retirements, as the DWC ad claims. There are retirements every year. These retirees may or may not be replaced. However, and sadly, we have dozens of furloughees available for recall into those seats. And, with USAir's bankruptcy and a possible United bankruptcy, we might have even more qualified and experienced applicants available for those jobs. I am careful to use Kit's terminology. He always tries to dance around criticism that his pilot shortage is a fraud by trotting out his "qualified and experienced" disclaimer.

One other point that another poster brought up recently regarding pilot shortages. Along with pilot retirements, there are airframe retirements. Not that much new equipment is coming on line to replace older mainline airplanes. Ask Boeing about that. So, less staffing will be needed. I wonder if Kit and his lieutenants thought of that.

Once more, everything's right about choosing professional aviation as a career - as long as you choose it for the right reasons and not because of "pilot shortage" sophistries.

I'll dismount my soapbox until the next pilot shortage thread.

 

[Bebop]

Warning! "Its been miller time for a couple of hours for me"

I think this is the perfect time to begin training for a career in aviation. Case in point, ME.

I went to a community college and got my ratings up to CFI.

2 years.

After that I went to a university and received a B.A.

2 years.

OK, so say I started all over today and I just finished all my schooling. It is now 2006. Where is the industry going to be then.
Maybe at an all time high. Record hiring numbers. 20,000 pilots hired a year. Maybe I teach for a few months and the next thing I am flying an RJ.

Remember this business is a yo-yo. up and down, up and down.

Right now I work for a Berkshire-Hathaway company. Warren Buffett's investing mantra is to look long term. If he sold all his stock to make a quick buck he would only be worth 5 billion instead of 35 billion. Long term fella's, think long term.

 

[NJA Capt]

Where is the industry going to be then.
Maybe at an all time high. Record hiring numbers. 20,000 pilots hired a year.

Remember this business is a yo-yo. up and down, up and down.

*Disclaimer above acknowledged*

Maybe at a high, but equally as likely not. Also, keep in mind that if 20,000 pilots are hired (Bebops guesstimate) that doesn't necessarily mean 20K "NEW" jobs. It means 20k people got jobs.

Domino effect-
Meaning the airlines hire 5000 pilots=2500 former fractional pilots and 2500 commuter pilots. The regional and the fracs have to replace their 2500 each with former freight dogs and corporate pilots (2500 each). Who in turn hire 5000 High time CFIs and banner pilots etc.

Add them all together and you get 20,000. So, through the magic of marketing, an opening for 5000 airline pilots becomes 20,000 jobs available right? Wrong.

5000 airline jobs means 5000 CFIs. When the college marketing wizards spin this, they get 20,000 pilot applicants and a ton of tuition. They also don't factor in the number of pilots that were turned out last year and the years before. Nor the number on furlough, nor the number of corp or fractional pilots in the interview pool. And, don't forget things like AA parking 74 F100s. Has anyone ordered 74 RJs to replace them? No.
Oh yea, about 1200 pilots will be back on the street because of that too.

The market gets saturated with eager pilots looking for a scarce few jobs and working for peanuts, which causes established to pilots loose salary. Why you ask? Because now WE can be replaced because, "there are plenty of pilots out there to fill your [my] shoes."

Yes, the market is dynamic, it will come back up and it WILL go back down. Everyone that was hired in the late 1990s were VERY lucky, because that was NOT the norm. That was the high. The span between that and the last low was 10 years. The average TT of a commuter newhire in a 19 seat turboprop (if you were lucky, pressurized) was 2500+.

 

[enigma]

Larry, your intro leads me to believe that you posted this to illustrate the BS that still comes from the pilot training/pilot job help industry. If not, please don't fall for the lies.

regards
8N

 

[larry]

Not I'm not buying into the shortage. I am planning to make the career change in April of next year. So where should I go guys? My wife wants to be in the Jacksonville or Daytona area. I could probably swing Pensacola. I'm guessing I'll have about 700TT and 75 multi. Obviously its instructing for me, which is ok as I'll need another 6 months to finish my Masters degree. Suggestions?

 

[publisher]

road

We have been down this road before and it goes no where/

If you find a job, it is probably a pilot shortage, if you do not, must be a surplus.

People advertise all the time, for this and everything else. On TV we all get the girl. Forget this Bobby, Kit did not create it, he lives with it, so should we.

 

[publisher]

road

We have been down this road before and it goes no where/

If you find a job, it is probably a pilot shortage, if you do not, must be a surplus.

People advertise all the time, for this and everything else. On TV we all get the girl. Forget this Bobby, Kit did not create it, he lives with it, so should we.

 

[enigma]

Larry, I doubt that you intended for your thread to become a fight about AirInc. If you want to see pages and pages of debate over the tactics AirInc uses to promote its business you need only to search this forum for AirInc, Kit Darby, etc.

So, I'll just say this in response to something the Publisher said about AirIncs head honcho, Kit Darby.

"Kit did not create it, he lives with it, so should we"

Granted, AirInc did not create the present situation. But, they are not "living" with it. They are ignoring it at best, and/or spinning it to their gain.

They continue to use Enron style accounting in the way they compute the number of pilot jobs coming available in the future. By that I mean that they just ignore the losses and count only the gains. Under my way of accounting, if a AAA pilot gets furloughed from mainline AAA and subsequently gets called back to MidAtlantic, the net gain in pilot jobs in ZERO. AirInc must be counting only the created job and seeing a net gain of one. Otherwise, there is no way that they could continue to release statistics showing an increase in pilot jobs this year. Yet they are continually quoted by most all of the press, as having stated that XXnth number of pilot jobs will be created, as if the total number of employeed pilots is what is increasing. Wrong.

Please enter the profession if you want, It is still a free country. Just don't let the pilot shortage pimps give you a false sense of optimism about the future.

Good Luck.
8N

 

[trucker]

Pilot Shortages ARE real (sometimes)

sometimes the shortages are real.

I personally have no use for the parasites AIRINC, Darby, AEPS, and once upon a time FAPA who put out all that self serving drivel about shortages. However, In the time period 98-01 there was a real shortage. My company (a freighter op out of business now post 9/11) was so desparate for pilots in early 2000 that flight crews were solicited by management: "Do you know anybody needs a flying job?" and were given flyers to handout at random FBOs we passed thru. It was quality jet time and we had vacant slots needing pilots. But who wants to fly night freight when the regionals were hiring so strong at the same time? When I was returning from Simuflite one time (summer 2000) I ran into a couple Northwest pilots who encouraged me to put in an app there because they needed pilots real bad.

As recently as last summer Executive Jet was also very desparate for pilots and had planes parked with nobody to fly them. They were hiring direct at job fairs and on the road at FBOs also.

I have seen real pilot shortages in the recent past and I hope the good-ole-days return again real soon.

t

 

[bobbysamd]

"Real" pilot shortages

Pilot shortages are real until H.R. lowers the current requirements. Then, there are no more shortages until requirements have to be lowered again, ad infinitum.

Now, if H.R. lowered requirements to the point where it was hiring 250-hour pilots, then, yes, there would be a pilot shortage. Something like that happened briefly in the '60s. Don't hold your breath for that happening again. I'm not counting the 300-hours wonders whom United hires, who are aberrations, or 300-hour MAPD grads, who are qualified strictly for Mesa.

I agree with the above. The only time I like to see airplanes parked is when they need pilots. Other times are tragedies. I still remember the day when the original Frontier shut down.