Originally Posted by
PilotAnalyst
The interesting thing to consider is that people are projecting a “shortage” based almost solely on Retirements. What that means is that 30-35 years ago when the regional airlines were many, many times smaller than what they are now, the Industry/Military was able to provide enough pilots for the major and other large domestic carriers during a time of intense domestic growth. The “shortage” talked about today is based off of the backside of a hiring curve that started 35 years ago, the backside is almost always less drastic than the front-side(due to early retirements, illness, furloughs..etc).
The best thing to do is probably ask somebody who got hired 30 years ago, what was it like? Was their a huge shortage? Was every regional airline pilot at that time able to get on the airline of their choice, or were some unable to get hired, and remained at the Regional's?
30-35 years ago the conditions were
Favorable Conditions for Shortage:
-Very small regional pool to hire pilots from(were talking the days of Navajo's and Metro 2's, airlines like Skywest had only like 20 airplanes)
-A regional airline system that was in the process of growing(thus demanding more pilots of their own)
Non favorable Conditions:
-flight training was relatively inexpensive
-Many Military Pilots
Today our conditions are different.
Favorable Conditions for Shortage:
-Very expensive flight training
-ATP requirement
-less Military Pilots
Non Favorable:
-A very large regional pool to hire from
-A regional airline system that is shrinking and is projected to shrink for the next 10 years.
The Question we have to ask ourselves is why did we not see a Shortage 35 years ago? Or did we? If we didn't see a shortage 35 years ago, what makes us think with our current conditions today, and not as drastic hiring curve as seen 35 years, we would see one today?
Observations, nothing more
"ATP Requirement" is a non-issue (my opinion) because prior to the Ab-Initio fad of the late 90's, to get hired at Skywest, Eagle, etc, you needed "1500 and 3" (1500 TT of which was 300 multi) to get on with a regional, as a J-31/SF340 FO. I don't remember this causing a shortage at those places. Back in the late 80s, early 90s, people would beg for the CP name and address at the "quality" regionals such as Eagle and Skywest.
Regional airline system shrinking - from my observations the opposite is happening and a glimpse inside any union meeting will reflect concern regarding encroachment by the regionals into "major" territory.
Less Military Pilots - yes less than Vietnam/etc but we are exiting two wars lasting back to 2000, 2001 and we have plenty of (in addition to others) current, qualified, C-17/KC-10/KC-135 drivers with international time (and combat time, thank you for keeping us safe) who are gonna be in the resume stack. These are ALL college degreed, some Masters, groomed, know-how-to-pass-an-oral-board, candidates. Numerically, less candidates than in prior years ? Maybe. Will this be a causal factor for a shortage? Doubt it. Again, thank you for your service guys.
Expensive Flight Training: Flight training has never been cheap, and thus, has always been expensive. Yes, agreed, it is leaps and bounds more expensive than before. What are we at now ? 110 bucks an hour for a C-172 ? Yes, crazy expensive. This indeed may play a role in a shortage.
My opinion: We need to step back and look at the world-view, and skip the price of flight training, etc stuff. What may cause a shortage is todays X-box generation simply is not looking up at the sky and seeing contrails, and saying gee, I want to be a pilot someday. Also, lets face it, the old school airline career is over, gone. Days of 4 day work months to Europe, with hot FAs, in heavy iron, at 200K a year, are gone. Many are simply not going to pursue aviation. Todays sub-30 generation is few and far between those willing to earn 18K a year to sit right seat in an RJ, after having paid 100K (see training costs above), to get there. "See kid, in a few years you may be at a major, so hang in there." That generation is like, uh, negative, see ya, I want to earn a living NOW. Remember, that/this is a generation that changes jobs like every 2 years.
THAT, my friends, may cause the shortage.