This summary arrived today in my AIAA news feed, so I thought I'd post it here.
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GAO Posits Low Pay As Reason For Pilot Shortage.
USA Today (2/28, Jansen) reported on the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) “mixed findings” in a report on how “airlines could have trouble hiring amid tougher training rules as mandatory retirements at 65 thin the ranks,” and lower average pay fails to lure new pilots. Also, the report says that the FAA put in place new pilot-training rules. FAA Administrator Michael Huerta explained to Congress in February that “the thing that we would have focused on and we did focus in the development of all of these rules is how do we maintain the highest levels of safety.”
The
AP (3/1) reported that while the data on the pilot shortage suggest a deficit in pay, there are yet “two other indicators” that suggest “the opposite is true.” For one, according to the report, the GAO found in two different studies that “the large number of qualified pilots that exist, but may be working abroad, in the military or in another occupation, as evidence that there is adequate supply.” Speaking to the possibility that pilots are, in fact, underpaid, Lee Moak, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, stated, “people aren’t going to work for $22,000 again, and the reason they’re not going to do it is they spend $100,000 or so to get their certification, and you can’t live on that amount of money, pay your student loans off and function.”
The
Wall Street Journal (3/1, Pasztor, Subscription Publication) reported that the GAO’s report supports claims by labor unions that inadequate pay is responsible for the dearth of qualified pilots.
The
New York Times (3/1, Mouawad, Subscription Publication) reported that the GAO made suggestions for improvements that “include increasing wages and bonuses for new hires, helping to pay for pilot training programs, or changing the contractual terms between mainline and regional airlines to help increase revenue at the regional carriers.”
NBC Nightly News (2/28, story 9, 0:40, Williams),
Reuters (2/28, Jacobs), the
Dallas Morning News (2/28) and other media sources have similar coverage.