aerospacepilot

There is currently no pilot shortage in the United States.
There is a shortage of qualified pilots in the U.S.

Regional Hiring Minimums
Regional airlines pay crappy starting wages ($25,000 a year) and thus are having a hard time recruiting qualified pilots. Thus you have seen the massive lowering of regional airline hiring minimums to recruit new, lower time pilots, who wouldn’t have otherwise been in the regional job pool. The majority of regional airlines have their minimums in the 600/100 range or LOWER! They can’t recruit qualified pilots, so they lower their mins to bring in less qualified pilots. The problem with lowering mins is they can only go so low. Trans States and PSA, along with others through various arrangements (Mesa, Pinnacle, Piedmont, …) have already hit rock bottom. If these airlines wish to recruit pilots, they will need to find another strategy. Signing bonuses seem to be working well, but these are only temporary and can only do so much.

Supply of new pilots:
The supply of pilots is continuing to decrease.
In 2002, there were 28,659 private pilot licenses issued.
In 2005, there were 20,889 private pilot licenses issued.
The average age has increased from 44.6 to 47.4 over the past 10 years.

In 2002, there were 12,299 commercial licenses issued.
In 2005, there were 8,834 commercial licenses issued.
The average age has increased from 43.7 to 46.0 over the past 10 years.

In 2001, there were 7,070 airline transport pilot licenses issued.
In 2005, there were 4,750 airline transport pilot licenses issued.
The average age has increased from 44.9 to 47.8 over the past 10 years.

Fewer people are learning to fly for fun than anytime in the past 40 years. It is too darn expensive. AvGas costs between $4-$5 a gallon, and it will not go much lower. It can certainly increase. More and more flight-training students are “wannabe” airline pilots. Even with these new fast track pilot academies (ATP, Flight Safety, Pan Am, Delta Connection, etc…), the amount of commercial and ATP licenses has declined drastically over the past 4 years. The word is getting out that becoming an airline pilot is not what it used to be.

Age 60
Changing age 60 will drastically increase the supply of pilots. There are currently 141,992 airline transport pilots. Over the next 12 years, half of those (about 70,000) will be unable to fly for an airline (assuming age 60). Perhaps a more reliable number is that at least 20,000 pilots will retire from the “good” airlines over the next 10 years assuming age 60. (AA, UAL, DAL, CAL, US Air, FedEx, UPS, SWA). And that is not counting Northwest, ABX, Astar, Air Tran, Frontier, JetBlue, Alaska, Midwest, Spirit, ATA, and ALL the regional airlines. (Not saying these weren’t “good” airlines, I just don’t have the retirement numbers for them). Not only would changing age 60 stagnate everything for about 5 years, it would have a compounding affect on supply. Every pilot who works a day past age 60 is increasing the supply of pilots. Every pilot who works more years because he has not advanced as quick because of a change to age 60 will increase the supply of pilots. The only possible advantage is some younger guys may realize changing age 60 will make their career that much worse that they may not get into flying, and that may decrease the supply of pilots slightly.
There is a pilot shortage in Europe. There is a pilot shortage in the Middle East. There is a pilot shortage in Asia. The ICAO changed age 60 because of economics (they needed more pilots to fly). It had nothing to do with safety. In the US, we do not have a pilot shortage. Age 60 does not need to be changed!

Growth in Air Travel:
There are currently approximately 60,000 pilots employed at the major airlines with another 20,000 employed at the regional airlines. Approximately 750 million passengers flew on US commercial airlines in 2006. By 2015, the FAA expects that number to reach 1 billion, and 1.2 billion by the year 2020. The amount of pilots required to fly these passengers will certainly need to increase (lets assume we need 50% more pilots by 2020). That’s another 30,000 major airline jobs and another 10,000 regional airline jobs over the next 13 years. There are currently over 3,000 VLJ’s on order from several manufacturers. With the hassles of airline travel and dealing with the TSA especially, there is certain to be expansion in the corporate/fractional/air taxi section of the market, and thus more pilots needed.


There is currently no pilot shortage in the United States.
There is a shortage of qualified pilots in the U.S.
There will never be a shortage of pilots at the major level. There may be a shortage at the regional/135/CFI level in the coming future. The tightening supply of pilots will eventually help our cause of wanting better pay and quality of life. Regionals will try to lower minimums until they hit rock bottom. Airlines will try to push a change to age 60.

The supply of pilots is tightening. But there is no shortage of pilots in the U.S., only a shortage of qualified pilots at the regional/135/CFI level. There will never be a pilot shortage at the major level.