Originally Posted by
scottm
I have actually read GAO-14-232. It uses data from 2012 and earlier, and is filled with questionable assumptions...
That may be true, but you have to bear in mind this is fundamentally an economics discussion with the latter being notorious for creative guesswork. The best we can do here is guess and look at indirect evidence.
...The number one bad assumption is that pilot supply has ever had any connection to pilot demand, which it has not... So looking at falling wages and concluding there is too much supply is incorrect...
I tend to agree it probably is not well connected, and in fact has become so disconnected that urban mythology has crept in (the pilot shortage folklore we all know and love).
...Did you know that Embry-Riddle and Flight Safety International train far more foreign pilots than American pilots? And those foreign pilots get FAA certificates? Those foreign pilots go fly for the foreign airlines that sponsored them, and have addresses overseas. They aren't waiting for pilot jobs in the U.S., so that premise is false...
Of course we all know this, dozens of school are full of English-mangling foreigners. But you cannot say these people have no possible option of working here. I would tend to agree they generally go back to whomever pays for their training, and more effort definitely needs to be placed on determining how many.
... Nobody has any data on Americans with ATPs waiting to return to the profession. It is possible, but seems unlikely, and there are no numbers...
This data could be estimated to an order of magnitude by downloading the entire FAA Airmen Database for its ATPs and subtracting the active ones out, a known figure of around 140k. Some unknowns will remain, such as how many are still viable as commercial pilots. It has to be a huge number even with the estimation it contains.