Originally Posted by
David Puddy
yes, an interesting news story about the increasing pilot shortage.
excerpted:
FedEx has plenty of competition in the cockpit labor pool, said aviation consultant Kit Darby of KitDarby.com.
Major airlines will hire 3,000 to 4,000 pilots this year, with Delta, United and American expected to hire 750 to 1,000 each, Darby said. Compare that to 2009, when 30 pilots were hired in the recession's depths, Darby said.
"This is a shortage like we've never seen before," Darby said of the industrywide hiring effort.
He doesn't think big companies like FedEx will have trouble attracting pilots. "They are one of the top pay and benefits companies in America."
Last October, FedEx Express' 4,300 pilots accepted a six-year contract with industry-leading pay in most job classifications. The first-year increase brought FedEx pilot pay to more than $257,000 a year on average.
Airline representatives told the GAO a downsized U.S. military is supplying fewer pilots to commercial airlines. The military, which pays pilots to train, supplied 70 percent of pilots before 2001, but the number has declined to about 30 percent, the GAO was told.
Dyer said the military once accounted for as much as 85 percent of FedEx's pilots.