Originally Posted by
iahflyr
Serious question. I have always said we will never have a true pilot shortage. Demand for pilots will increase and decrease throughout time. But even as demand increases, the supply of airline pilot candidates seems to always increase as well. Yes regionals have gotten more relaxed with their hiring standards. But they all seem to be putting people into classes. Lots of pilots who had gotten out of the game are coming back. Lots of people are joining programs like ATP to get their ratings quick. There seems to be trouble at Air Wisconsin and Expressjet, who combined employee around 5,000 pilots. Each legacy airline still has 10,000+ resumes on their desk.
Who still believes we will someday have a pilot shortage? What evidence are you basing that opinion on? I'm not trying to antagonize. I just want to see other people's point of view that is different from mine.
Consolidation helped ease the demand on pilots.
American Eagle Puerto Rico operation ceased
Skywest Brasilia operation ceased
Mesa Hawaiian operation ceased
Chautauqua
Shuttle America
Mesaba
Colgan
ComAir
Lynx
Air Midwest
all consolidated or ceased.
Airlines have lowered there hiring standards and washed out fewer new hires, allowing more sim.
More and more flying has gone to PBS carriers who can operate more flights with less people.
More carriers award line above 75 hours utilizing the same size group to fly more.
Delta has grown the their total pilot count and coverd more flying which could have been outsourced.
More RJ company's fly >50 seat airplanes requireing less hulls and jobs.
Most RJ company's have gotten rid of anything that was <50 seats.
In 2008 6 major airlines still operated their separate regional feed systems, which created overlap compared to today's networks.