Originally Posted by atpcliff

Hi!

Oil:
Oil will be hitting $100/barrel. Then it will continue climbing over $150/barrel.

My prediction is it will get to about $250/barrel until the combination of demand/drop and alt fuel availability will allow it to decline, until it is down around $10/barrel or less.

Anyone else want to predict the max price of oil???

Instructor/Pilot Shortage:
There is a very large instructor shortage. Even the US, which, along with Canada, are the only two countries that still have more pilots than jobs, is getting more and more critical on instructors. More than one flight school has closed, because they lost all their instructors.

Boeing says there is worldwide demand for 17,000 airline pilots a year for the next 20 years. Much of the lack of instructors is because so many foreign students are coming here for training-they suck up a lot of spots, and those schools pay a lot. I just saw an ad for one of them-$42K per year to flight instruct for them, and you build a lot of time fast.

Skyhigh:
Your stats of 10K new commercial pilots/year is wrong. The FAA says there are now LESS commercial pilots than there were 5 years ago. If 10K are being produced, that means that more than 10K per year are dropping out.
Note: I'll correct myself:
I guess that, theoretically, 10K new commercial pilots per year COULD be true, but then that means that since the US is experiencing a net loss of commercial pilots every year, that more than 10K per year are dropping out, which is a making the pilot shortage worse, not better.

Military:
Set schedule? Wrong. It is all timing, just like all other aviation jobs. If you go to flight school, and they are trying to RIF (get rid of pilots), you can wash out with a few bad rides. If they need pilots, on the other hand, they will fly you and fly you and fly you until you get it right. You can re-take your checkride multiple times, and you will only wash out if they absolutely can't teach you to pass the next checkride.

cliff
ABQ