Originally Posted by
Cubdriver
Here is a somewhat more credible article on this subject.
FlightGlobal: Pilot Shortage
Alteon's (now Boeing's "Training and Flight Services" division) reductions are indeed curious given this. However IATA, IFAPA, FAA and several others say there will be a global and national pilot shortage over the next 2 decades. In the US this is hard to believe knowing what we know, but I think the argument would have it the 1500 hour law, plus reductions in pilot trainee starts, flight training financing, and flight training capacity plus the gradual drain of experienced pilots to other countries might eventually lead to a shortage of pilots. I tend to doubt there will ever be a shortage in the US, just a shortage of pilots willing to work for poverty-level wages.
Originally Posted by
Cubdriver
The U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics
here keeps records on and makes projections on job growth in the Unites States. They do not care who wins and it's their job to do this. As far as airline pilots is concerned, they say the group will grow from 76,800 jobs in 2008 to 83,300 jobs by 2018, or 8% more. That's 6,400 jobs over the 2008 figure.
Now we have Boeing Training and Flight Services saying
here that by 2028 North America as a whole will add 97,350 airline pilot jobs. They do not break this figure into ten-year or one-year periods, nor by U.S versus other countries in North America. But if we divide 97,350 by 20 years to get a yearly average of 4,868 jobs per year, and multiply it by 10 we get 48,675 jobs added to North America during a hypothetical ten year period. I will venture a guess on the low side that one third of these jobs, or 16,225 jobs will be American.
On the one hand we have USBLS saying we are going to add 6,400 jobs in the next ten years and on the other someone saying this figure is an impressive 16,225 jobs. I will leave it to you to decide which to believe, an independent statistics organization or one that sells stock in airliner manufacturing.
As usual Cubdriver nails it, any forecast will be more inaccurate the further it extends the time horizon.
Originally Posted by
winglet
Cubdriver,
The source of all of these articles can be found here:
Boeing Current Market Outlook 2010-2029
World air travel is growing exponentially. It is interesting reading regardless of what some think of it's accuracy.
winglet
The very nature of the source is why many question the numbers. What company would say they anticipate little need for the product they make, or that they anticipate the price of their stock to fall. This is known as marketing.
Boeing is somewhat famous for painting a rosey picture of their future. They are not alone in this respect.
Go look at the predictions they made in 2000.
You came up with a pretty good list of some of the things that made this decade bad for aviation, it is a very large assumption that similar and different things will not effect the future of aviation over the next two decades.