Captain Jack

I am new here on the website, and this may be the incorrect place to post this, but I have a few questions. It seemed that a few weeks ago it was the best time it has ever been to become a pilot and in the course of a few weeks it as become the worst time to become a pilot.
I am at the point where I have about two years left in my college program. I have my commercial license with my instrument rating and working on CFI to build hours. All was looking good until a few weeks ago. Now all of my progress has been put on pause and I quite literally can't even go to school.
My main questions have to do with the airlines and hopefully can be answered by some airline pilots, and here they are

1. When it comes to laying off pilots at the airlines due to the reduction in airline activity in response to COVID19, will those pilots have the opportunity to be hired back to the airline they worked for if things recover sooner than later with their seniority in tack?

2. In terms of moving in a flow at American or even United's AVIATE program, will that continue at the rate it was previously at once the Majors start hiring again?

3. In conjunction with my last question, my third and final question is one that possibly concerns me the most, is there still a pilot shortage? One of the reasons I became a pilot and spent all this time and money is because of the promise of becoming an airline pilot, and relatively quickly at that. Of course, I love flying for flying, but my dream was to become an airline pilot. If there is no hiring of any kind in the near future, where does that leave me? I don't want to come off as I don't care about everyone else careers and I only am looking out for myself because I do care very much about how this is effecting everyone in our community. But with that said, I am very concerned for my own future in this industry.

Thank you to anyone that replies, I value everyone's insight and opinions.

m3113n1a1

1. Yes, furloughed pilots will get recalled in seniority order.

2. Unsure, but I would say most likely it would.

3. Yes, once the airlines begin hiring again there will be good demand for pilots due to retirement numbers.

My advice: if you truly love flying and want to be an airline pilot, stick with it. If there is any doubt in your mind though get out now. This career is not easy. There will be major ups and downs in the industry throughout your career and it will all be out of your control. The days are long, you will be away from family quite a bit. However overall in my opinion it's a great job. It's fairly flexible, pays okay (for now), and is mildly entertaining and easy.

bababouey

1. Yes, we are furloughed from the bottom of the list, then called back up most senior first, you don’t get rehired, you just come back.

2. Yes, but we’ll have to see how the market looks after this, if we go into a recession, then no shortage presumably.

3. See answer 2


My $.02, start looking at military options, we are at the mercy of this virus and how fast demand returns. It could be a speed bump or we could be totally decimated, nobody can tell you for sure yet.

Don’t bail on this profession, it’s still great, but extremely cyclical and requires impeccable timing.


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ShyGuy

1. Yes.


2. and 3. Have you not studied the career that you want to pursue?


Yes, there will be hiring in the future. But not right now. This entire industry is cyclical. I was born in 1984 so lets see. 1984-1986 airline strikes, Eastern out of business, Pan Am out of business, Gulf War, dot com bust, 9/11, more wars, MERs, Age 65, 2008-2010 financial crisis, bunch of airlines disappearing in 2008, airline mergers, SARs in there too, another merger (2 for me already, 2 binding arbitration SLIs), and now Coronavirus.

The good news this time around is that the airlines are as financially strong as could be going forward and lots of retirements. Given where you are in your career, don't even sweat it. Study the history of airlines and this industry. And get used to it. This virus crisis will pass at some point, and then later we will have some other crisis. You did come off a little tone deaf. There is no promise for you to be an airline pilot. And while things were great for hiring and "relatively quick" from 2014-2019, there is no guarantee of a "relatively quick path" to being a major airline pilot. You are and will always be at the mercy of the industry and things beyond your control. Seriously: if this concerns you, then you haven't studied your career choice history very much.

at6d

1. Generally yes.

2. It depends. What rate will they be hiring/will flow agreements still be in place, etc.

3. Welcome to the world of aviation.

ShyGuy

But!................. But!................... That's not what the shiny brochure said!

rickair7777

#1 and #2 have been answered.

I'll elaborate on #3, yes there is still most likely a long-term pilot shortage and long-term opportunity.

As was mentioned above, the industry is cyclical and very subject to economic swings as well as "black swan" events which punish airlines more than other sectors (9/11, pandemics, foreign war, etc).

If this ends up being a typical recession, you'll still be in good shape by the time you finish school and get to 1500 hours (or 1000 or whatever).

But there is also the risk of catastrophic, unprecedented events which result in permanent structural changes to the economy, industry, and/or society (asteroid impact, civil war, eco-politics, etc). Some sectors are more at risk for that kind of thing, and airlines are usually right up there at the top of the list. So there's always that risk, but it applies to most sectors to some degree except mandatory services like medicine, food production/delivery, law enforcement.

If you pursue aviation, you have to plan on rolling with the cyclical punches, and be at least slightly mentally prepared for a big game-changer out of left field, although it's pretty unlikely.

The industry has bounced back from numerous insults over the decades, including several epidemics.

Bahamasflyer

I firmly believe that flying cargo is inherently MUCH MUCH less risky than pax. Seems to me that UPS/Fedex etc are not being hurt much by this, minus China itself.

To the contrary, seems that they can't find enough lift to transport supplies fast enough in this pandemic.

More to my point.......just look at how many pilots have been furloughed by pax carrier vs cargo in the last several decades. The difference is stargering I'm sure.

Am I correct?? Rick will hopefully set me straight if I'm off base

rickair7777

Depends on what you mean by cargo.

Purple and Brown have pretty much gone with the economy historically. Structural changes in said economy (online retail expansion) have worked in their favor for the last decade.

The rest of the cargo/ACMI industry is mostly not particularly stable, or lucrative compared to the big two.

The assumption by most (including me) was that purple and brown had a very solid lock on their overnight business, because of the incredibly high cost and complexity of setting up a global overnight network from scratch (if it doesn't have to be there overnight or within a day or two, then other modes quickly become more cost effective).

But then along comes one of the very few people in the world who actually COULD set up a global overnight network from scratch: Bezos. And he is obviously not looking for a single union pilot group... his corporate culture does not include happy employees, outsourcing and whipsaw are the name of the game. If he sticks with that model it could put a dent in the future prospects of the big two.

Air Guitar

Amazon is a very unique buisness model. $9.6B is a hefty number for package fulfillment. Who knows how long that can last. Walmart has made a huge chess move by saving a ton of money by taking advantage of their almost ubiquitous locations. In a world where free shipping is now the norm, no other company can match those kind of logistics. I think that is a factor that would prevent Prime from beating purple/brown's package volume. Then again with the Prime Air cheerleader group only starting in 2016 and Walmart still climbing to be on top again, it is still too early to tell.