lbell

Having gone thru the late 90's downturn, 9-11, 2008 Economy Dump, Colgan Air Crash (implementation of 1500 hr rule), Merger-Mainia, SARS, and now COVID-19...I have learned the aviation industry ups & downs are like a pendulum on a Grandfather Clock that repeats itself every 10 years.

With that being said, the Majors missed out on the busy Summer 2020 flying. SEPT/OCT are normally slow months (great for non-rev). Travelers will begin to start flying during Nov/Dec holidays, but at a snails pace due to fear & cheap gas prices.

The Public Traveler has to get back to work, and become financially secure, before they book vacation & travel plans again. Businesses will reevaluate their travel budget, since they will have already worked thru the kinks of using Zoom for tele-conferencing

Jan/Feb 2021 will be slow, as it always is. (Again good time to non-rev).

Late March 2021 will start to pick up with Spring Break travelers. April will have increased bookings as the public is "tired of staying in" & "want to get away". This uptick in traffic will cause the Majors to increase flights for Summer 2021. The public will return and take their postponed 2020 vacations.

Now the Majors will have to hire for these increase flights, and start hiring in March/April 2021.

By the time this trickles down to the Regionals needing pilots would equate to around Sept/Oct 2021. There are enough furloughed pilots from TSA & Compass to supply the Majors (and Regionals) with a steady quality applicant pool.

Sept/Oct 2021 your Regionals will go into a hiring frenzy, to get staffed for the upcoming 2021 Holiday Travel Season. The pipeline will "dry up quickly" as Flight Schools will see a significant decrease in students between now and the next hiring boom of Sept/Oct 2021. This will cause the Regionals to increase pay & Sign On Bonuses to attract applicants to their company.

Then the pilot shortage will really hit with the 2022 retirements, increased flights, and near zero students that continued their flight training to meet ATP Minimums. If you are a new student, you should be able to get your 1500 hours by Sept/Oct 2021 (as long as you can get hired as a CFI, which may be difficult with the reduction of students actively seeking flight training) and be in the perfect spot to get hired.

CSTLK

This forces no flying situation is very sad for all of us. However, I think this can have some advantages as well. Since my exams were postponed, I'm taking some time to study.
Also, some institutions offered free courses and lots of discounts for education due to the virus so this can also be an opportunity.
If someone wants to check it out, it might help you as well:
Udemi released lots of atpl material
https://www.udemy.com/course/general...F9FDC6D40B0847
Good landings

Purpleanga

I sincerely doubt your optimistic timeline. I don’t think there’s going to be hiring next year and probably even furlough recalls. The last recession took about 2 to 3 years for pilot movement to happen again. And that was based on much lower unemployment than what we have or will have now. It’s really only been about a full month of this, I think people will eventually actually come to terms with what has happened and the recession will take hold. Honestly though the student pilots and CFIs might not have it too bad if they can actually find a job because you’ll be flying something. Many of the 121/135 pilots out of a job or furloughed won’t even be flying at all. When I was furloughed during the last recession I maybe flew about 15 hours total in a Cessna during those 2 years before I got back to the RJ when my time was up. It really was pointless to build time because you weren’t getting a job, nobody was hiring. I just waited for the recall.

GoJuice

So now that we have had some time to analyze the situation, what is the feeling on how long it may be until airlines are hiring again? I understand nobody has a crystal ball and we are in unchartered territory. I am/was currently in the middle of a career change working on my PPL. Im trying to decide if its worth it to continue with my training now, or wait it out and save the money until we know how this will all shake out.

LoneStar32

Finish your PPL and see where everything stands then. Having a PPL is great even if you don't plan on flying as a career. As far as the hiring market, I expect it to be bad for a long time. Longer than anybody who is starting training right now would miss unless you are on a 5 year training/time building plan. Regionals will probably start hiring again in a year or two, but expect those jobs to go to furloughed and other pilots on the street. After that, competitive hiring mins will be high. The days of getting hired right at ATP mins are gone until later this decade sometime.

Yumyum

Truck along until October. If things don’t change between now and then. We will be looking at thousands of airline pilots jobless. Not to mention the rest of the economy.

jdaero

COVID has had a negative impact on the industry! But like everything in life you need to adapt.

at Simtech Aviation in NYC we have been creating videos on our youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrW...hpFmLAMxnOKyag

To help pilots practice at home!

Excargodog

it’s actually somewhat worse


The early retirement programs will have prematurely retired many of the senior pilots that would have been retiring from the legacies over the next 1-4 years and several of the legacies are now downsizing because they don’t expect either international or business flying to be coming back any time soon, so there is that.

Come 1 October there are Likely going to be people at both regionals and majors furloughed. It gets worse for the regionals next year, because several will be affected by the scope agreements from their major once this year of greatly decreased flying by the major is accrued in the books. Those scope agreements will force less flying at the regionals as a consequence of this years less flying at the majors. Because if that, it is very likely several more regionals will go out of business, furloughing their pilots as well. So there is that.

Up until about six months ago all the military pilots eligible for retirement (less a handful of flag officer or wannabes) and a whole lot of military pilots coming up on the end of their ADSC were putting in paperwork to get out. Well THAT came to a screaming halt, and all those people pulled their separation paperwork or retirement paperwork and are now just sort of hanging out. That is already 500 pilots and increasing by 1000 pilots a year.

All of these people are going to be hired (or rehired) long before anyone who doesn’t already have an ATP and a type rating in AT LEAST a CRJ or Q400. That’s just reality, so you are probably looking - assuming passenger demand becomes normal next summer and you meet criteria for an ATP - at being behind at least 3000 or so far better qualified and more competitive other people competing for a substantially reduced number of Regional and major job openings.

Yeah, that’s absolutely nothing like you were told to expect when you started your training - probably three or more years ago if you are anywhere close to ATP mins now, and that sucks. But it is the reality, or at least a close approximation of it.

LoneStar32

This is truth right here no matter how hard it is to swallow. Sorry for not being "optimistic"

stevecv

Agree with this 100%. Can't change the reality of the situation. The economic consequences are profound. And it isn't just aviation, other industries will suffer.