FAA 20-Year Forecast
 

The FAA is forecasting some pretty depressing numbers for the number of student pilots in the short term and very slow growth in the mid-term and long term. The light sport category is expected to grow, however, about 25 percent over the short term.

As a new Private Pilot and someone who is working on my IFR and Commercial ratings with the intent on becoming a CFII it's easy to understand why. It's too damn expensive to learn to fly! And there is practically zero student aid available anymore and most banks won't loan money for someone to take flight training. I'm wondering what others think of this. Not much need for CFIs if no one's going to be learning to fly.

A couple of problems...

As older GA airplanes wear out, equivalent replacement airplanes are horribly expensive...

An older 172 can be had for $30K...but a new 172 is about $250K.

I assume some of that cost is related to new glass avionics, but my understanding is that a very large part of it is liability reserve...ie a large chunk of money ($100k?) set aside to pay for the inevitable lawsuits.

LSA's should help a little, but even a cheap LSA is pushing $100K, and they are really inadequate for upper-middle class types who are interested in the utility of general aviation (family/personal/business trips). Two seats VFR is really limiting.

As far as loans...lenders have finally wised up and realized it is neither a good risk nor ethical to loan someone $100K to get a $20K job with horrible job security. Kind of like those "liar loans" they were giving to home buyers a couple years ago before the wheels came off the financial bus...

I have no problem with eliminating the flight school loans. Anyone who REALLY wants to fly will have to work for it, and consequently will have a higher opinion of their own professional value. That combined with fewer players should drive up entry-level aviation wages and remove some of the incentive to whipsaw older pilot groups against younger ones.

Thanks for the comments. I don't disagree with anything you said. In one way we should be glad that learning to fly is prohibitive, otherwise we'd have as many nuts in the sky as we do on the roads.

Agreed. However, the CFI market is a joke right now. I am at a point where there is no where else to go until I get more flight time to reach 500 hrs, that the insurance companies require for jobs. I've called flight schools, dropped off resume...nothing. The big question for me, and for future generations of flight trainees is, how do I get from 300-500 hour when there are no students?

Flight schools are mandating 500 hours for new CFIs?

That's a sad day when you need more time to instruct than fly for an air carrier. What the heck happened?

IntrepidTravlr, I feel for ya. I'm sorry you're having a tough go of it now, but I'm gonna tell ya this, it isn't going to get any easier. This industry is brutal. To be honest, with all the info out there on the internet and in the news media today, I'm shocked ANYONE is getting into this profession.


Amen. As a furloughed pilot, I'm looking forward to a true pilot shortage. I just hope I can hang on till it actually materializes in a few years.

The job market was much the same when I was trying to break in. Couldn't get a CFI gig, etc. All of the flight schools had 'waiting lists' just to hire their own students back as instructors - but no one was leaving, so the list didn't get any shorter.

Here is how I solved the problem: I kept working my job in an oil refinery and spent every dime building time. Probably not what you want to hear...but it worked. Rented airplanes to keep flying and build time and then eventually bought a Grumman Yankee in a partnership and was able to fly much more for the same $$. I bought block-time in an old, flea-bag Apache to get some multi time. Eventually all of this hanging around the airport started to pay off with a connection here and there and some limited part 91 corporate flying on my days off.

When I first got hired in the refinery and started getting my ratings, I figured I'd be out of there and instructing within 6 months. Turned out, my total time in the oil refinery (from getting my ratings to finally getting a paying flying job) was nearly 5 years. :eek:

By the time the market started to turn around, I had 1,200 hours and a bit of multi time. Finally broke out of the refinery prison and did a bit of instructing, but quickly (due to some of my airport connections) landed a 135 gig hauling freight in an Aero Commander. Was able to get a lot of multi-time quickly with that job and after that the career progressed pretty quickly.

Good Luck.

I've applied at several flight schools, like TransPac in Arizona, IASCO in Cali, and a couple of smaller fbo type schools that all turned me down. I made follow up phone calls to them and they said that they required 500TT, or in many cases 100 dual given. It's tough out there if you're a new CFI with no dual given.