Even in better times you must realize that it's a pyramid scheme to a large extent, if your CFI has 8 students, those 8 students will all require 8 students when they are CFIs, and so on. Not everyone can be a CFI anyways. If it's a true shortage and the airlines need bodies, they'll buy a fleet of Cessna 150s or maybe even skycatchers, lol, probably try to find some way to make people pay for it, but if all else fails, they'd interview and let people fly it for the promise of a job.

College in general is a pyramid scheme... Kids whose parents can afford it send them off for 100k or more, then they get a job for 30k for a while.. Then the sons and daughters of the CEOs get promoted, while everyone else is locked in at 40 - 60k for the remainder of their careers... This whole go in debt for a job thing is the real problem.. It removes the bargaining power of the entry level applicant - because they need to pay those loans back at any cost instead of saying "thanks but no thanks" (for the 30k a year job they could have gotten without even going to college in the first place). It affects everything... People under 35 aren't buying houses anymore, starting families, having kids, etc. These student loans set people back about 15 years, sometimes longer. The cost of "education" is probably the biggest problem with the economy we face today. Young people are starting to opt out finally... For the first time in a while there has been a decline in enrollment this year, or so I've seen on some article. But this doesn't bode well for the country I don't think.

Are you serious? It is only a difference course? Seems like such a different airframe and all.

Do you mind saying where you instruct at? How many of the school's students are foreign with the intent of returning to their home country? Thanks.

I'll say that we fly cirrus and aren't Aerosim or Purdue. My best guess we have about 5-10 international students who start each year, which hasn't changed much with the downturn. Most if not all of the internationals are coming from Malaysia with intent to go back home. Thus it looks as if most of the losses are on the domestic side.

Thanks for the reply....I was going to PM you, but I think you need 2 more posts. I have a guess on where you are at, it is a place I went to...

Pilot shortage? Read through APC and see how many people are applying vs getting calls. There's your shortage.

I read in the regional forum that airlines like American Eagle are being picky about whom they want to hire, in spite of its having hardship in staffing airplanes. This does not seem like a shortage to me even on the regional level. And let's not even start with low-time jobs. Those are as scarce as an innocent senator in Congress, not to mention that for each one there will be like one position open and 500 applicants sending resumes. The majors will never be confronted with a shortage, bar something extraordinary happening which is currently unforeseeable to us. At the end of the day, there is no shortage!

I heard the other day that there were only 200 multi-commercial tickets issued to americans last year. And by americans, i mean people that actually intend to stay in the USA, not international students that come to get trained and leave again.

The regional level is where the shortage will happen, some regional airlines are already experiencing it and canceling/delaying flights because they don't have any pilots. The majors will always just suck up the regional pilots, but the regionals is where the shortage will be. Look at Republic, they are in trouble with united for the Q400 operation because of so many cancelations (some due to mx, some due to staffing), and they are pushing back some of the American 175's they got because they don't have the staffing for it yet