What is flight training like today?
 

I was curious from some of you flight instructors around the country about a few things.

If we were to eliminate foreign students who will eventually return to their home countries, how many American students are training to be a professional airline pilots today?

Everyone has a point of view on the so called pilot shortage. From your points of view, is there a shortage of students training as compared to maybe years past?

I'm curious what the pilot training pipeline for airline pilots might look like in 2-3 years. For example, if a new airline pilot want-to-be were to start training today, it would likely take them 2-3 years to be hireable.

Is there a "shortage" of domestic students or US student pilots here?
I would say no. As of today, there are still lots of hireable guys on the street or other jobs that actually pay for various reasons.

I would say if you looked at most flight schools today, you would see a large foreign student base with a very small domestic group of students.
Loans to pay for the zero to hero schools and now the new 1500 hour ATP rule taking effect August 1st, (in two days!) it will only decrease the already small sample of domestic US student pilots in US flight schools.

If a new student were to start today with all the financing or cash to pay, yes you could be 'hireable' in 2 to three years yes, (zero to flight instructor, gain 1500 and complete the new ATP program) hours depending on how you define quality of life and hireability.

I work for a well-known state university with a 141 program that is restricted ATP capable. Our student pipeline has grown over the past two to three years. We now have more students than we have had since 2008, but not nearly as many as we did a couple of decades ago. I'm not sure of the exact number if you were to subtract the foreigners, but we are issuing 10-20 commercial certs every semester.

Timeline from zero to 1500 hours training/flying full-time while attaining your bachelor's degree is likely 5 - 6 years right now. Most guys will be hired at their university as a CFI sometime in their graduating (4th) year. They will be at 300 TT. To get 1000 hours with 200 XC as a CFI will require at LEAST one to two years. At some operations, it takes more like three.

For that reason, the training programs are reeling more from a loss of instructors than from a change in student flow. Many instructors leave in order to attain the 1000/200 or 1500/500 (depending on your educational path) required to get their ATPs before their test expires in July 2016. Unless you're in a sun zone, it's difficult to build more than 50 flight hours per month as a CFI. Many scheduled 135 ops or similar offer 70 - 80 hours per month, not to mention the hours are cross-country time. As a result, our school has turned over a huge percentage of our instructors over the last six months.

Sure, you can get 1500 hours in three to four years and skip the four-year degree. But if you want a bachelor's and to qualify for the restricted ATP, you're going to need more time.

I'm curious to know if the rules that congress and the faa implemented are having a drastic impact on new student starts, student drop outs, etc.. Do you feel the new rules are having an impact or will have an impact? I would like to learn more about how these new rules are or will affect the pipeline of would be career pilots. As you pointed out, there could be a 5 year period before someone is employable. It's this "pipeline" period I'm curious about.

I haven't seen anyone drop out because of the new rules. As far as whether the rules are impacting starts, that might be hard to say. I do know that our school has seen enrollment numbers increase over the past several years. That's up from a big drop off around 2008, but not yet up to pre-2000 levels.

As far as the pipeline, I think the restricted ATP vs unrestricted ATP mins will have a large impact. Having a four-year degree expands your career options for time-building significantly because it makes instructing a viable option.

Not having the four-year degree takes the XC requirement to 500 hours, which takes FOREVER to attain as a CFI. I've been instructing for over a year and have built about 30 hours crosscountry. Most students finish their commercial with around 100 XC. Obviously instructing all the way to 500 just isn't practical, forcing folks who didn't go the university or military route to find non-121 jobs that involve cross country flying somehow.

So there are two broad paths developing in the civilian world, dependent on whether you meet restricted ATP mins or not. One includes instruction as a viable option, one does not.

Did the rules regarding what can be logged as cross country change in the last 10 years?

IIRC ATP cross-country is still flight at least 50 nm from departure airport, no landing required.

I have wondered about a few of the same things tom. I have only been flying for 5 years, which includes flight training and instructing.

When I first started training at my school, there were a fair amount of students and all of which were domestic. Another bigger flight school on the field also had a good amount of students, most of which were domestic. It was very busy.

As I went through training though, I noticed that traffic started to lessen. During the slow down, the instructors at my school (all of which were domestic and came from the bigger school on the field), started leaving for the regionals. My school at the time didn't need to hire very many people to replace the ones leaving because of the lesser volume of new students. There were rumors that the same thing was happening at the bigger school and that it was going to have to stop ops for a while due to there not being any new students. However, there was a third school on the field that never really seemed to slow down and in fact picked up. It was an international flight school.

As of today things have picked back up substantially! The bigger school now has mostly foreign students from China (like 95%) and the international flight school, which is were I now work is hustling to find instructors to meet the growth of our booming 100% foreign base. I might add that the school that I work for now is looking to retain foreign students that complete the program to stay on and instruct. However, the place were I did my training does not have any foreign students that I know of and they don't fly anywhere close to the amount of time that the other two schools on the field do.

So I say all this because I think that there may....may be a larger number of foreign students here that are career oriented than domestic. We have another school on the field that is part 61 and they seem to do okay but from what I've been told most of there students are people that just want to learn to fly for fun.

I think the job market for instructors is great right now.