I disagree. The initial cost of obtaining a pilot's license has always been very expensive. However, in comparison to getting a college degree, flight training has not increased in cost as rapidly as college tuition.
And since we're discussing career paths, it's a valid comparison.

The cost of obtaining licenses is not a major cause of the lack of young pilots.

 

I know you disagree, but that's also irrelevant.

The degree is irrelevant. It's no longer required.

The cost of flying relative to a degree is irrelevant, in part because the degree is no longer required, in part because financing for flight training is largely had through a degree program (thus making the degree more expensive), and finally because degree programs run the gamut from a few thousand to several hundred thousand, and unless you intend to compare flight training outside of a degree program to financed flight training inside a degree program, you have a non-sequitur, irrelevant comparison. Further whether the flight training costs the same as a degree, or an expensive chihuahua emblazoned with the brand of Paris Hilton, or a ride on the next Bezos tourist trip to space, is irrelevant. Flight training is none of those things. A bolt might cost the same as a plum, but the comparison is irrelevant.

Regarding career paths, it's also irrelevant unless you're talking about a pilot career path obtained outside of the degree program, vs one obtained inside the degree program. If you're talking diverging paths, two different careers, then it's quite irrelevant, any more than one goes to dental school to become a plumber, or seeks motorcycle repair training to sign contracts in a law office. Entirely different subjects, but with the same logic, next time the barn burns down, we'll de-horn all the cows. Makes no sense to you? Exactly.

If you're attempting to suggest that kids today have no desire to take flight training because they can get a degree for the same cost, this is also irrelevant. Again, there is a very wide range of degree cost just as there is a wide range of degrees; the coincidental equivalency between cost of flight training or cost of a particular degree is irrelevant. Flight training costs vary widely, as do degree costs.

A student can easily obtain financing for college; the same is often not true of flight training, further invalidating the comparison between flight training and a degree. A pilot, having obtained FAA certification, holds the licensing and qualification to be employed; degree programs which grant any particular licensing are typically far greater in cost than flight training. The comparison between flight training and college, particularly regarding one vs. the other on a cost basis, is irrelevant.

Flight training is seldom taken as a cold, hard, calculated mathematical decision, but rather an emotional one: the student wants to fly. The student wants to do it because it excites him or her, it inspires, calls to, draws that person. Few young people are calculating their retirement bottom line when they pick a career. Many students who enter college change their majors, often more than once. They don't know what they want. The select few that enter high-yield careers such as law or medicine aren't drawn by the same incentive; the cost of entry isn't their comparison. They'll be paying hundreds of thousands of dollars and will carry that debt for a very long time. The entry cost isn't a barrier to them, but the bottom line and the career future is. Few kids wake up excited with their vision of the future to proclaim, "Ma, Pa, I wanna be a god damn proctologist!"

Conversely, kids today still get excited at the sight of an airplane, and when they proclaim their love of the sky, their parents may say, "God damn, why couldn't you be a proctologist?"

The entire discussion of what kids want, and whether they're drawn to flight, is an entertaining, but irrelevant sidebar to the discussion of raising the retirement age to 67. Raising the age to 67 will do nothing to hinder aviation recruits; retirement is so far removed from the fledgling flyer's thoughts as to be meaningless. The industry will have changed so drastically in thirty or fifty years as to render any comparison of an age 67 retirement limit to student pilot numbers, absolutely irrelevant.

The biggest barrier to starting flight training, and the hardest part of learning to fly is not, and has always been, cost. Whether one cherry picks a degree as a comparison to that flight training, or a beagle farm in Germany, is irrelevant; and more germane to this thread, neither is relevant to raising the age of retirement to 67.

 

That was excessively long. And wrong.

Very few young people want to be airline pilots. You need to talk to a decently large sample size. You are cherry picking the few that ask you about being a pilot while you're in your uniform at the airport.

 

do you have any sources to back up this notion? The FAA’s airman stats report shows a dramatic increase in student pilot certificates over the past few years, and schools are seemingly overwhelmed by people trying to learn to fly

 

I don't think I've ever had a kid ask me about being a pilot while in uniform at the airport, but of the thousands I've met through young eagles, civil air patrol, cub scouts and boy scouts, church groups, airshows, talks and presentations and displays at open houses, malls, church groups, civic groups, libraries, etc, and perhaps one or two more I still see a genuine interest and desire to fly.

Perhaps you're merely talking to the wrong people.

As for length, don't blame me for your short attention span or comprehension problems. You can fix that, if you make the effort.

 

I’m not really big either way on this 67 talk, yes more years behind me than in front.

I will say, it would have less of an effect than the 60 to 65 year change years ago.

 

Thanks for doing all that. Personally I’d like to see this shortage start becoming less of an issue after the last carrier inks the next agreement. It’s not like I want to spend the last decade plus a little training pilots in narrow bodies.

We have a few new pilots administering flight training scholarships that seem to vette funding fairly well. $ is released to the flight school when certain metrics are met and financial need is the only requirement to qualify. I’ll probably start throwing a bit of coin that way in the near future.

 

There's no shortage. We have a temporary artificial demand following an unprecedented spin-down with Covid; we're working through a rebound effect. The myth of a pilot shortage had been bantied around for decades, and has always been a lie used to sell flight training and magazines.

We don't have a shortage of applicants or of upstarts and fledgling flyers. We have movement, a bubble in a cyclical industry. It's a wheel, and comes and goes. This bubble, too.

As for promoting aviation; I got my first airplane ride as a scout, doing an aviation merit badge. Those who finished, got a ride. It's a favor I've returned many times over the years. I can't say how many, if any of those I've given rides to or talked to have gone on to make a career, but I'm sure the guy who taught our merit badge class is probably long done with his career by now, and has no idea how many of us might have gone on to become pilots. Just part of the circle. I've yet to see a young eagles event come up short of kids wanting airplane rides, and Oshkosh is no ghost town. It's packed. Same for Sun n' Fun, and every airshow I've been to or attend. The last one was packed, at a relatively small town, and the kids were lined up by the fence to get pictures and autographs of the performers.

The kids who do start today will have a long time before retirement, and whatever it is in forty or fifty years, we can reasonably expect it to be quite different from what we know now. So much so that any temporary ripple today town't even be a memorable after-thought, down the line, and minor changes such as moving the retirement age to 67 will have no impact whatsoever on the decision of youth to seek a flying career. None.

I live in a pragmatic world, though once I was a romantic in a world of wood and wire and fabric wings. I do enjoy seeing the sparkle in the eyes of those who still see it that way, and there is plenty of that sparkle left to go around.

 

Even before covid we had near six figure signing bonuses and dramatic upward pressure on wages. The shortage was and is real, but you’re also seeing spin up in new pilot starts as a result

 

In my 30 years in the aviation industry, I’ve never seen a time when regionals offered so much pay, or so much in bonus money to come to work. I’ve never seen so may pilot applicants with the wet ink on their ATP skip the regionals and start at Spirit or Frontier.

When was the last time the legacies dropped their hiring minimums?

How do you explain this except there are a lot of available seats, and not enough qualified applicants to fill them? By definition, that’s what’s called a pilot shortage.