Shortage or Just Hiring Wave- Analysis
 

I ran some hiring numbers and thought this might be interesting Data, since it seems like were always talking about pilot hiring demand, but don't ever seem to see any real numbers to show what is happening from a larger perspective. I figured since we know what an airline aircraft order schedule looks like, and what aircraft are suppose to be replaced by that order with their fleet retirement schedule, we can reasonably project the size of an airlines fleet for the next few years. I assumed after 2020 we would see stagnant fleet sizes( just to be on the safe side in projecting pilot demand- since few orders extend beyond that year).

With this model we can project their pilot demand by multiplying the number of aircraft in their fleet by their current pilot to aircraft ratio. (For Example An Airline that has 3100 pilots and about 315 aircraft- so it takes about 10 pilots to run each aircraft) If this Airline were to grow by 1 airplane they would need 10 more pilots.

On top of their growth/shrinkage pilot requirements we can add their mandatory pilot retirements which are also fairly public knowledge. So we can add the number of pilots they need from growth each year to the number of pilots that are projected to retire to get an idea of how many pilots will be needed from that airline year after year.

Lots of things are variable (like aircraft order schedules, exercising aircraft options, pilots retiring early, pilot productivity rules, etc) so this model is a snapshot of current hiring projection from a conservative viewpoint. I put this data on my website since I didn't know how to put the graphs and tables onto this forum. I'll post additional airlines and clean up the format as I have time. Just remember these are just estimates, but I thought the calculated guess's were interesting.

Because its a conservative HR projection model over the next 10-20 years we can get a better idea of how long it will take to get to 50% seniority for upgrade for those who get hired in the next few years at the majors, based upon current aircraft orders/retirements and pilot retirements.

The most interesting thing I found in all of this was that for the next 5 to 10 years most regional FO's can expect to be in the right seat for at least 5 years, even during the most intense hiring in the next 6 years. Just because the Regional pool is so much larger compared to the Mainline pilot demand than it was 30 years ago on the front side of this wave. So we will see only 10% a year from the Regional's go to the majors. That's still 5 year upgrades.

United Airlines Projection-
United Airlines Pilot Demand | Audries Aircraft Analysis

Delta Airlines Projection-
Delta Airlines Pilot Hiring | Audries Aircraft Analysis

American Airlines Projection-
American Pilot Demand | Audries Aircraft Analysis

US Airways Projection-
US Airways Pilot Demand | Audries Aircraft Analysis

JetBlue Airways Projection-
JetBlue Airways Pilot Demand | Audries Aircraft Analysis

Alaska Airlines Projection-
Alaska Airlines Pilot Demand | Audries Aircraft Analysis

Comparison and Totals-
Airline Pilot Demand Comparison | Audries Aircraft Analysis

Very nice job. I hope your predictions are right.

I can imagine this took a lot of work, great job.

very cool, id be curious to see spirit too.

Bravo!

Lets all hope the transition of 50 seat RJ flying to larger mainline equipment will make these numbers look better going forward.

Awesome job on this analysis. I would also be curious about FEDEX and UPS.

Where did you get your information, what are your sources and how do we know your numbers are real? Anybody can put anything on the internet these days:eek:

PtP

I like that these are all low ball estimates due to the fact it only considers Mandatory(65) retirements.

I wonder what the average age of actual retirement is? (due to medical, personal situation, etc)

See guys there are some smart guys that visit this forum.

I have two friends that got on at USAir in the last year. They will be at 50% in 8 yrs. Crazy. I hope for their sake, the pay drastically improves.

Your fleet numbers for US Airways are incorrect from the word go. Started this year with 340 aircraft in the fleet, will end the year with 337 aircraft in the fleet. So a net loss of 3 airframes, not a gain of 16 airframes as you have projected.

And whatever you have included about 23 E190's should probably be removed from your calculations between 2012 and 2016. I don't think those were ever aircraft for firm delivery, they were possibly options only. A few weeks ago, I believe the President of the company said that they were happy with the current fleet of 15 E190s and not looking to add any additional E190s to the fleet at anytime in the future.

In the interests of keeping your work as accurate as possible, I can provide you with the correct data. Send me a PM once you have made enough posts on APC. Welcome!

Like I said, anyone can put anything on the internet. New user, simple math and pretty graphs, but no sources to provide facts or reliable estimates.

Blind faith is as good as false information.

PtP

I appreciate the info. Your hard work does not go unrecognized!

Let's face it. I'm not sure ANYONE could get 100% accurate information on all the numbers the OP provided from EVERY airline. It's a rough estimate.

Thanks for sharing!!

Outstanding first post, welcome aboard

I'm glad the info is informative.

I appreciate the double check on my work on US Airways, its been a couple of months since I did those numbers. I redid the US Airway numbers. A couple of factors changed the numbers from my previous assumptions.

1.) I pulled the remaining 23 E190's on order out of the equation and assumed they would never be delivered. No matter how hard I looked I could not find out when those orders are to be delivered. So in keeping with a conservative model I treated them as "Options".

2.) The delivery and retirement schedule of the A320's and 737's from the sources I was looking at were spread out over a period of 3 and a half years. However looking APC and the intel you guys the collective pilot body has it appears they will be retiring a little quicker than thought. Also I had spread the A330 delivery's over a period of 3-4 years to be conservative, considering they had already delayed once. My updated model shows them coming online with 5 in 2013 and the remaining 3 in 2014.

With all these changes though I was happy to see that the 50% point for Seniority is still between 8-9 years. Maybe a little more towards the 9 year than before due to the loss of the 23 E190's that are currently on order.

Its true though- This is Simple Math. Its adding up Mandatory Pilot Retirements and Pilots needed through Growth for each year. After being tired of hearing flight schools, and Regional's tell their students and pilots about quick upgrades and high salaries, in order to get their students to spend tens of thousands of dollars, or work for very little. I felt it was time to try a shed a little light on this, with something more substantial.

As far as sources for the aircraft order schedules, I've used Wikipedia as a baseline resource, and then followed it up with news reports and press releases from the companies, most of the order schedules are public information, and are talked about in the conference calls.

Here's a couple of links.

http://www.airbus.com/fileadmin/back...012_Airbus.xls

US Airways - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Just a side note it'll take a day or two to update the comparison page with the USAir data.

Great work!! at JB you have 0 mandatory retirements. I realize our numbers are low but they are not zero. The may be considered of no effect because 5-15 per year has no effect on hiring but they are not 0.

pilot shortage soon

Yeah, I figured the JetBlue numbers might be minimal, but I'm always trying to build a more accurate model. If you feel comfortable sharing the JB mandatory retirement schedule, I can't find it anywhere. I will put it into the numbers.

Great post. Make sure you edit Delta Airlines to say Delta Air Lines. Do not give the recruiters a resume with Delta Airlines on it. You will get the evil eye.

AA projections assume they stay in business?:rolleyes:

Great info and a lot of hard work.

Great post!

this is very cool thank you for posting

Very nicely done.


How about SW?

Retirement data -

http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/ma...ated-list.html

Slightly out of date but better than nothing(thread started in 2009)

His website has FedEx and Virgin America data (hyperlinks on the site)-


Airline Pilot Demand | Audries Aircraft Analysis


Airline Pilot Demand


Current Airline Profiles

Pilot Return on Training Investment

Comparison

Alaska Airlines Pilot Demand

JetBlue Airways Pilot Demand

US Airways Pilot Demand

United Airlines Pilot Demand

Delta Airlines Pilot Demand

American Airlines Pilot Demand

Virgin American Pilot Demand

FedEx Pilot Demand

Delta Airlines Pilot Demand- New TA



Calculator - Pilot Career Compensation Comparison (Staying at A Regional vs. going to a selected carrier)

PilotAnalyst, great job on putting together a system that allows us to see the future projections. By posting on this forum, I hope you are able to obtain further data from informed members that will allow you to further refine your numbers. This is a great starting point and I hope you continue to update this information for the future.

optumism?
 

Great post. Am I missing something though? "we will see only 10% a year from the Regional's go to the majors". This should be horrible news. One in ten will make it through the regionals.

Lets do the math:

Five years instructing to get to a regional (1500 hour rule) then 6 to 8 years minimum to get out to be rewarded by another 9 years in the right seat at a legacy to finally earn as much as a grocery store manager? :confused:

A lot of things have to go right over decades of time and effort to make this dream work out. There is no pilot shortage. The legacy airlines need to hire thousands upon thousands per year to make a dent in the stockpile. A few hundred here and there does little to help the bulk of us.

Aviation has become a war of attrition. In the end it will be the guy who sells off everything in his personal life who will get the job. Have a girlfriend or a dog you are fond of and you are out.

I assume that this is supposed to be good news? The data at the optimistic side of things?

Skyhigh

HOLYCRAP! Calm down man he put numbers out there if you don't like them don't read them.

Haha, I'm not sure you fully understand how the internet works...

I like how you said "these days" too. As if there was a time when only factual, edited material was on the internet.

PilotAnalyst, I understand that you predict the total pilots required for an airline by adding the pilots required for new aircraft and the manditory retirements together. That makes sense.

Why is it that, in the case of Alaska Airlines, the two don't add up? For example, in 2013 you predict: 132 pilots needed for new aircraft, 19 manditory retirements, but only predict 92 total new pilots? Shouldn't the number 151?

What am I missing here?

OK, looking again, I see that you made an error on the table but the end result is correct. The "New pilots required for Fleet" numbers are wrong in every column. That's the problem. I expect that is easy to correct.

Thanks for the efforts though. Interesting stuff.

10% PER YEAR.

Five yrs to get to 1500hrs? Three yrs if you're hustling.

Excellent work. As we all know our crystal balls are good only out to about 12 months, then they cloud up becuase we can't predict external factors like fuel costs, the general economy, and world affairs. But this is the first time on this forum that we've seen an attempt to use reasonable data to project the demand for pilots in the domestic US.

However, there are some other factors that can be applied to the model, and these would include the number of furloughed guys for example. In some cases, ie. American, there are still about 1800 guys on furlough. No telling how many of these pilots would actually come back...many have moved to other carriers or occupations. The domestic US market is mature, and we can't anticiapte too much additional growth. Even Virgin and Jet Blue seem to have slowed down in spite of larger plans. And further consolidation remains on the horizon.

In the end though, there will be SOME jobs. Given the fact that about half of all domestic flying is done by regionals though, it would take about 17 years to hire all of those pilots currently at regionals waiting for their chance to move up to mainlines. I'm not sure I'd call that a pilot shortage...but the question remains; how many students are begining entry level pilot training programs? Will there be 2000 a year or so who make it far enough to begin careers at the regionals?

Thanks for the input everyone, the model is only as good as the information behind it. Thanks for finding the glitch in my Alaska data, the totals were still good but one of the row's was outputting the wrong data, that’s fixed.

Everyone should know the data is a conservative projection, meaning it is possible for an airline like Delta to announce a huge order of 88 717's to start coming next year and suddenly the whole model changes for that airline (big time). It tries to apply only known quantities, IE aircraft on the order books, current pilot utilization, pilots having to retire by 65. I try very hard not to take into consideration aircraft Options which for some airlines are substantial. I also agree that the new pilot rest rules/fatigue rules will alter the model, but because we just don't know how or how much I disregard those for now. In the future I hope to reflect the new pilot utilization, and any options that become hard orders. Also, the comparison and industry total information is slightly changing as I put on more airlines into the equation, but I hope to have those numbers updated for you to see soon.

Ultimately the data is not meant to be reflected in a positive or negative light, but in an impartial way so that people can judge for themselves. When ever we have our lively hoods at stake we tend to become irrational(just like some finiancial investors), but I'm hoping to put some rationality back into the equation.

Thanks for suggesting Spirit which I just finished and I am currently working on Southwest and UPS. Please continue to pass on any additional bugs in my numbers.

Virgin America Projection
Virgin America Pilot Demand | Audries Aircraft Analysis

FedEx Projection
FedEx Pilot Demand | Audries Aircraft Analysis

Spirit Airlines Projection
Spirit Airlines Hiring Demand | Audries Aircraft Analysis

Delta Airlines if TA Passes
Delta Hiring Projection- TA | Audries Aircraft Analysis

Thanks! Great work.

Here's a recommendation - is it possible to align the airlines alphabetically instead of randomly?

Couple of things... first of all, great job and thanks. I had a couple of informal spreadsheets that I kept on my own computer with 'snapshots' of published retirement numbers and projected seniority at different air carriers if I were to get hired at X, Y, or Z. It's nice to see a lot of this data in one place.

The biggest thing that I would say is that you have a good snapshot of today - assuming nothing was to change in the intervening years. As we all know, the business is fluid. You have to make the best decision on your individual career with the data that you have at any given time... so thank you for putting out some good data for 'today.' I have bookmarked it, and look forward to the updates.

Also, the only thing that I would say that you need to change in your basic assumption is how the new rest rules are going to affect hiring and staffing for the year(s) 2013-2014 for each carrier (# of warm bodies per aircraft for planning purposes) and the small bump in the overall chart that will be affected across the board. Other than that... it's good stuff. Thanks again.

Could you include in the line break at the top of the page, above the figures in the "pilot hiring table" the total pilot employment numbers for each carrier that you do the analysis of?

So in that first section, you could view the number of total pilots employed, then scan across to see the calculated average representing the number of pilots per aircraft.

Then, as you move down into the table where the fleet numbers may be changing from year to year, there is always the two other numbers near the top of the page for reference; representing total number of pilots employed by the airline, and the average number of pilots per aircraft at that airline.

I think it'd be a good number to see when a newhire would be expected to hit the 40-50% mark of the seniority list (ballpark of Captain upgrade).

As mentioned repeatedly above....great post and thank you for sharing.

For those of us contemplating going overseas...any chance of including foreign carriers? (eg: EY, EK, QR)

Thanks.

Howdy Pilot Analyst--If this has already been answered, I am a tool; your Total Combined Pilot Demand (including retirements and growth) graph.....that is just for six airlines?

Thanks for your efforts! You came out of the gate with an impossibly high expectation level from all of us.....Couldn't your first post have been about Go Jets or "my regional is better than yours"? You can only improve from there :D

Actually the percentages are there as well. Super neat tool.

First off, very nice work.

I looked at the total pilot demand page, and saw how it would affect the regional industry. From those numbers, assuming all RJ pilots go to majors, and majors hire only RJ pilots, 50% of today's present RJ pilots will be gone by 2019.

The way I interpret that is that somebody who's starting at a regional now will be looking at an upgrade in the next 6-7 years. Add another 1.5 years to get the PIC time, and you've got 9 years from regional newhire to major newhire.

Armed with that, I'd advise people looking at regionals now to carefully consider which airline you go to. No sense looking for the quick upgrade, because it isn't likely to happen. Go somewhere you can see yourself being happy for the next decade.