Apokleros

Thanks for the dose of reality, guys. The way that the Wall Street Journal portrays things, they make it seem like the sky is about to fall down on us regarding this nonsense shortage of pilots. Yet wherever you look the flight schools are still cranking out pilots despite a drop in enrollment. It's still pretty competitive out there, so it's hard to take it at face value. The current state of affairs may change though with the wave of retirements coming up, but seeing is believing as they say....

JohnnyG

The numbers don't lie. Those retirements have already started, and still don't reflect enough attrition for healthy movement. They will speed up in the next 5 years, but just not in any significant amount.

Check the pages on AirlinePilotCentral.com for accurate numbers under each airline for retirements. The numbers are insignificant compared to the numbers of pilots working here in the US. Not everyone turned 60 at the same time, and not everyone will turn 65 at the same time.

All numbers used to support an argument for a surge in pilot need are from overseas. They legitimately are hiring overseas. Unless you're a veteran of part 121 with verifiable experience in needed airframes, you're out of luck.

Bellanca

Since posting on this thread, I spent saturday night with a former co-worker and some of his fellow new-hire classmates. And after chatting with them, I established that 2 (including my friend) had done night cargo, another did 135 pax, one was former 121, and one had been CFIing. From talking to them, most of them had 2000 hours. It totally reminded me of the little discussion in this thread.

Disclaimer: this is just one anecdotal example, but it seems to be representative of the experience of what other friends and acquaintances have been hired with in recent months. It seems to me that at the beginning of the year, the airlines would hire just about anyone with (or close to) ATP mins, but now they are being somewhat picky. It seems to me they are really looking for candidates that have airline or turbine experience, or at the very least have been flying a piston twin bigger than a seminole/dutchess/310. How long they will have candidates to sustain this is definitely a valid question, but the 'shortage' hasn't seemed to hit quite yet.

HappyCrew

Congratulations on the 500 hour mark... Hang in there....

mobius27

Depends on your definition of shortage. Great Lakes is desperate. Republic can't fully staff their Q400's. Meanwhile Compass is still being choosy and I haven't heard any problems from Skywest, though they are about to start receiving their E-175's. There are certainly less pilots willing to go to certain airlines now than there have been in the past, which I think you could define as the beginning of a much larger industry wide shortage. It will never reach the level where it directly effects the majors, but I think we will see difficulties across most of the regionals eventually.

Apokleros

It almost seems as if most folks are heading towards the better reputed regionals and shunning the ones doing badly. Does that mean that the regionals which stand on a better footing today will have to deal with overstaffing issues in the near future? Does anyone want to bet that when the next recession hits, new furloughs will soon be on the way?

JohnnyG

No, no, no. Please stop spreading this disinformation just because you heard it. Let's go rumor by rumor here:

1. "They can't fill Q400 classes, no one will fly it, no one showed up to a Q400 class earlier this year, they have planes parked with no pilots, they can't fully staff them."

--This is hogwash. They dispel this at the Republic interview, because I had heard the same thing from Republic pilot friends of mine and asked. There is no verifiable proof this is happening, but there is verifiable proof from those in charge at Republic that it's not happening. To kill it even further, Republic turns away MOST that interview, and ALL that interview are qualified. This literally means that at any point, they can hire a greater percentage. Out of the 4 friends I know that went to work there this year, only one was even OFFERED a Q400 job. Seriously. STOP REPEATING THIS. There are 'plants' from the industry here helping keep these rumors spooled up.

2. "Great Lakes cannot get people to come work for them."


--Hogwash as well. This is their way of controlling you, getting you to think you have a better chance of working there so you'll pay tons of money going to interview entirely out of pocket. They always want to increase their pool of applicants, like any other job, so they can take the best possible and minimize the liability of crashes and accidents among other reasons, to over simplify things. Right now, as we speak, some Great Lakes FOs are getting passed over for flights because there are way too many chiefs and not enough indians.


Don't get played by this industry. This forum has got to be one of the largest tools and forums for of misinformation the airlines that actively plot to lowball you as part of their business model. We are nothing but sheep and every time you actually believe AND tell others that one of the world's most in demand and high tech turboprops has NO PILOTS, you are wrong.

"look at this shiny F/A-18 sitting here, it's too bad no one wants to fly it. If only there was someone with a community college education, an alcohol problem and certificates they got from some half-@$$ed backwater flight school to fly it."

HEY!!! I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS MY WHOLE LIFE! Finally, a shortage of people who want to fly F/A-18s!

There will never, EVER be a shortage of people who are certificated, clean and willing to fly airplanes. Keep repeating that over and over again until the rumor that there are Q400s parked with no pilots starts sounding stupid to you, because it is VERY STUPID.

Apokleros

Yeah, what JohnnyG just wrote.
There are still by far more pilots in the market than jobs available, and the big name flight schools are still pumping out a never ending stream of 191 - 250 hour pilots ready to assume the limited regional-airline slots that will open up in the next few years. I don't see any shortage approaching on the horizon. It's all a bunch of lies and misinformation divulged by the airlines and flight schools who want to make it certain that they can keep on paying peanuts to workers.

EvertsDC9

You have the contact info for the F/A-18 job??

USMCFLYR

Here's one

Marine Officer | USMC Officer Requirements | Marines.com

...and it works!