Is the pilot shortage over?
 

Have we seen the end of it? My Regional has had full classes for 9 months now. Republic and many other regionals have full indoc classes for the next 6 month minimum.

Is this the new normal?

Pilot shortage is far from over.

Pilot hiring standards and regional standards have changed. Better conditions mean people who hit mins want a better qol rather then hate there life. It’ll be the new normal until the next flow of CFIs next summer.


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The pilot shortage is either over or never truly existed at all.

Seems to me that this profession was beat down so hard in the years after 9/11 that it doesn’t know what a true shortage would look like. Just because pilots don’t have to grind it out for years making minimum wage as a CFI while funding their own multi-engine time building hoping to fly checks at night in an old Aztec doesn’t mean we all of a sudden have a “shortage.” The market has simply approached an equilibrium.

Just ask any 1000-hour CFI looking for a humble Part 91 gig or even one of those low-time Part 135 SIC jobs that supposedly hires at 500 TT. They are still plenty selective, and you’ve got to be willing to move anywhere in the country for very little pay. In any other industry this would be considered a shortage of jobs, not of applicants. Most corners of this industry are still, in most cases, pretty challenging for new entrants.

The pilot shortage narrative has been fueled by the airlines themselves, who seem to be attempting to leverage it as justification for reduced ATP minimums and single-pilot ops. It’s my opinion that pilots who buy into that narrative are ultimately doing great harm to the profession.

No shortage mainline just needed to keep people coming to the regionals. Mainline has enough Mil guys retiring to fill their slots.

https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comm...ne_pilots_age/

Strongly advise looking at these numbers.

Mandatory retirement numbers at the bigs are going through the roof in the next 4-5 years. If you don’t believe in the shortage now, I think you will by then. There’s a reason the legacies are setting up flows, Propel programs, CPP’s, etc. They see what’s on the horizon.

Actually, they don’t. The military cut back their training severely after one of the last Base Realignment and Closure exercises, consolidating some training that had been spread out to several services into single bases and closing a number of trading bases altogether. They then gave up the airspace and the bases. That both cut back their training and severely limited their ability to increase it. Same for the reserves and Guard. As a result they developed a shortage which they managed by both increasing the active duty service commitment and increasing retention bonuses.
Where traditionally, they trained a lot of people, half of whom left at their eight year point, they now train much fewer who are obligated for ten years and then bribed into staying until they make 20. So the airlines are getting fewer and older ex-military, at least fixed wing military.

And what reserves are left are increasingly mobilized for deployments making even the reservists less available.

So no, the majors CANNOT fill their slots with retiring military.

Granted, RIGHT NOW the shortage is at the regionals, and the majors NEVER WILL be as short as the regionals, given that they pay four times as much for basically the same job, but this is unequivocally a time of real opportunity for regional pilots, and it’s going to keep getting better for another five or six years.

So how do you explain ExpressJet, Mesa, and all three of the AA WO’s still aggressively trying to fill classes? The ones with classes filled out far into the future are the regionals with the better contracts.

Because for the Regionals it was a pay problem, not a pilot shortage. The pay and QOL improvements at many of the Regionals over the last few years have brought many experienced pilots out of the Part 91/135 world who had no intention of working for a Regional a few years ago.

Contrary to the belief of some, the ATP requirement (1500 hour rule) has had no impact on any shortage. The only thing it has done was to prevent the Regionals from lowering the requirements way below 1500 when they needed to fill classes. Since they can no longer do that, their only option is to improve pay and QOL. So far that has worked in bringing in the pilots they need.

Yeah, there's no way the math lies this time around. It would take a big economic downturn to put a dent in what's to come.

But don't miss the wave, the pilot pipeline will likely have so much momentum that an over-supply is plausible by the late 2020's (in the US, not Asia).

How accurate is your info. on Republic? I am interviewing in a week and 5-6 month is actually ideal for me to start as I have a few commitments to get over with.

I would love to see regional retirements incorporated into this. Lots of guys in their 50s

In my opinion there is a pilot shortage and it is definitely a pilot’s market. However, the jobs with decent pay and better QOL will never have a problem finding pilots. The jobs that have lower pay and QOL and still had people lined up to work for them because no other flying jobs were available is now no longer happening. We are really struggling at my Part 91 flight department, as well as other flight departments in the area to find people to staff the airplanes. I know people, myself included are leaving part 91/135 gigs to get on with the regionals and LCCs with better pay and work rules than our current jobs. I believe the jobs that are abusive to pilots will eventually die out or will be forced to change for better QOL and work rules for pilots. The jobs that make things better for pilots will thrive and have no problems finding quality applicants. Just my .02.

There was a pay shortage, not a lack of pilots.

There is no pilot shortage!
There never was.
There will always be more pilots than “desirable” jobs.
Desirable meaning pay and QOL.

I think there's a bubble there too but will come later than the legacies by about ten years. But it will be a small bubble because many of them will get on with majors in the next five years (easily worth it at age 55, especially if the kids are out of the house and you can live without picking your days off for a couple years).

It's not accurate at all, and hasn't been for 2-3 months. We've opened more class dates and there's not much of a wait these days.

A CJO should be good for 6 months, so just tell them what your timetable is and they should work with you.

Haiku attempt?

I lack that type of creativity, it’s a coincidence.

It’s not worth committing Haiku over. 😫

Agreed but I’m not sure they are trying to get out definitely not as much as the 30-45 age group is.

I think there has already been so much hype about a pilot shortage that there won’t actually be one. The closest we got was in the 2015-2018 timeframe when regional pay jumped significantly.

I would really like to see some supply data from the FAA that segments for the right to work in the US. There is so much training of foreigners that it seems too difficult to parse that out from the FAA data and get a good grasp of. I’ve seen at least 1 study use CFIs as a proxy, but that’s not nearly as good as actual data. There are plenty of people who never become a CFI.


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SkyWest I understand CRJ classes are now backed up till March.

At my regional, this is far from true. I can't recall any Capts., over 50 with 10+ years seniority, that was actively pursuing a major. They would be making less money for a couple of years, loose their 17 days off, and commutable trips to learn a new plane and airline. $120,000+ is a nice salary in most parts of America.

If you have a clean record as a regional captain, within the next 7 years, you will not have a problem getting to a mainline. Of course, there won't be a shortage at the majors, with upper-middle-class wages and decent QOL. We won't see the majors with empty seats in new hire classes, but we also won't see their hiring rates of the 2000s.
The regionals have adapted and made this career a more viable option. My regional new hire class had more ex-corporate pilots than CFIs, and they left for BETTER QOL... Yes at a regional.

There is a little bit of a bubble right now, and it will come crashing down soon. Those "good" regionals that you are talking about have classes filled for several months out, but are starting to lose the same number that they are hiring, or more.

The majors and cargo carriers need to hire 5000+ per year for the next 10+ years. There is a shortage of qualified pilots to fill these seats.

Look at the majors that are starting to reduce their hiring mins and holding in-house career fairs. The legacy airlines said 2 years ago that they weren't going to go to job fairs like OBAP and NGPA again, but they are back there recruiting again.

There is a shortage of good, professional, experienced, and well qualified pilots. Not every regional pilot is qualified for a legacy job. The pool of regional pilots that are qualified, however, is starting to get small pretty quickly.

Those that have no check ride failures, no DWI's, 2000TPIC, Line Check Airman, advanced university degree, and a good overall person are in very high demand right now. I have seen pilots with these qualifications go from no calls at all to three interviews at legacies/good majors in a matter of 2 weeks.

That wouldn’t take very long to eclipse at a legacy.

the issue isn’t “does a major pay more”; it’s does the regional offer enough. There’s a subset of pilots who are inclined to stay because of family, pension, location or sheer laziness. A doubling in salary not that compelling if the regional pays enough.

It isn’t even that. You see some career FOs at regionals. Or at least FOs that are quite content to wait until they are senior enough that when they upgrade - if they ever do upgrade - they will be senior captains flying the very same sorts of schedule you fly as a senior FO with the seniority to upgrade.

Don’t even think it’s fear of failing the upgrade, in most cases, just that after months and sometimes years of reserve, they never want to be on reserve or commute ever again. I think that more than anything else leads to career regional lifers, more even than failed training events, DUIs, or lack of ability to get a four year degree. And I think it’s these people that make majors leery of straight flow programs, increasingly requiring set amounts of TPIC or other hoops to jump through that will weed them out of the flow.

That's almost exactly where I was. Broke even year one. Off to the races year two, anticipate about $2M more career earnings over staying at the regional.

At least as many days off at the major year one, although that can vary by base and equipment. Year two better QOL hands down, and the trips are easier too (1-2 leg days vice 3-5). By coincidence, QOL/days off declined dramatically at the regional after I left, due to staffing issues. No sign of that changing for many years.

What you just said is actually not true, but it's the logic that many folks use to rationalize staying put.

Now there is a real downside to making such a move: Risk. Risk of training failure, risk of economic downturn and furlough while you're still very junior. If you're sole bread-winner for a family and don't have other skills, that's a legit consideration.

Training failure is definitely a risk. Thing is majors hire military guys who don't know how to play the game as well as a prior 121 guy who is likely to have friends that can give all sorts of helpful welcome aboard tips.

The furlough risk is minimal now. Short of some sort of economic catastrophe, retirements alone would cover furloughs over the next 5 years - 10 years by which I figure a major would recover. Sitting reserve in the worse base is possible, but you're on the seniority list. It'd be worse if your regional got Colgan'ed (or Compass'ed or GoJet'ed shortly).

If you're an airline pilot, that puts you in the top 2-3% of driven people. There are always jobs out there for unskilled people with drive and once you're on a major seniority list, you don't leave it. The company will even retrain you to get back flying once it's recall time even if you haven't touched an airplane since you got furloughed. That's not the same if your regional goes under during the downturn.

I interviewed on 27 Aug 19, I got the call a couple of days layer for a 20 April class. I'm expecting to be available on 1 Feb so I'm on the wait list for the 10 Feb class as well.

Can we safely say that pay and bonuses now have bought enough people back to aviation plus enough people entering at the bottom? Or will the well run dry again soon?

Look at the demographics. More mandatory retirements than ever before, fewer military fixed wing pilots than ever before, declining experience levels pretty much across the board. Yet more aircraft and more flying are here and more yet still coming.

There has been a hiatus in hiring to cover all the summer flying, and because of all the parked MAX’s, but it’s about to start up again.

The well has never run dry and never really will, but we got pretty near the bottom of the barrel 2 years ago, and it’s going to get worse (or, depending on your outlook, better) for the next 3-5 years.

https://youtu.be/99lyU5N--f8

As long as there are pilots who are willing to live the commute-to-base lifestyle as they do, there is no shortage. Typical commuting co-worker:

Day 1 - Drives two hours from home to commuting airport, then flies half way across country to base. 6 hours later, gets hotel room or pays for crash pad for the evening.

Days 2,3,4,5 - Flies a 4-day trip for the company.

At end of 4-day trip, has to get hotel room or crash pad because there are no more 'flights home'.

Day 6 - Flies half way across country to get home, then drives 2 hours home from commuting airport (This is only if the Wx is good, and there are no other delays)

Day 7 - Gets one day off at "home".

Day 8 - Repeats above process above until the end of the month. Repeats month after month.

I hear this story nearly each time I take a trip. These same folks seem to hate their jobs and careers. Generally unhappy folks. But they continue to put up with the commuting life. Why? They are willing to sacrifice 7 to 15 years of their life away; family, QOL, so they can fly for United, Delta, or American.

There is no pilot shortage. When these 'competitive tactics' go away, then, OK, maybe we will see a shortage on the horizon.

Don't be one of these people and Lower The Bar. It's truly sad what airline pilots are willing to give up in life in this business. Pretty much explains why I fly with so many divorced pilots... and I ain't no Dr. Phil.

That has nothing to do with a shortage of pilots...

As long as it's an option people will do it. Same with oil workers, many of whom commute long distances for two-week shifts.

If they banned commuting, THEN there would be a pilot shortage. Not to mention the added cost of paying pilots to live in major airline hubs, 90% of which are very high COL areas.

But I agree that stupid commutes are a real buzz kill, would never set myself up for doing that long term (although poop happens sometimes).

This isn't typical in the least. It is common but does not define most commuters. I haven't commuted the day before or after the trip in years. And I don't even know anyone who drives two hours to get to their home airport.

I know people who this is common for, but I wouldn’t say this characterizes most commuters either.


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When you’re in an orientation class and one of your coworkers hasn’t flown in 7 years that speaks volumes to how desperate companies are for “Talent”.

When regionals are willing to train helicopter pilots and foot the bill. In my opinion that speaks volumes on how desperate companies are for talent.

In medicine there is a concept of compensated and decompensated heart failure.

Just because you’re not turning blue and coughing up bloody froth doesn’t mean you have a normal heart.

The industry is in a state of compensated recruitment failure. It would not take much to tip things bad.

I do agree they (regionals) are currently tapping the existing pools of last resort.

But they could still create their own funded ab initio pipeline... pay for all training and create a pipeline student=>CFI=>regional=>major. Since they're paying it does NOT have to be guaranteed flow, they could have gateways along the process. They could then adjust the throughput with bonuses at the CFI/regional phases.

The problem is that they need to lead the problem... if the legacies start parking jets, then it's too late to start such a pipeline.