Pilotchute

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?

Sloneckozzz

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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BobSacamano

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.

NovemberBravo

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

Sloneckozzz

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

Strongly advise looking at these numbers.

IDrive175

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.

Excargodog

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.

stabapch

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.

TheWeatherman

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.

rickair7777

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).