I'm not sure if I missed this in the authors piece, but does he count for how many of those commercial students were foreign? From personal experience, trying to find Americans wanting to take up the piloting profession is is like looking for a needle in a haystack in my part of town. There are at least 3 puppy mills cramming 300 Chinese students through the grinder every 6 months here in Dallas. That's 1500 new commercial certificates alone. My questions is, when it hits the fan again, will the airlines start looking abroad to hire foreign students at an even lower salary than they're willing to pay US citizens?

 

I ran total numbers and came up with the following: Total pilots in the FAA database with a certificate (Student, Recreational, Sport, Private, Commercial, or ATP), using the USA as a "country" (the database does include foreign pilots with an FAA certificate and I did remove them from the pool), and disregarding medical expiration date I returned 526,506 certificates. When I selected just ATPs in the USA without regard to medical I returned 111,746. CMEL with an instrument rating (no ATP) without regard to medical, I returned 72,513. The combined of the two is 184,259.

You can search with a limitation on the medical expiration. I choose limit the pool to those with medicals initially issued as first class that expired or will expire in 2009 and 2010. The number of ATPs is 76,257. The number of CMELs with an instrument rating but no ATP is 18,054. The total of the two is 94,311. That number at the end of 2007 based on my search with the same methodology then was approximately 104,000. If you add in the pilots that meet the above with a medical that expired in 2008 you would add 9906.

Here is a link to the FAA database through Landings.com which has a fairly good search engine:
Landings: Aviation's Databases

I used APC data for the current number of employed pilots. It didn't take that long to add them up.

While the actual numbers are interesting and debatable, using the same methodology in Jan 2008 and now I come up with about the same number of "available" pilots in the pool.

 

Because of ICAO rules, CAL requires all FO's/IRO's to hold a current first class medical.

 

Nope. Married. But I am sitting at home on reserve this month. Haven't flown a hour all month. And yes, getting a little bored.

 

Yep, I was trying to clarify what he was saying as he only mentioned FO's as a whole, as well as a waiver.

 

Thanks WEACLRS, interesting info.

 

But aren't those students destined for China's own exploding aviation industry, trained in the US because (among other reasons) China simply doesn't have the required GA infrastructure to handle that volume?

 

YES. And it is the only way some flight schools are surviving.

WEACLERS, you are ruining the day for the typical pessimistic airline pilot.

 

This may be how it is at AE, but not everywhere. When I was at ExpressJet we had to get a 1st Class Medical EVERY year. We were allowed to let it go past 6 months, HOWEVER when we went to get our medical renewed it was required to be renewed as a 1st Class Medical. We were never allowed to just get a 2nd Class. This is how it works at DAL/NWA as well.

BTW, when your 1st class medical hits 6 months it is STILL a 1st class medical. It does NOT become a 2nd class medical, you are just not allowed to excercise the privileges of that 1st class medical past 6 months.

 

Tom,

It still works this way at DAL. I'm a Diesel 9 FO, and I get a new 1st Class every 12 months.

PS-I hope you're enjoying retirement. It must be nice to look at all this junk knowing it no longer effects you.