The US Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) reports:

The 12 regional carriers reported 2.0 percent more FTEs in January 2016 than in January 2015. Six regional airlines – PSA Airlines, Compass Airlines, Mesa Airlines, Horizon Air, GoJet Airlines and SkyWest Airlines – reported increased employment levels.

The others reported decreases.

January 2016 US passenger airline employment data released - eTurboNews.com

 

The FTEs are ALL employees, so the six carriers that reported increases are total increases for ALL employees...pilots, gate agents, mechanics, etc.

It is interesting that a number of carriers reported decreases.

To see how the pilot shortage is progressing, we need to see numbers for pilots only...not in this report.

 

One interesting note from the latest FAA Forecast was that Regional RPMs decreased .7% on domestic routes and decreased 22.2% on international routes. Yet they are forecasting growth in 2016 of .7% domestically and .7% internationally. IMO they don't know what to do with their forecasts for the regional sector. I'm sure their forecast regression analysis came up with .7% for this year but seems coincidental to me. It will be interesting to see next year. I'm betting there is another loss. For the 2015-2035 forecast, the FAA forecast a 3.4% growth in domestic RPMs. I could not find a similar statistic for the international regime for regional carriers. There is always a variance that is possible with forecasting and I could not find that in the report but it would seem to me a deviation of 4.1% is quite large. Also, while it is no direct indicator of supply of pilots, I do believe it can be used indirectly as if the supply shrinks so to should RPMs.

FAA Forecast 2016-2036 Fact Sheet:

https://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets...m?newsId=20136

FAA Forecast 2015-2035 (Reference Page 49-50, specifically):

https://www.faa.gov/data_research/av...port_Final.pdf


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True, but I assume that total FTE is somewhat proportional to flight crews. While this may not be hard proof of a pilot shortage, it certainly gives you an indication of who is able to attract talent and presumable can grow.

 

Faa forecast says 1300 new airframes at the airlines over the next 20 years and 13,000 additional active atp licenses over the same time period. What pilot shortage?

 

And another forcast said it may rain later in the week.

 

What about the ATP's that get another job outside aviation, do corporate, become "your friend" from the FAA, fail a medical, have a DUI or are un-hirable? I'm not going to crunch numbers, but things look better than the lost decade at the very least. Also... 20 years is a lot of speculation. We'll likely all have flying cars and teleport machines by then anyway.

 

So we should be worried about less than 1000 new ATPs a year for 20 years while retirements at any SINGLE airline will be at or just under 1000 a year, for many years, real soon? I may have missed the sarcasm.

 

So if it 1300 additional airframes, 6 crews per airframe the math is -

1300 X 12 pilots = 15,600 pilots

13000 - 15600 = (2600)

Some people get an ATP but still fly as a private pilot, others go into corporate aviation, others get an ATP an go back to their home country.

 

I hate math....


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