Plenty of Passengers, but Where Are the Pilots? | Hacker News Reader

Plenty of Passengers, but Where Are the Pilots?

nytimes.com

31 pointsdanso57 comments

Seems like an economics problem. The airplanes are full. The airlines are making lots of money. There aren't enough pilots. Hmm.... Perhaps pay them more?

This is what all the pilots I've met are saying.

It's what every employee in any profession is ever saying.

Well, if there is an employee shortage ...

Careful: don't apply that thinking to the "engineering shortage" or you'll never hear the end of it on HN. Engineers live in magicland, and in magicland, supply curves don't exist. People should work for passion and $60k, and if you don't, you're not a real engineer.

Not sure what you mean. Plenty, if not most, engineers on HN are compensated at market rate for their region and skill-set. The uproar over the anti-poaching scandal involving Apple, Google, etc. from a few years ago was due to the artificial wage deflation that it created. I can't recall folks from HN siding with the corporations during that time. Sure, sweat equity is valued at early-stage cash-strapped startups, but that is in addition to "passion" and a lower salary.

That's only half of the equation. They can't get more pilots by paying more, because the requirements to become a pilot are so arduous. According to the article, trainee pilots have to pony up ~$150k in training costs, as well as spend many years working in scarce non-commercial-carrier jobs. So in part, the solution would be to create more non-commercial-carrier pilot jobs, and/or for airlines to start sponsoring trainee pilots to make it more attractive (or even possible) for them to get qualified.

I've been watching this government-made crisis develop over the last 24 months.

Currently, you need 1,200 hours experience from a designated aviation college or 1,500 hours experience from GA.

I believe airlines will lobby Congress to halve the number of hours in the very near future as they get data on the massive pilot shortage.

Wasn't this requisite level of experience upped by Congress not terribly long ago?

Yes. In the US, originally you could be a First Officer without holding the ATP (Airline Transport Pilot) certificate. The ATP requires 1500 hours of flight time. Prior to the rule change, you would see regional airlines recruiting pilots with as low as 400 hours of total time (TT) for FO positions, allowing them to build the requisite hours to obtain their ATP.

The article mentions JetBlue is running a so-called ab initio program where they train pilots directly for the low sum of $125k! That's right -- pay $125k to (maybe) get a good job in 15 years.

As long as they charge 6 figures, there isn't a real pilot shortage. This is just the industry whining in the hope of finding a sucker (US taxpayers) to subsidize a training program for them.

There's only one other possible source: the ticket price.

Cancelling flights is pretty expensive. I would not be terribly surprised if the total cost in foregone revenue (both from the flights not flown and from the opportunity cost of the decreased inventory on the flight passengers are rebooked onto), aircraft parking fees, couriering lost luggage and in compensation/accommodation provided (whatever little that is) is in the thousands of dollars per flight.

In other words, all other things being equal, you can probably train a decent number of pilots from savings from not cancelling flights, without plucking tax payers or raising ticket prices.

Probably. And I am sure that airlines CFOs are keeping that in mind.

Then train the pilots. The airlines have out-sourced the training costs to the pilots, and then expect them to (at least initially) work for a pittance. $25K starting salaries, weird seniority rules etc.

And then they wonder why no-one is biting...

Enough people are biting to keep the system working.

And yet here ware discussing an article about how the system isn't working (anymore).

Oh, it's still working. It's just some people believe it may stop working.

Being a junior corporate lawyer is a miserable job. You need to study for 4 years of undergrad, pony up $150-200K for grad school, and then there's a >50% chance you wind up in a low paid job. Then if you do get one of the plum jobs, you are doing 60+ hours a week of grunt work buried under mounds of paperwork.

Why isn't there a shortage of corporate lawyers? Because they pay them very well.

The industry can figure out a way to get people through the system if they really want to. They can find a way to hire military pilots if they really want to.

Tinfoil hat: underpay the pilots... "oh look we don't have enough pilots"... automation time!

It's not a tinfoil hat, it is the only solution that will inevitably be implemented.

In the world where I routinely get cross-Europe plane tickets for $30, airline pilots are about as glamorous as truck drivers, and will be replaced by robots about as soon. And no, nobody wants to go back to the time when average ticket price was $300 or more.

Since when airlines make a lot of money? Their profit margins are so thin I wonder how they survive at all.

The solution is obvious, of course. Machines can drive cars, hence, they will be also flying planes soon.

Pilots complaining their jobs are routine? Good. All routine jobs are to be eliminated, the sooner the better.

I believe the airports themselves need more automation.

A modern large airport is the pinnacle of efficiency. Most of things there are already quite automated, or on the way to it.

In a historical context, you are right. Warren Buffett once said something to the effect of, "A far-sighted capitalist would have shot down the Wright Brothers" [0]

More recently the combination of consolidation, less competition and lower fuel costs have created record profits. [1] [2] [3]

Also, machines are already doing most of the flying. "Autopilot" comes from aviation. :-) Automatic planes are actually a less tricky problem than automatic cars, as there's much less random stuff to navigate in the air. [4]

[0] http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2011/12/business-quo...

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/business/energy-environmen...

[2] http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/2016/01/12/airl...

[3] http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jun/08/us-carriers-...

[4] http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/24/travel/autopilot-airlines/

On "less competition" — I don't know, maybe in the US. European airlines are currently busy with outcompeting each other to hell. I fly Swiss (that one that once was a premium airline, with silver dinnerware etc.) Twice a week. Average ticket price? $50 (Geneva to Barcelona). Trains are way more expensive now.

Yes - I think this is a US-centric article.

Not the whole issue. At the very least, raising wages significantly would mean higher ticket prices which in turn means lower demand.

The airlines are also afraid to put pilots in a situation of power at the negotiation table.

Right. This is the joy of a market. If a skill is scarce, people pay more for it. That encourages people to supply more of it.

As someone would have loved to become a pilot, but went into another industry because I wanted to be able to feed my family, the airlines have no one to blame but themselves. The pay for regional pilots is insultingly low.

I don't think pilots qualify for H-1B but perhaps the US gov't could come up with a scheme to allow experienced foreign pilots to come to the US and get trained and certified at the airlines' expense.

Piloting is bellweather profession for many other jobs vulnerable to automation. Is the debate about visa programs or universal basic income when all these jobs are gone?

A combination of pay, educational requirements, and job security holds people back from many professions that they are motivated to perform. But I don't know that there is a solution that government can provide alone. We all need to participate in creating work, security, education.

There are still great dreams to dream and jobs to have. I hope your current industry is also fulfilling.

This is another industry with a brutal gender gap (95%-5%) that I don't see referenced in the article as being an untapped source for talent.

http://www.womenofaviationweek.org/five-decades-of-women-pil...

Is it an industry that can get away with relatively low pay and bad hours, because it offsets those by preying on the stereotypical fantasies of young boys "I want to be a pilot when I grow up", thus making it difficult to attract "normal" career minded individuals?

Nursing has the opposite gender gap.

Its a common trend when I see an article about a profession that is having trouble to find enough people to recruit. Nurse, midwifes, carpenters, preschool teachers, dentists, plumbers, and so many more professions only recruit from one half of the population, and has thus problems when demand fluctuate.

Didn't the nytimes run an article about pilots having to work in starbucks to supplement their starting income?

1. The lack of pilot problem affects only regional carriers but not national airlines level yet.

2. Regional carriers can't afford to increase pilot salaries because national airlines are stingy.

This problem will begin to resolve, when the lack of pilot issue works up into the national airlines level. Eventually national airlines will be out of pilots, and they will be forced to either raise pilot salaries or institute training programs, or provide more favourable deals to regional airlines.

The problem initially started by passing of the bill in 2009 increasing the number of hours First Officers require by 5 times.

Since it takes a decade or more to train a pilot to that level, it may take a decade or more for the issue to percolate into the national airlines level.

By 2019, national airlines will be feeling the pinch in pilots and be forced to act. As they ramp up salaries, or provide more favourable deals to regional carriers, or implement trainee programs that train new recruits from from the ground up, or fully subsidising they training, the number of pilots entering flight schools will increase, or automating pilots away entirely.

By 2029, due to the previous ten years of work national airlines had done to attract pilots, or reduce dependency on them using automation, the issue of a lack of pilots will be resolved.

It's kind of scary that fixing pilot problem is going to take longer than it took aviation to go from first passenger jet to first 747!

Comet entered service in 52 and Jumbo Jet flew commercially in 1970. Compare this with 2009-2029 range you proposed.

The pace of change in "modern" world is depressing and that we are content with it is depressing even more. How about next year?

Also note how fast you can break something. Pass an act in a month, fix its fallout in 20 years.

You could move to Beijing, they're planning to open 18 new subway lines between now and end of 2020[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Subway#Future_lines

They're actually awesome, it takes them to build four lines as a new system the same time as it takes to build four-stations existing system expansion in cities outside China.

Moscow metro expansion plan is comparably bold but I doubt they'll deliver.

> Also note how fast you can break something. Pass an act in a month, fix its fallout in 20 years.

I wouldn't blame it only on that bill.

Airlines could have built a responsible pilot training system to address their needs while complying with those rules. Instead they built a racketeering system where pilots _pay_ companies for the right to work for them and earn hours.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_to_fly

This is a textbook example of companies maiming themselves on the long term in order to get some fast cash.

Wanted to become a pilot, so I did the maths. Didn't add up so I got a job in IT, now it does :).

The article says most flying is automated these days. I can see the need for a human in the loop for special conditions. However, humans do make errors, and sometimes act maliciously.

How far are we, do you think, from self-flying planes?

Maybe freight would be the initial area to introduce them, as the risk of loss of life is minimised.

In the air. On the ground the risk is the same.

Even in the US there is a whole lot of open space. And I don't think massive distribution centers are in extremely urban areas with high population density.

Yeah, but where are the airports? They're inevitably in population centers.

Case in point: FedEx flies into SJC, and the planes on the approach fly low over downtown, and very low over 101, since the end of the runway is right next to 101.

An unmanned cargo plane could suicide in an emergency such that no human is harmed.

I think we are already there given that flying is a much easier task than driving. See http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/03/has-th...

As one conspiracy theory, low pilot pay could be the industry's way of forcing the issue, given the psychological barriers to completely automated flights. Additionally, partial automation leads to lots of boredom for pilots, which could detract from rather than improve safety (full automation avoids that problem).

We should see it happen in our lifetimes, anyways.

a long way, as there are many unpredictable unforeseen combinations of events in the sky. A much more likely scenario is single pilot commercial flights, especially for regionals, effectively doubling pilot capacity.

Maybe we'll see single pilots on short regional flights, but with pilots falling asleep and things like the Germanwings suicide I can't imagine single pilot commercial flights being the norm happen any time soon. And on longer domestic flights, pilots still need to be able to eat a meal and get up to use the bathroom.

Despite the silly comments in this thread, we're so far away from drone airliners that the question is in the realm of science fiction because of human judgment:

- airports and terminal areas are very busy

- en route diversions can happen anytime due to weather observed in flight

- airports like SFO can be fogged in most any day.

Military drones aren't being landed in busy urban areas.

None of these points are big obstacles. Airports may be "busy", but the system is already set up such that pilots can perform a whole flight under next-to-zero visibility. It's mainly an issue of airspace control.

En route diversions are easy to handle by a rudimentary flight crew and communication equipment. The computer just needs to know the new destination and off it goes. It could even find one on its own, if all the crew is knocked out and all communications have failed.

That being said, people won't trust an AI enough to make this a reality soon. Even though a system more secure than an average pilot is certainly conceivable.

In all three of those circumstances the human pilots are already relays, and are not really not necessary as executors.

Consider the current ATC data links such as CPDCLC. The pilots read what appears on the screen and press ACCEPT to load the ATC commands into the flight management computer which instructs the autopilot.

Pilots don't land in thick fog, autoland has been doing that for 50 years. If autoland self-aborts they divert to another airport and follow the ILS needles to land there...

TCAS negotiates collision-avoidance in busy airspace and generates emergency action commands for the pilots.

Military drones are also at least partially overseen by a pilot as well.

When we've mastered the automation of cars, then we can start turning our eyes to be able to handle planes as well. Just like cars, automating clear and calm days is relatively simple; but most days are neither clear nor calm.

I don't think we are ever going to get them, frankly. Or at least not passenger planes. Machines do break down, no matter how many redundant systems you put in. You want to always have someone on board who can help, even if the plane flies by itself 100% of the time during normal operation. Unless of course, that's what you meant. I mean that planes will always have to have someone familiar with flying on board, even if that person is not doing anything most of the time.

Well technology helped to eliminate the flight engineer role on modern planes. Technology could eliminate the need for a co-pilot, but the problem here is the lack of trust of having a single human in the loop. Plus the additional issues that others have mentioned e.g. pilot suicide, etc.

Seeing as autopilot gets disengaged when a problem is detected (inconsistent airspeed measurements from different sensors, for example) and control handed over to a human ... a fair way off I would wager.

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