An Electric Aviation Pioneer Who Aims to Crack the Pilot Shortage
forbes.com
forbes.com
You had to start with whatever small regional airline or cargo company you could get to accumulate hours, and eventually you could get into the airlines. Until the last 10 years or so, there wasn't really a shortage of pilots in the airlines.
Plus, as we know, non-executive salaries haven't been keeping pace with inflation. And perks and retirement benefits have been shrinking. So it's less attractive now to become a commercial pilot than it was 20+ years ago.
A couple of other factors are also involved. 1. The US economy has shifted away from trade/skilled jobs and into information jobs. 2. Many pilots of the past learned to fly in the military; but since WW2, we've had less and less need for pilots - especially now that we are moving a lot of activity to remotely piloted drones.
I expect that as commercial pilot jobs become more attractive (due to not enough applicants), the salaries may go up, and the interest will redevelop.
But how much does it cost to live like a druglord in South America?
Now it's around $30,000/year with a college degree. (Yeah, seriously.)
Experienced captains make $200,000 based on union senority, or $300,000+ in Asia for expats.
Assuming the economy is doing well, you can go get a regional airline job. Today it will pay $40k to start, but if the economy falters, there will be an excess of pilots, and those that are lucky enough to have an airline job will be getting $25k like they used to.
Finally, after some years of this, you'll move to a major airline and start finally making good money. All the while, you're often away from your family, living an unhealthy lifestyle, exposed to radiation, and if you ever have any significant illness or require most any medication, your career is over, and you have to apply all of those jet pilot skills to something else.
If you're 18 and starting your training today, you have 47 years to retirement, and it's very likely that less than half way through your career, automation and remote piloting will have advanced enough that many planes will only require one pilot, causing a collapse in the demand for airline pilots and wrecking salaries.
But hey, you get to fly for a living!
See the new Garmin/Cirrus/Piper "autoland" feature. Obviously GA is very different from Commercial, but there are definitely people in the industry working on this.
If you go back to the 1940s, some big aircraft had five flight crew for long-range flights. They progressively dropped the navigator, then the flight engineer in the 80s, because computers could do their jobs. Many small business jets already can fly legally with a single pilot.
When automation reaches the point that the computer can fly the entire flight, and the pilot merely needs to monitor, as we are close to with this new Garmin autoland system, the pilot incapacitation argument for having two crew members goes away. It's inevitable and just a matter of time.
> Already requested and had the data linked chart for our landing weight sent up to the aircraft: we require 5,671 feet on a wet runway, good braking, zero tailwind. Each knot of tailwind adds 150 to the distance required, so even one knot of tailwind exceeds the runway length.
* https://jethead.wordpress.com/2014/12/13/flying-a-jet-in-the...
Instead of the F/O flying the approach, he could simply have let the autopilot do the whole thing and focus himself, as he did, on the strategic aspects of the flight.
That being said, airline margins these days are so tight that it wouldn't surprise me to start seeing pushes for alternatives to raising pilot compensation. Anything from remote piloting and self-flying aircraft to lowering entry requirements is probably being discussed in board rooms right now.
I guess (a) reducing margins, (b) cutting executive pay, and/or (c) raising prices are all non-starters.
This may seem fine on the micro level -- an individual working into their 70s, but is a disaster at the macro level -- a significant part of a workforce suddenly in their 80s.
Senior workers tend to hold senior positions. A 65-er retiring frees a slot for someone in their 40s to move up, which frees a slot for someone in their 20s to take their prior role. Fewer retirements slow advancement for the rest of the workforce and drives out younger workers with skill to seek their fortunes elsewhere.
When that cadre of octogenarians finally starts dropping, the organization will be rushing to fill senior roles with mid-level employees, leaving a big gap to fill for the middle and entry levels.