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Comment by jcoby | Hacker News Reader

The private pilot is a dying breed. Skyrocketing costs make it all but impossible for most people to get into. Even getting your private pilot's license often costs $8k-$10k. And then you are looking at $150/hr to fly a 20-30 year old C172.

These skyrocketing costs make it so the fleet ages and becomes less reliable. So people get out. Or they die because they can't fly enough to get experience or the aircraft has a problem because it isn't flown enough.

And costs rise further because there is no market. It's a downward spiral. And it seems that the FAA is completely happy with the situation.

I've been out on beautiful days (low 80s, calm, 10 mi vis) and the CTAF is all but dead. Even 5 years ago there would have been 2-3 in the pattern and I would have heard a steady stream of traffic around the other 5 airports in the same frequency.

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"The private pilot is a dying breed."

Yes, literally.

One alternative is to go the LSA route (Light Sport Aircraft) they are substantially cheaper to buy and operate, plus the instruction requirements and Medical test are easier too.

Most people I know who've done it are older and need a hobby and have spare money when their kids are gone and mortgage is paid off.

True. Or they bought the plane 20+ years ago and still own it.

When I go to EAA meetings I'm the youngest by 15-20 years and I'm in my 30s. I don't think I've ever seen a privately owned certified plane that was newer than 25 years old.

It's all around a bad situation for general aviation.

Same here. I'm in my late 30s and am by far the youngest at any pilot gathering I attend.

I really don't know where the airlines are going to get the next generation of pilots from. Of course with the horrible pay and hours, I can't blame anyone from not choosing that career path.

I've heard that starting pay for ATP or cargo is somewhere in the low $20s and schooling is in the mid $100s. Is there any truth to that?

Yep, that's about right. If you do it right, schooling can be quite a bit cheaper, but starting is sometimes even less than 20k.

Plus figure in "working" 60+ hours a week and only getting paid for 30-40 of them. It's not uncommon for airlines to fly pilots from city to city to stage them for flights. But they only pay them for the time they are actually touching the controls. So they get up at 3am to catch series of flights, then don't start getting paid until noon.

>I really don't know where the airlines are going to get the next generation of pilots from.

The military. As usual.

Eh, I'm not so sure that'll happen. Military pilots aren't getting as many hours as they used to, plus it's actually a pay drop for them to leave and work for an airliner the way it is right now.

Right now the airlines have managed to talk high school grads into taking out huge student loans and drop 100K+ on a for-profit school, then take a job making ~ 20. There's no way that's sustainable though.

When my neighbor retired from the airforce, he moved on to flying planes for FedEx. He is paid VERY well for that.

I've always heard that FedEx and Southwest are the absolute best employers for pilots, and the regional carriers (who I was primarily talking about earlier) are the absolute worst.

No real idea on how accurate that is, just stuff I've overheard in pilot lounges at airports :)

Actually, the air force is paying out the ass to get high-TiG o-3s/ low-TiG o-4s to reenlist. Like, a $20k to $30k reenlistment bonus (that's tax free and on top of their salary of roughly $70k, not counting their BAH, which can be another $10k to more than $40k (it's $2500/month if you're an o-3 getting a master's at the naval post graduate school in monterey), also tax free). The reason they're not able to keep those pilots without the bonuses is because the airlines are offering starting salaries for those pilots around $90 to $100k; the bonus is designed to make the military pay roughly commensurate after BAH is included.

Interestingly, though, the navy is has a glut of pilots right now.

Really, I hadn't heard that.

I was going off all the information that came out after the Colgate Air 3407 crash in regards to how feeder airlines treat their pilots.

I've talked to several CFI's who are moving into regional carriers and they report the same environments, i.e. high hours/low pay.

It sounds like maybe you're set if you can clear that hurdle and move directly to a "real" airline?

Basically. It's kind of like how if you go to the right college for CS you can go directly to software engineer without having to spend years in IT or QA or working on your own side projects for fun, before finding someone who will pay you to be a software engineer, let alone someone like google or apple.

The major airlines love, love, love military pilots, especially ones that muster out around o-3, o-4 because they are in their late 20s/early 30s (lots of years left before mandatory retirement), they are already completely trained, have tons of time flying planes (compared to civilian pilots of the same age), and they are almost overqualified for ferrying passengers in terms of abilities/skills.

Maybe I'm being a bit far fetched here, but what if someone up in management is banking on "phasing out the pilots." Autopilot has for a long time been "good at some things", and there's often debate here as to what purpose a human pilot increasingly does or doesn't have in the cockpit as the computerized solutions become more reliable. As there are fewer pilots, relegate the physical role to a babysitter; potentially cutting down on the initial educational costs and reopening the low wage employment doors without that first costly hurdle.

Pilots on todays big airline planes are pretty much babysitters to the autopilot. Still, it will be a long time untill the notion of flying a plane with no pilot is accepted by the public. Even though it will probably be safer, as you're taking a chunk of human errors out of the equation.

It's some combination of loss aversion and the associated guilt that comes from negative consequences of positive actions.

There is a trade off: fully automated transportation (planes or cars) will eliminate routine operator error, like falling asleep at the wheel. On the other hand, there will also be corner cases which humans could (sometimes) handle that the autopilot didn't.

And human psychology means that not only will we weight the losses more heavily than the gains, but when losses happen and people die, we will feel unimaginably guilty over the losses, no matter how many people were saved.

I can already see all the headlines when the first big accident happens involving a self driving car.

Unfortunately for a lot of the planes the cost of education isn't really any less. The reason you want that babysitter is for when something goes wrong and if the pilot doesn't know much then the only thing he's supplying is the comfort factor of a 'real' pilot. I'd draw a parallel to a sys admin. It's all well and good to have a comsci student fresh out of university as your sys admin when the system is set up and running correctly. However unless you have one with the right experience when an unexpected error pops up you may end up with significant losses and a much longer/no recovery.

Maybe from overseas (mainly developing countries?). I don't know for sure, but I know some pilots from here (Brazil), including my cousin, who went off to fly for chinese and mid-eastern airlines, because the demand was high over there. Maybe the US won't be so far off?

Maybe the air force? They have tons of experience and the pay is pretty low for pilots. I don't think we're in a drought.

Luckily there is an ample supply of unemployed CPL-holders dying to take that right seat in an airliner (and sometimes even paying to do so).

(Disclaimer: I have a frozen ATPL(A) myself, worked for one of the biggest airlines and know at least 100 of mentioned unemployed pilots)

I have a close friend who owns two new Cirus planes. There are tons of people who own jets as well. It all depends on your economic bracket. I think, though, that the private plane industry is going towards smaller, more expensive aircraft.

It is more of a microcosm of the economy than anything else.

People still fly Cesnas because they are very stable and were not built with planned obsolescence in mind.

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