The pandemic heated a simmering pilot shortage to boiling point, leaving airlines scrambling to hire enough pilots to get flight schedules back to full capacity. The shortage is expected to limit capacity growth, and be a factor in higher ticket prices.
Carolina Larsson was in her mid-30s and working at an investment bank in New York City when she overheard a co-worker talk about flight lessons. Soon she was taking lessons at the same flight school and plotting a career change.
Not a ‘temporary issue’ U.S. airlines received billions in government loans in 2020 to make payroll as travel restrictions, put in place around the world to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, caused a sharp decline in bookings. Flight schools were also getting hit and graduating fewer pilots. Many schools had to close doors under public-health orders, offering flight students fewer opportunities to build the flight hours they need to qualify and slowing graduation rates.
That includes about 219,000 airline pilots, with 65,000 needed in North America alone, a CAE spokesman told MarketWatch. Flight-training is fragmented, too. CAE graduates about 1,500 new pilots a year, but there are dozens of smaller schools graduating just a handful of pilots each year. Hiring new pilots has patterns: usually, regional airlines — which fly small-market, short-haul routes for different airlines — are viewed as a stepping stone toward becoming a pilot for larger airlines.
Rising fuel prices and not enough pilots are the main capacity constraints for airlines, and consumers are seeing it play out in fare prices. “The pilot shortage is going to manifest itself with reduced service, reduced frequencies,” and airlines flying larger aircraft to compensate for that, said Geoff Murray, a partner with consultancy Oliver Wyman.
Murray has predicted that the more likely scenario is for a global gap of 34,000 pilots by 2025, which could turn out to be as high as 50,000.
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