The aviation industry is growing and airlines are hiring pilots like we haven’t seen in almost two decades.
But students and career-changers should weigh the pros and cons before plunking down that hard-earned cash for flying lessons. The barriers to entry into the field are high, and the path forward doesn’t guarantee a promising career with stability, progression or growth potential. A lot has changed in the 30 years I’ve been flying airplanes. I often ask myself if I could do it over again, would I pick the same industry? #MyIndustry.
To be clear, I am looking at the issue almost exclusively from the North American perspective. In the rest of the world, airline pilots face other daunting challenges: financial restructuring, instability, and punitive industrial policies. In some countries, airline pilots must fly additional hours without pay and sometimes face discipline at managers’ whims.
Boeing’s 2014 Pilot and Technician Outlook, released in July 2014, projects that in the next 20 years, the world air transport system will need 533,000 new airline pilots. Some of this demand is based on the demographics and retirement of today’s pilots. At one major U.S. carrier alone, pilot retirements (requiring hiring and training replacements) will average nearly 100 pilots a month for the next 15 years! That being the case, shouldn’t there be a steady supply of aspiring aviators? The answer is that while the jobs are there, the entry-level pay is a significant disincentive.
Unfortunately, becoming an airline pilot today is an expensive and time-intensive undertaking. In the U.S., the large-jet airlines’ usual pipeline of military-trained pilots is a fraction of what it once was, and is not enough to offset the forecast need. Most of today’s pilot candidates will come from the civilian sector and will spend over $150,000 to complete their college aviation education and training. After that substantial investment, most can look forward to annual starting pay around $21,000. That’s why many flight school classrooms are vacant. It also helps to explain why many of today’s pilots, who would prefer to fly for U.S. airlines, work abroad for Asian and Middle-Eastern companies who offer compensation commensurate with the pilots’ skill, experience, and training.
Today, there are enough pilots world-wide. The current challenge to the industry is that there are not enough pilots in the U.S. who want to work for meager wages. Going forward, if there is no coherent policy to address the economics, one can envision a scenario where there will not be the supply of needed new pilots to meet the forecast demand. Business and government must work together to encourage a stable, economically strong airline industry. In turn, stability and consistent profits in the industry can create opportunities to address the inequities and encourage making an airline pilot career an attractive one for students and career-changers.
“May you live in interesting times” is an often-quoted, but uncredited curse. Looking back now on a piloting career over three decades, I have to admit that the times have never been un-interesting. The highs have been high, but infrequent. The lows have been survivable, but persistent. If I had to do it over again, would I pick the same industry? That’s an unexpectedly hard question to answer. I used to fly with a pilot who was furloughed after 9/11. He went to medical school and today is an anesthesiologist. He once considered coming back to the airline pilot ranks. I told him that with his physician’s salary there were easier ways to indulge his yen for flight.
-Captain Steve Gillen
Follow @ReneeGeraldo
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