Interesting
article on current and projected pilot shortfalls . . . .
"Long-time airline analyst Helane Becker of Cowen estimates the industry may need 35,000 to 40,000 new pilots over the next decade — to offset an increase in retirements and keep pace with travel demand."
if the industry doesn't see an influx of pilots, the airlines will be forced to cut flights to smaller cities. In effect, they would miss out on sales and profits.
Maybe that means the U.S. regionals will try to leverage that to drum up higher subsidies for Essential Air Service routes. These are typically the smaller cities where the municipal airport is a short drive but the nearest regional airport is an hour or two away, so they get daily flights from the municipal airport direct to a hub or hubs.
I can see how it could happen- full pilot staffing, to include unprofitable routes where you only put a handful of passengers on a 50 seat jet (or a turboprop with fewer seats), is more expensive this day and age with all the job mobility, churn, training costs, etc. The last few months have had a lot of "these cities cut by ____" articles in the travel blog world as well as more media traffic about the demise of the 50 seat regional jets that serve those segments. Those fleets are worn out as it is, they have worse gas and maintenance per passenger mile costs, and the economics of seats per pilot are self-explanatory, but up until 2021 the industry had enough pilots and revenue to put pilots in those seats and fly those routes.
It's a fair chunk of regional flying and it's a good system for building up pilot experience. It's like a little leagues but with big league consequences—flying scheduled air service to sometimes challenging airports with weather, short runways, surrounding terrain—and it does make for a collectively smarter airline pilot population. So maybe the airline industry might use the safety angle to get more government cheese. A good way to pay for expensive things is to use other people's money...
There's going to be more pressure to bump up the mandatory retirement age a couple more years and to reduce pilot minimum certification and/or experience requirements. It's gonna be fun watching Congress argue about both of those things, especially the second thing.
www.nytimes.com
