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commercial pilot shortage coming?

Part of the problem could be solved be eliminating the need for a 4 year degree to be hired. Why should someone waste their time and money on art history and psych 101 when they should be working on their flying skills. These kids with 160k debt wasted about 100k on stuff they will not need to do the job.
 
Fallonflyr said:
Part of the problem could be solved be eliminating the need for a 4 year degree to be hired. Why should someone waste their time and money on art history and psych 101 when they should be working on their flying skills. These kids with 160k debt wasted about 100k on stuff they will not need to do the job.
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Part of the college experience is learning independency, gaining a little maturity - and surprisingly - some of that "other than flying" stuff comes in handy, like math, physics, economics, writing....
 
From the linked article:


Also, FAA regulations created in response to an aviation safety law passed by Congress two years ago will raise the experience threshold required to be an airline first officer from the current 250 hours of flying time to 1,500 hours, the same level as required of captains. That's expected to make it harder for airlines to find qualified new applicants.​
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At the same time, the pool of military-trained pilots that airlines have relied upon in the past has largely dried up as more pilots choose to remain in the military rather than seek airline careers, industry officials said. That means airlines have had to rely on new hires that have accumulated their experience at flight schools and, later, working as flight instructors at local airports and the flight schools.​
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As discussed in another thread, it's not necessarily that military pilots choose to stay in military - a lot of it has to do with the fewer first tour hours we're getting, which "forces" us to stay in past our first flying tours vice jumping ship while we're still young. Based on the one-size-fits-all career path each service has, getting back into the cockpit takes time, is not guaranteed, and often means flying a lot less than on your JO tour.
 
As long as they can pull from flight schools and hire 23 year CFIIIIIIIs (or whatever they are) - they'll be able to get away with stupid low pay. Those kids aren't going to say no - especially if they've had to hang around their local FBO even longer now to get to the 1500 hour mark.

The issue I've always wondered about though has little to do with the number of hours and more to do with the quality of hours. A dude flying around Middle Of Nowhere Muni does not come close to a guy who's got 1500 hours flying around a ship, pointing his nose at the ground, night traps, section/division lead type stuff. I know who I'd hire. Heck, I'd hire the second guy with half the hours.
 
That story should've had a "Sponsored by Embry Riddle Aeronatical University" line at the end. Jesus.
 
Yep.. But per mins, a kid with 1500 hours and a fresh ATP, but with 1250 of it "PIC" (signing, not sole manip) is worth more than me with 3500 hours, 2000 of it Military, but only 150 PIC in Fixed Wing.
 
MasterBates said:
Yep.. But per mins, a kid with 1500 hours and a fresh ATP, but with 1250 of it "PIC" (signing, not sole manip) is worth more than me with 3500 hours, 2000 of it Military, but only 150 PIC in Fixed Wing.
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And there's not much that anyone is going to be able to say to make that suck any less. And while I clearly think the quality of flight time in your logbook is greater than local CFI at the muni - at some point PIC hours matter.

Recovering LSO said:
The issue I've always wondered about though has little to do with the number of hours and more to do with the quality of hours. A dude flying around Middle Of Nowhere Muni does not come close to a guy who's got 1500 hours flying around a ship, pointing his nose at the ground, night traps, section/division lead type stuff. I know who I'd hire. Heck, I'd hire the second guy with half the hours.
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My comparison here is really a PIC to PIC comparison.
 
Recovering LSO said:
The issue I've always wondered about though has little to do with the number of hours and more to do with the quality of hours. A dude flying around Middle Of Nowhere Muni does not come close to a guy who's got 1500 hours flying around a ship, pointing his nose at the ground, night traps, section/division lead type stuff. I know who I'd hire. Heck, I'd hire the second guy with half the hours.
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To begin with, while I will usually give the edge to the military guy, it is due more to the training, and not the quality of the 1500 hours. That said, the quality of those 1500 hours is going to go down because of this stupid new rule. Now, every one of those 1500 hours will likely be, as you say, instructing and most of it in single engine. Now instructing is valuable experience, but I'd rather have a guy coming up on 1500 hours and his ATP with 500-700 hours flying in a twin turbine commuter in a variety of weather and terminal areas mentored by a competent captain. As has been said else where on this forum in the past. Generally, the civil route is just different. In my personal experience I see very little difference between the two routes by the time they get to the bigs. As for the minor leagues, you aren't seeing many military guys there anyway so there is no comparison. Although I was hired 20 years ago, you rarely saw civil and military 1500 hour guys competing for the same job. What I saw was nearly a 1000 hour premium required of most civilians. Military with 1200-1500 hours and civilian guys with 2500-3000. That extra 800-1000 hours was spent flying for a small airline learning how airlines work or some heavier iron in the world of cats and dogs. Either way, it wasn't the boat, it ws the very environment they were going to fly in as an airline pilot. The old way worked just fine. ALPA pushed congress into this ruling because of one high profile accident that had little to do with the co pilots total time and a lot to do with the training of the captain and the trainers and mangers at Colgan that let him slip through.
 
^ I respect your experience but disagree with your summary of the Colgan mishap. Yes, the issues with the Captain were, for lack of a better word, obscene - the NTSB report suggests that a more qualified, more mature, and more competent first officer could have altered the course of that needless mishap.

F it. I don't work for an airline and, God willing, never will - I'm just telling you that when I see a set of Naval Aviator wings on the pub case being pulled by the guy driving the 1130 out of SEA to San Diego I feel better. If I were to later find out that he's seen the back of a blue water ship at night... Well that might just be enough to cause me to not white knuckle the arm rest (like I do the rest of the time).
 
Recovering LSO said:
^ I respect your experience but disagree with your summary of the Colgan mishap. Yes, the issues with the Captain were, for lack of a better word, obscene - the NTSB report suggests that a more qualified, more mature, and more competent first officer could have altered the course of that needless mishap.

F it. I don't work for an airline and, God willing, never will - I'm just telling you that when I see a set of Naval Aviator wings on the pub case being pulled by the guy driving the 1130 out of SEA to San Diego I feel better. If I were to later find out that he's seen the back of a blue water ship at night... Well that might just be enough to cause me to not white knuckle the arm rest (like I do the rest of the time).
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If you drink like you're on liberty when you fly commercial, you tend to not give a shit.

"Fuck it...be sure to hit something hard, Captain. At least I won't have to sit through another critical days of summer lecture."
 
KBayDog said:
As discussed in another thread, it's not necessarily that military pilots choose to stay in military - a lot of it has to do with the fewer first tour hours we're getting, which "forces" us to stay in past our first flying tours vice jumping ship while we're still young. Based on the one-size-fits-all career path each service has, getting back into the cockpit takes time, is not guaranteed, and often means flying a lot less than on your JO tour.
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I think it is also that a lot of guys who would get out to fly for the airlines aren't because of how hard they have seen some of their contemporaries have it the last ten years. Give it 5-10 years, or sooner, and I think you will see the same retention issues with pilots that we saw before 9/11 where the military had a hard time holding on to enough pilots.
 
As long as we are talking about training and experience, consider this. Most pilots at foreign airlines come from intense military style ab initio training programs run by the airline itself. They learn their airline's procedures and policies from day one. In the end they are flying copilot on a B737 or A319 with barely 500 hours. That is not so different than a nugget pilot in the Navy. With the exception of some Asian countries where culture is not condusive to good CRM or mentoring, the safety records of companies that use ab initio training is very good. That is why I say it is more about the training. Military pilots get paid to do far more than just fly from point A to point B. That makes their job more challenging and in the end, perhaps better stick and rudder guys. An airline pilots ONLY job is moving from point A to point B. We don't get paid for putting bombs on target, shutting down an IAD or putting a sling load down on the deck of a pitching ship. Airline pilots are paid solely for their judgment. Smooth landings mean nothing but bragging rights. On time performance is virtually out of the flight crews hands these days. Airline pilots are paid to decide whether or not to make the approach into weather, where he should divert, if the police need to meet the airplane on arrival, what to do with the suspicious device found in the lav, whether to land short of a destination because of a sick passenger, how to deal with the flight attendant cat fight, etc. Absolutely non of that has anything to do with monkey skills. I dare say, the judgement of NFOs have saved many an aircrew and they are not even pilots. Do military guys have the requisite judgment to do the job, certainly. But so do most civilian sourced guys that may have had to deal with the same sort of problems before they went to United. Judgment is exclusive of flight time. Experience can certainly inform judgment, but it is not necessary and experiences can be shared. That is why having a mix a guys in the airline, civilian from commuters, air farce heavy guys, civilians from third tier overseas freight operations, Navy tacair and even army helo drivers is so important.

In the Colgan mishap the weather sucked and procedures and known techniques were not followed. How many hours does it take to know the weather was bad, and the approach wasn't being flown accurately or procedure were not being followed? The co-pilot had all the experience she needed to know those things. She lacked judgment and assertiveness. The Captain was even more handicapped. In any case, it had nothing to do with hours. It is about judgment. Whether military or civilian, some guys some times make a bad judgment call. That is when safety is compromised. Not when a 1800 hour civilian sourced pilot steps onto the flight deck.
 
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