A Message to Wishful Young Flyers

You may have heard some say ‘forget a piloting career’; no new pilots will be needed because so many experienced pilots are now grounded. Don’t lose faith, encourages Captain John Bent, FRAeS.

Many young people ‘get the bug’ to fly from an early age. You may be one of those who dreams of a flying career.

My message for you is one of hope, based on lifelong experience as a pilot and on conservative industry projections. In fact, I believe that now is the best time to start your planning for a flying career!

In the short-term, new pilot demand will be very low. But it takes time to train as a professional pilot, and you should consider the following factors.

The airline industry will resume operations because the world needs it. Some authorities suggest that borders will re-open by year-end 2021. Grounded pilots are already returning to flight decks after re-training.

Just a couple of examples: Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines plans to have a full roster of pilots by October, and easyJet’s summer bookings are 250% over last year.

Pre-pandemic, airlines contributed 4% to global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and nations need to restore their economies as soon as possible. Many countries have high dependency on tourism and need tourists back fast. International businesses will still need to have face-to-face meetings, and families spread around the world want to reconnect with loved ones.

Some airlines have failed, yes, but new start-ups will replace them, and consensus projections suggest an eventual return to similar volumes of passengers seen in 2019; approximately 4.5 billion per year by 2025, rising to 8 billion by 2030.

Once the pandemic is under control and borders re-open, there is no reason to suppose that the airline industry will not continue to double every 15-20 years as has been the case since World War II. But post-pandemic, surviving airlines loaded with debt will need to find even more cost efficiencies than already achieved, and in new ways. Consider:

You may have heard that the use of pilots on the ground via data link will become an option, and it probably will. But passengers will need a lot of convincing to board robotic airliners, and this is most likely to take a generation or more. Although some airliners are indeed technically capable of autonomous flight now, until Artificial Intelligence becomes sufficiently capable and flexible, the human brain remains the best tool with which to handle unexpected events, such as sudden airspace closures due to border wars, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes at destinations, and many other unpredictable challenges.

Pilot Opportunities Ahead?

The Covid-19 crisis has already become a rapid change driver, as the importance of reduced carbon in aviation has now assumed even greater urgency.

Aircraft design initiatives such as hybrid, electric, and hydrogen fuel-cell powered aircraft are already being developed by aircraft manufacturers, and the first of these aircraft types could be in service with new sub-regional carriers within a decade. It has been calculated that this sector, serving commuters with high-frequency schedules between hundreds of city pairs around the world, may require upwards of 60,000 new pilots, over and above traditional industry needs. See the chart below for a partial list of electric aircraft in development.

Time to Jump in the Pool

As the post-pandemic resurgence of commercial flight escalates (projected 2022-2025), airlines will use the pool of grounded pilots to staff flight decks before finding it necessary to look for pilots from other sources.

While there will always be some pilots available from air forces and general aviation, this is traditionally a relatively small and irregular source, and the military and GA sources will have shrunk. The supply burden will fall back to Authorised Training Organisations (ATOs), aka flight schools, graduating newly licenced pilots.

By the time that the grounded pilot pool is drained, a large proportion of primary flight schools around the world may have closed for good, unable to survive years without students. At that point, airlines will find few pilots available from the reduced ATO pool to staff their growing fleets, which could severely impact their growth.

Starting new flight schools is a lengthy process requiring significant seed capital. But history tells us that airline pilot planning tends to be short term and reactive to fleet growth. To secure this critical need requires foresight to start launching new ATOs now.

For you as an aspiring pilot, this means you need to lock in your training as soon as possible with an ATO which has reasonable expectations of survival to 2024. You should aim for a start date around mid-2022 at the latest – the most realistic minimum time required to apply, complete the selection process, attend training, and qualify is two years.

If we assume that the grounded pilot pool will be drained by 2024 (the best current projections), for you to be a front runner for airline employment, you need to start planning now for a start of training in the year 2022.

Your Actions

Approaching the airlines at this time may be fruitless, as most airlines are wrestling with survival, and know that they have a ready source of experienced grounded pilots available for some time ahead.

You would do well to research the ATO industry for yourself in your region of interest to try to find a quality supplier with reasonably guaranteed business prospects up to 2024 and beyond. This will mean a careful check of financial viability and current students booked.

Should the availability of this training begin to look doubtful, please feel free to contact me ( johnbworld@gmail.com), and I may be able to help point you in the right direction.

Keep the faith, future aviator; humanity is now well used to air travel and it will return strongly.