There is no pilot shortage. There is a shortage of suitably qualified i.e. hours or type rated pilots.
This is the nuance of the situation. Plenty of aspiring wannabe aviators at the base of the pyramid. Huge demand at the top. Training rate and experience (time dependant) are the choke points, the rate limiting step of the entire industry is now training.
Demand expansion at the top of the passenger pyramid (B737/A320 size and above) vastly exceeds the rate of the system ability to train pilots
and give them the required experience at the bottom. Anyone who can progress doesn't want to stay as an instructor training PPL/CPL longer than necessary, so there will be a perpetual shortage of instructors. Retiree's for training? Not many want to go back to sitting next to someone trying to kill them, even if they can even hold a medical.
For decades the industry has collectively saved a fortune in training, denying the accumulation of experience to the base. Instead it slowly consuming the human capital of experience as the pilot demographic aged. Now that capital is retiring. It is not retained by the organisation, it just vanishes from the industry. "Experience" simply cannot be conjured from thin air, it a function of time, there is no way around it. There is no commercially viable training program that can implant 5,000 or 10,000 hours of experience into a 500 hour pilots to make them ready to be a jet Captain. Airlines have had experience in spades and took it for granted, until it started retiring
en masse.
The signs of this impending situation were evident in 2007/08, however the GFC gave the industry leverage over pilots and suppressed the signal to start large training programs. Little to no succession planning was done in the West.
So really there are three issues:
- Retirements taking experience out of the industry
- Capacity expansion requiring more experience
- Training limitations at the bottom
Originally Posted by Andrias
Based on Boeing's projections - 790,000 Pilots required over the next 20 years. Is it possible that they might be basing their projection on the individual that has the equivalent qualifications and skills (i.e. Theory and Hours) to fly their aircraft? And Airbus manufactured aircraft as well for that matter (i.e. 1,500 hours, ATPL passes and possibly type rated)?
ICAO's General Secretary answered your question in Feb 2018
Our new numbers have revealed that no fewer than 620,000 pilots will be needed by 2036 to fly the
world’s 100-seat-and-larger aircraft, and that 80 percent of these future aviators will be new pilots
who are not yet flying today.
Address by the Secretary General of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Dr. Fang Liu,
“Civil Aviation: An Engine of Economic Development”, page 7
Thought experiment. What is the average time someone can achieve a command of A320 / B737 from the first moment they the moment they start off the street the process of learning to fly
in the commercial viable way? Not talking about the Ace's but an average pilot. How far will that put us into the cycle towards 2036/2038?