dik cheney
From the Asian Times:
Chinese airlines in dogfight for scarce pilots
By Robert Hartmann
HONG KONG - The rapid development of China's civil-aviation industry in recent years has led to a serious shortage of pilots.
According to published figures, 11,000 pilots serve in China's civil airlines, flying more than 800 planes. It is predicted that by 2010, China will have 1,250 aircraft in service, meaning that the industry will require at least 6,500 more civilian pilots by then.
From the McClatchy site:
BEIJING — A pilot shortage is throttling the dramatic and safe ascent of China's aviation industry, leaving hundreds of new Boeing and Airbus jetliners on order without pilots to fly them.
China will need an average of 2,500 pilots each year for the next two decades to fill cockpits, but it can't meet the demand.
So for the first time, foreign pilots are taking command of some Chinese airliners. Citing the pilot shortage as one factor, Aviation Minister Yang Yuanyuan recently declared that the industry is growing "too fast." He's cut back daily flights, slowed the launches of start-up airlines and warned that safety must prevail over growth.
China isn't the only country with a pilot shortage. Airlines across East Asia — and around the world — are grounding flights and offering special pay packages to poach aviators from as far away as Brazil, Russia and Indonesia.
"It's something that is sneaking up on the industry overall because there have always been pilots in the wings," said William R. Voss, chief executive of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va.
Chinese aviation regulators say the nation will need an additional 9,000 or more pilots by 2010, as national airlines add jetliners at the rate of up to 150 a year.
"But speaking truthfully, we only have the capacity to train about 7,000, leaving us short 2,000 pilots," said Gao Hongfeng, the deputy head of the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China. "The shortage of pilots has become an important factor constraining civil aviation's development."
St Petersburg Times...
Shortage of Airline Pilots Sets Off Alarm Bells in Industry
By Maria Antonova
The St. Petersburg Times
SASOVO, Ryazan Region — With its neat rows of houses surrounded by lush greenery, the state-run Sasovo flight school is a bucolic place, graduating up to 300 pilots a year in Soviet times. Today, students occupy only two out of the six dormitory buildings, and the graduating class this spring will total about 40.
A growing shortage of pilots, one of the industry’s most pressing problems before the economic crisis, has been masked partially by falling passenger numbers. But aviation experts expect it to re=-emerge in full force.
The average age of a Russian pilot is 50, and 900 pilots are forced to quit every year after failing to pass strict medical tests, according to Federal Aviation Agency statistics. The government has launched a program that aims to churn out 1,000 new pilots nationwide every year, but even that measure will not fill the gap overnight.
Of course you need to look outside your somewhat local boundaries to see this stuff...
