I work in management at a Part 135 company and also as a flight instructor and I see a severe and very real shortage of pilots. The only active flight training is by those companies set up to train future airline pilots for Asian carriers. Who would go into the business when they now require a 4 year degree and 1500 hours, taking some 10 to 15 years, and $300,00 or more investment, only to get paid $25,000 a year?
I lose pilots to the majors and to regional 121 carriers all the time, at present I have only 1 full time pilot when I am used to having 5 or 6, plus a bunch of part time pilots. I am competing with the Regionals and cargo carriers because I need pilots with 4000 hours, an ATP and lots of PIC time especially twin and turbine time. Exactly what they want too.
I have had 80 percent of my pilots poached this year to the regional airlines and cargo carriers. Even the medical companies and Fractionals have taken a bite. I am spending most of my time training new pilots and many of them will only have a short time with us because they are already over 65 or are obviously attractive to the bigger operators.
Until recently most of my pilots had been here for more than 10 years, one was over 25 years. Now nobody has more than 4 years experience with us and training new people is a constant need.
I cannot pay enough to attract them or keep them. Increasing the pay, which is reasonable for the job, does not help. Most pilots want a life and will sacrifice pay for more time at home. If I increase the pay even 25 percent it will bankrupt the company. That is not an opinion, it is fact.
I used to fly in Asia and my copilots on the Boeings might only have 400 hours total. That has not changed to my knowledge and yet they don't seem to have a problem. Why does the US now need their SICs to have such a huge amount of flying time? What value is it if the flying they get is banner towing or flight instructing?
It is my opinion that the FAA has set out to destroy aviation. I will admit that most of them do not know what they are doing but the decision to accept the knee-jerk decision by Congress without argument had to have been seen as being something the industry just cannot accept without severe financial damage and a high risk of reducing the number of smaller carriers. So obvious that it had to be part of the plan.
Many Regional carriers have been parking airplanes because they cannot man them due to the pilot shortage. This leads to reduced scheduling and to reduced movements in smaller airports, which rely on FAA subsidies to operate. Those subsidies are taken away if there are not enough daily flights so that airports are being closed to scheduled carriers as well. A perfect storm and again something that could have been anticipated by the FAA and used as a basis to refuse to raise the bar that high. Instead they went along with it and all of aviation will suffer. If it is as bad as it is now, what will happen in a few years when the shortage continues to bite?
I have it on good authority that there are new rules coming down the pike concerning SMS that will effectively shut down all small 135 carriers too because of the increased compliance costs...Well done, FAA!
And all this for no good reason. The Colgan pilots had more than 1500 hours and an ATP so it obviously had no bearing on the accident. Creating a pilot shortage means that the airlines will not be able to do extra training because they do not have the resources any longer and they will be extremely loath to fail/fire any pilots they now have, for cause or any other reason. I can easily see that standards will fall and the overall safety of the industry will suffer. Those pilots who remain will be flying longer hours, maximum duty time and less days off simply to keep the airline operating. Add to this the new duty time limits and it will be lucky if we even have an industry.
The FAA adage "we are not happy until you are not happy" is true, believe me.