Oh no, not again...

[DeltaT]

Is it that time again already for the industry whinge? :ugh:

NZ's pilot numbers continue to dive | Radio New Zealand News (http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/333202/nz-s-pilot-numbers-continue-to-dive)


NEW ZEALAND TRANSPORT 16 Jun 2017
NZ's pilot numbers continue to dive
5:57 pm on 16 June 2017

Eric Frykberg Eric Frykberg, Transport, Energy & Resource Infrastructure Reporter
[email protected]

Too few pilots are being trained in New Zealand, industry leaders say, with new pilot approvals having nearly halved between 2009 and 2016.

Pilot in airplane cockpitFlying New Zealand said young pilots had a difficult time when they finished studying. Photo: 123RF
Their comments match official statistics.

Figures from the Civil Aviation Authority showed the number of commercial and air transport pilots it approved between 2009 and 2016 had fallen from 709 to 386.

Air Line Pilots' Association president Tim Robinson said supply was not coming close to meeting demand.

He said too few pilots were being trained, those who were often went overseas after training, and about 50 pilots were retiring each year.

President of Flying New Zealand, the aero clubs' umbrella body, Rob George said young pilots had a difficult time when they finished studying.

"You could be talking about a two-year course with a six-figure student loan, and you are probably employable at not too far above the minimum wage as a very inexperienced, low-hours instructor."

Mr George said this was the only realistic way for a pilot to get flying hours anywhere near the 1500 required to apply for even the lowest-level flying job at Air New Zealand.

With challenges like this, Mr George said many people were deterred from an aviation career in the first place.

"Entry level jobs are quite difficult for people to get into unless they go offshore to somewhere like Papua New Guinea or the islands or whatever to build those hours and experience," Mr George said.

To train pilots, the government pays some money - but it falls around $30,000 a year short for most students.

The government also caps the total number of students at a fixed level.

Captain Robinson said that cap should increase, and that wasn't all.

"We would also like to see more industry investment in pilot training because companies are of course the major beneficiaries of an efficient training system," he said.

"At present there is no real investment from the airlines in pilot training itself."

The pilot shortage is not just a local problem.

A study by the University of North Dakota forecast a global shortage of 15,000 pilots by 2026.

John Nicholson of the industry body Aviation New Zealand said this country had to move fast to meet this challenge domestically.

Air New Zealand said it had no issues with attracting applicants for flying roles with its regional airlines which is where most pilots start out.

However the company tried four years ago to put pilots on a government list for approved migration.

Immigration New Zealand turned down its application.

[ElZilcho]

He said too few pilots were being trained, those who were often went overseas after training

Because there's no bloody jobs for them here, so why do we need to train more!

This article just wreaks of Sausage factory Flying Schools who built their business round the uncapped and unregulated student loans of the mid 2000's.

I finished Instructing not long after these loans began, but what I saw was bordering on the criminal. Kids with no aptitude as Pilots, 50+ hours in their books and still not solo. The instructors wouldn't say anything, they wanted the hours, and the flying schools wouldn't chop them because the money kept coming in. I hate to think how many are still suffocated by debt with nothing to show for it.

[PoppaJo]

Next to no jobs? Wouldn't be connected with the size of that country's population now would it?

Know a lot of unhappy pilots in the sandpit trying to get out, I doubt Air NZ will be needing to invest in flight training anytime soon...

[Jbrownie]

Is it that time again already for the industry whinge? :ugh:

NZ's pilot numbers continue to dive | Radio New Zealand News (http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/333202/nz-s-pilot-numbers-continue-to-dive)

Hahahha Delta its funny you mentioned that in the other forum and wah-Lah. Here it is.

[DeltaT]

Yes just amazing how this comes up on wash and repeat cycle.
And yet the 'cred' is coming from a NZALPA rep this time. Shameful.

[roundsounds]

At least NZ CAA publish the stat's, I haven't seen any stat's on pilot numbers from CASA since the introduction of Part 61, etc.

[27/09]

Yes just amazing how this comes up on wash and repeat cycle.
And yet the 'cred' is coming from a NZALPA rep this time. Shameful.

There has never been a shortage in the past. I have no idea what the true facts are now, but if there's no shortage why has one New Zealand turbo prop operator reported to have been offering visa sponsorships?

[ElZilcho]

There has never been a shortage in the past. I have no idea what the true facts are now, but if there's no shortage why has one New Zealand turbo prop operator reported to have been offering visa sponsorships?
Because they need Q300 DEC's and are currently crewing them out of Aussie.

[DeltaT]

if there's no shortage why has one New Zealand turbo prop operator reported to have been offering visa sponsorships?
If you read the Rishworth ad, the 8 days off per month -none are consecutive.
That is not very appealing!
No wonder they can't get people and need to offer visas.

[Vag277]

Round sounds

See here. https://www.casa.gov.au/sites/g/files/net351/f/ar1516_part6.pdf?v=1476938431

This data is published annually.You just need to look.

[CurtainTwitcher]

but if there's no shortage why has one New Zealand turbo prop operator reported to have been offering visa sponsorships?

Economics 101: supply vs demand. As supply is increased, the price will fall. Q.E.D if you want to prevent wage increases, increase supply. Two ways to do that, train them, or import them.

Welcome to Globalization of wages. It isn't about boosting developing world wages, rather pressuring the developed world down to the third world standard.

Citizenship [or the prospect of it] & residency are the carrots to facilitate this process. NZ has been a poster child for this method of suppressing wages, AU isn't far behind.

[Offcut]

So, 50 retirements a year and 386 joining the workforce? And that's a shortage? And those 386 can only get jobs by leaving NZ. Yet another bulls..t grab for government funding by the training organisations. They could at least make up some more convincing stats to throw at us.

[CurtainTwitcher]

Just look at what has happened across the dutch with the Oz system of private colleges raping the taxpayer over training. Would it surprise anyone that Jetstar implemented a VET FEE-HELP system to use the taxpayer to backstop it's cadet program (http://archive.is/AAyxq).

The education providers win through a taxpayer subsidised loans and the employers win by increasing the number of inexperienced graduates supplied to industry, suppressing wages.

The scandals that went on in this industry were legendary, a quick google search will reveal anecdotes of massively overpriced, poor to no-existent training fraud within this system.


How VET FEE-HELP debt went from costing taxpayers $325m to $3b (http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/how-vet-feehelp-debt-went-from-costing-taxpayers-325m-to-3b-20160721-gqasfh.html)
How VET FEE-HELP debt went from costing taxpayers $325m to $3b

The federal government was warned as early as 2012 that unscrupulous providers were rorting the vocational education loans scheme and that there were no safeguards to protect against the abuse of vulnerable students, blowing the scheme out from $325 million to $3 billion in less than three years.

It was not until 2015 that the government took emergency action, freezing payments to the sector. Now, new evidence is emerging of education operators engineering alternative ways to boost lucrative student dollars, as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission pursues several colleges for the return of hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funding.

In a 2012 departmental warning, the Gillard government was told specifically that people with disability had been targeted and gifts had been offered as inducements to enrol in courses where student loans under the VET FEE-HELP scheme were available. The government was also told that it had no power under the law as it stood to take action against such practices.

The warning was also ignored under the Abbott government, until several vocational college rorts were exposed in the media and investigations instigated by ACCC and the AFP in 2015. Education minister Simon Birmingham then froze payments to all private providers at 2015 levels and in April 2016 released a discussion paper on redesigning the scheme.

The 2012 warning was contained in a Regulation Impact Statement on the VET FEE HELP redesign, prepared by the then Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education.

"If the limitations identified with VET FEE‐HELP's quality and accountability framework are not addressed, the potential to damage industry confidence in the quality of VET qualifications and the role of VET FEE‐HELP is high," the document said.

"Complaints to the government have identified instances where people with disability have been targeted for enrolment or gifts have been offered to students as an incentive to enrol in courses where VET FEE‐HELP is available. There are currently no legislative provisions to enable the Government to deter or stop such actions from occurring once it has been identified."

It comes as the fourth minister in a year in the scandal-plagued sector, Karen Andrews, was sworn into office this week.

Questions addressed to Ms Andrews were answered by Mr Birmingham's office.

Mr Birmingham said he would play a "leading role" in the re-design of the scheme, in his former role as vocational education minister Mr Birmingham banned the use of laptops as inducements across the sector.

"We've already introduced more than a dozen measures to clean up Labor's mess that inflated the cost of loans and saddled students with extra debt and saw some providers prey on unwitting and vulnerable Australians," he said.

In a submission to the government's latest discussion paper on redesigning VET FEE-HELP, the Mitchell Institute's Professor Peter Noonan has pointed out that the 2012 warning to government is important because "a key issue is the extent to which the problems with VET FEE‐HELP should have been identified, risk assessed and managed far earlier than they were, including through urgent legislative amendments".

He points out that cost blowouts in the VET budget from rapid enrolment growth were apparent in Victoria in 2011, followed quickly by South Australia in 2012, the states that had moved earliest to introduce demand driven, government-funded VET places.

"Caution was not exercised with the implementation of VET FEE‐HELP even as enrolments, overall loan values and payments to individual providers began to rise rapidly in 2012 before escalating exponentially from 2013 and beyond," Mr Noonan writes.

He also says the states effectively used VET FEE-HELP to shift the cost of skills training to the federal government, even though it is formally a state responsibility.

With Eryk Bagshaw

Another example of the scale of the problem from the ABC: Careers Australia salespeople accused of enrolling poor students with fake entrance exams (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-26/careers-australia-salespeople-accused-of-dubious-sales-tactics/6265790)

[27/09]

Economics 101: supply vs demand. As supply is increased, the price will fall. Q.E.D if you want to prevent wage increases, increase supply. Two ways to do that, train them, or import them.

Welcome to Globalization of wages. It isn't about boosting developing world wages, rather pressuring the developed world down to the third world standard.

Citizenship [or the prospect of it] & residency are the carrots to facilitate this process. NZ has been a poster child for this method of suppressing wages, AU isn't far behind.

Ahhh now I see it. There's a shortage of pilots at the right price. How silly of me to think otherwise.

On the other hand there doesn't seem to be a shortage of the plonkers who dream up these schemes to solve this "shortage". That's a real pity isn't it?

[DeltaT]

OMG this is unbelievable. Despite the airlines being quoted in the article as saying they have no shortage, and despite Air NZ saying their cancellations ARE NOT due to a pilot shortage, the article goes on to say we are having a impending shortage anyway. Seriously, if you are a NZALPA member, please call them and tell them to shut up. Ph 09 2551500
Emirates flight school opened last year with a capacity for 600 pilots at once, and as for worldwide shortages, we can't all work anywhere in the world we like.

Cost of training pilots sees shortage begin to bite - NZ Herald (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/aviation/news/article.cfm?c_id=556&objectid=11879758&ref=rss)


A shortage in the supply of pilots is worsening because of the cost of training and worldwide demand.

New Zealand Airline Pilots' Association president Tim Robinson said student loans covered only two-thirds of the cost of training for a commercial pilot licence and while not at crisis point, the shortage of pilots was starting to bite

"There is a pilot shortage in New Zealand and we believe the issue is only going to get worse in the next few years - there's a lack of trained pilots going through the system to go on to employment," Robinson said.

It costs between $100,000 and $120,000 to get right through to a commercial pilots' licence, which is the minimum before going into an airline.

Student loans cover $70,000 of that.

The association, which is holding its annual meeting in Christchurch this week, is at odds with airlines in New Zealand over the impact on flights.

"They've had a number of cancellations through rostering of pilots. They say the cancellations have been more through operations issues, weather and airports but the pilot shortage is starting to move through the system and we're only going to start to see it increase in the next few years," said Robinson.

Jetstar said pilots were certainly in high demand but the airline had the numbers needed.

"While there is high demand for pilots worldwide, we currently have around 900 pilots across New Zealand and Australia, which adequately meets our flying requirements," said a spokesman.

Air New Zealand also said it had no shortage of regional pilots or cabin crew and attracted applicants from New Zealand as well as offshore.

"We aim to operate all services as scheduled, however, sometimes cancellations are unavoidable. There are a number of reasons a flight may be need to be cancelled, such as weather - which is the most common cause of disruption on our regional network, engineering issues or due to crew sickness," said a spokeswoman.

Robinson said the shortage was exacerbated by other airlines coming to New Zealand to recruit pilots. Emirates had run open days, the Qantas Group had recruited here and China Southern Airlines was aggressively looking for Kiwi flight crew.

John Nicholson, the chief executive of Aviation New Zealand, said that five years ago the country produced 241 graduates with commercial pilots' licences. Last year there were only 120.
"I think the mystique has gone out of flying and people going into flying are having to pay too much money to train. Then there's the uncertainty - you can't guarantee where the first job is."

According to Boeing and Airbus, the Asia-Pacific region is predicted to need between 232,000 and 248,000 new pilots, and between 217,700 and 268,000 new engineers in commercial aviation, in the next 20 years.

Boeing predicts China will need 6810 new aircraft in the next 20 years and 2800-3000 new pilots per year, but trains fewer than half that number.

[aussie1234]

My worry is engineer shortage. Who's going to fix all of these planes that don't need maintenance. Not a lot of young guys on the apron

[Propstop]

Give a bag chucker a six week course and he will be an expert like GT. The modern aircraft fix themselves anyway.

[sgenie]

Not to worry, NZ Herald is at its best again - having two minds at once:
The gig economy: Pilots paying to fly - NZ Herald (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11880500)

One might think you cannot have two opposite opinions on the same subject. NZ Herald can.

[Rabbitwear]

No need to worry , China will take over Australia and New Zealand , they have many trainees to share with us .