Pilot shortage 2021
 

Pilot shortage, 27000 pilots needed by 2021 and not enough available

Was that the recent announcement by CAE, a well known training provider? Now I wonder why they'd be saying that?

It seems that living in total denial (I'M NOT LISTENING!) is all the rage at the moment. Perhaps the management at CAE need a round of golf to clear their heads.

It's gonna be HUGE

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....5ac22a90b5.jpg
Eurocontrol's view on the matter.

If you are a prospective CAE student then before reading their article fill a bathtub with half a tonne of salt, climb in and then read it.

Information sources are wildly varied. Airlines are laying off and schools have seen increase in students, so what's actually going on where you are? Specifics, numbers.

Our Airline is hardly flying and yet no layoffs or plans to. And they have recruited pilots during the last 6 months and sent on training.

Pilot shortage lol

Whilst it seems that the sources for these large recruitment forecasts are perhaps skewed, the vaccine is coming and by next year. And to think that the public by and large will not travel again would be equally skewed. Any airline surviving this will (next year IMHO) require a large recruitment drive to cope with the demand that will inevitably be needed and the large layoffs now will be assumed as a viable source to cover this. The problem? a good percentage will have taken early retirement, many will be loathed to return to such a volatile industry, having retrained and upskilled in other industries. The perception that the training industry has cadets clamouring is definitely not true despite the colourful advertising stating the time is now to invest in an fATPL, and understandably so as finance for such is not on offer from mum and dad, or banks. I would suggest the training providers will be the sector to suffer greater losses moving forward, and the LCC cadet-reliant business models to be coming to an end in any meaningful way that allows their (LCC) expansion at rates Pre-COVID. There will be a skilled pilot shortage but not at the levels forecast I would offer.

I'm really curious as to the percentage of currently redundant pilots who will be actively seeking to get back into the industry in a couple of years...

Short term, maybe 50-60% from talks with many from varied operators. That may change of course in future years as the terms and conditions improve(?). If not, maybe less. It is an interesting topic dns I agree.

From my own observations, roughly one in three redundant pilots will not or is unlikely to come back whenever hiring picks up. Those who have already earned their pension and are financially secure are discovering the beauty of finally having plenty of time and energy for themselves and their loved ones. Once one gets well into their 50s, lifestyle preferences tend to change a lot. People are no longer keen on being awake and working at silly o'clock or living in hotels for weeks on end. As for the younger lot, a good number of them use this an opportunity to permanently change careers. Particularly the ones who weren't quite happy with their job pre-COVID and were considering a career change way before the crisis. That's been their final trigger to act.

One in three? How many redundant pilots have you observed?

Utter rubbish. The european body of pilots is actually relatively young. There is no looming retirement wave in Europe (like there is in the USA). Having spanked £100k-ish on flight training, and having discovered first hand how little our experience is valued by HR/recruiters in other fields, those sadly made redundant are clamouring to get back into the cockpit in my experience. Only a tiny number will start again in other fields. Flying is the only way to make a half-decent living and to pay off astronomical training debts.

As for older pilots retiring early, very few can afford to do that and I have seem little evidence to suggest it. At BA only a handful took early retirement despite a VR package being offered.

CAE obviously want to keep spinning the pilot shortage myth as they stand to profit from all the training, that is their business. Where I work we have no recruitment plans whatsover on any time frame. There is no demand and no one knows just how long it will be until pilots are in demand again, but it will be measured
in years not months.

Chief Willy is correct. Aside from the odd retiree, most typed pilots are biding their time and will return. Career opportunities have not opened up for pilots, for two simple reasons. Covid-19, and the inevitability that pilots will return to flying as soon as the opportunities present themselves. It may be a few months yet, but hopefully aviation will return next year.
Sadly T & C's will not be on a par with 2019/2020 figures, and probably never will be.

I suggest people read and re-read Chief Willy's post. It is spot on.

The vast majority of redundant pilots will be waiting for the first opportunity to get back flying. Yes, they may not enjoy the job, they may look at the direction the industry is going in and wince, they may be looking at a 50%+ paycut compared to their last flying job in 2019, but they will accept any conditions going.

Unless you have relevant qualifications AND significant experience in another field, you shouldn't kid yourself that any HR/ recruitment person is going to be in the slightest bit interested by what you think you can offer. As much as pilots want to think differently, nobody cares about the "transferable skills" we like to kid ourselves that we have. Many will probably have already seen that recruitment is dominated by faceless, automated systems employing standardised online filters. It's highly likely that your application will be filtered out before it's even looked at by an actual person.

I actually think that there will be continued demand for "cadets" who will be unpaid, or will pay to fly. Why wouldn't the airlines continue to profit from the right hand seat? There may well be limited recruitment of experienced pilots with a relevant rating at the airlines who emerge from this crisis. It would be an extraordinary act of self delusion to think that the salaries offered will bear any comparison with those previously offered, and as mentioned above by a previous poster those terms and conditions are gone forever.

from general conversation, seemingly not this time. Many have actually used their redundancy packages to fund a new vocation, skill set. Building trade seems to feature heavily for some reason.

Yes, there will of course be Cadets that will slot in to the RHS for nothing, or next to. But enough in the interim to satisfy the bigger LCC, a blue and yellow one springs to mind - I think not. The numbers will not sustain future expansion plans in the short to medium term. The salaries for experienced or not will be dire for some time, agreed. This is what is heavily driving the thinking currently I would suggest.

I think there could possibly be a shortage of experienced Captain in the next two years. The Middle Eastern carriers have made very deep Pilot cuts and I’m pretty sure once demand picks up, which it will, and covid is a distant memory these Middle Eastern carriers will be desperate for Pilots. I feel many won’t return due to retirement and the treatment they have received during the covid crisis. The only realistic way to entice pilots will be to pay astronomical amounts of money. This in my view will create a shortage of high hour Captains in Europe. It’s always supply and demand that dictates salaries, not HR.

Yes, always read who is saying the message, CAE, they arent going to call it like it is.

BALPA said over 1,000 experienced pilots unemployed currently in the UK and around 15,000 in Europe now. That is enough for a several years recruitment even a heavy demand if it does springs back.

What people havent yet realised is that big companies are getting rid of floors of their offices and indeed their whole offices, one major bank closed down an office for 2,700 people and made them all homeworkers!! As people can be home based saving company time and money, big studies in IT showing that home workers are more productive as dont waste time travelling and for those a bit older with families etc, they prefer it. Alan Sugar was complaining that people were working from home too much, now that Zoom, MS Teams working is normal, business travel will never be the same again, it has decreased for ever! There is not a need for a large amount of people to travel regularly for work, some business travel will happen but also people realise that Zoom etc can also be used for social gatherings so that is likely to decrease some leisure travel.

Save your money and do something else with your time, only once has their been an actual pilot shortage, it was during WW2!

Sorry I disagree, and so does Amazon by the looks of it. If I was a betting man I’d put my money on Amazon all day long. All this ‘work from home’ is a fad.
https://www.thestreet.com/.amp/techn...avirus-virtual

Passenger numbers will be back to pre Covid levels within two years and it will double in size every 7 years like it has done since World war 2. New airlines will pop up all over the place. One start up airline has just bought some of BA’s 747’s during a pandemic. As for the ‘staycation’...a wet week in Bognor Regis or fly to Malaga for a fiver in the sun? I know which one I’d choose.😏

Wholeheartedly agreed, fastidious bob. Right now, a life largely devoid of mobility and face-to-face contact isn't a matter of choice for most people. It's a rather unpleasant matter of necessity. But would all those people still think the same if COVID was no longer a factor? Mostly not, I think. Working from home, spending holidays at home and communicating with friends and family virtually from home quickly gets miserable AF. It's not a life anyone, apart from the most reclusive introvert, would wish on themselves.

Good question. And further, what awaits those who haven't flown at all in a couple of years ? Will so many experienced pilots have gone non-current that airlines will be forced to deal with getting people current again or is non-currency going to be a fatal blow ?

Answers almost impossible to know.

I'm seriously hoping, for everyone's sake that this "work from home" thing is a very short lived!

It may be fine for people who are already established in their work places and have a family, but it's absolutely catestrophic for people living alone or who are new to a job! Those random chats in the office kitchen or over a quick beer after work are vital to making relationships that can be depended upon when things go wrong.

My office working friends with families hate it. They are often locked in their hobby room that is now an office wearing a neatly pressed withe shirt, a stylish tie, adidas sweatpants and sleepers.

dns, further to the social and the learning elements (which are both very real - teaching a novice how to do a real-life job only by Zoom and shared screen is a lot harder than in person) there's also one more thing. Any task requiring collaboration, collective brainstorming and creativity is seriously impeded by the virtual environment. And that's not just my own observation. Many people, in aviation and otherwise, share that those "Eureka!" moments when a great new solution is born are a lot harder to come across in home office mode.

Going forward, I think that the optimal solution would be to cap remote working vacancies to a certain percentage (not more than 30%, I think) and assign them with priority to those who have a specific, substantial reason to work from home (and are willing to do so, of course). Team members in poor health, pregnant women, parents taking care of small kids, people giving care to ill family members should be assigned a remote working vacancy with priority over those who do not face any such special circumstances. That sounds like an optimal way to keep productivity high, office-dependent local businesses running and people happy.

You all seem to be mixing up two different things: the phenomenon of people (who live close to their office anyway) being forced to work from their basement/attic/hobbyroom vs. the vastly reduced demand international travel for business purposes.

Once this has all (hopefully) blown over, some elements of the working from home fad will stick as people like to have a choice. However, I agree with you lot that it is is essential that people are physically together for all the reasons you have mentioned. (starting up new colleagues, the famous coffee machine chats, the human need of feeling part of a group/team, etc, etc). Unfortunately, everybody returning to their office desks has zero impact on air travel, as those people will get back into their cars, busses, MRT's or whatever transport mode they were used to in the morning pre-COVID.

As for international air travel for business purposes; sorry to burst your bubble, but this has changed permanently. I work in an environment where I negotiate infrastructure contracts in the energy industry (I sell powerplants). Pre-COVID, everybody in my company, as well as our clients/suppliers, including all of the involved law firms agreed we had to meet face to face. And so we did; frequently and on high yield tickets (the seats close to the pointy end where you sit, you know - the ones that make the money for the airline), jetting between continents at least a couple of times a month. We all had the shiny frequent flyer cards to prove it. However, despite COVID, we had to keep stuff moving remotely and honestly - it works. It's like somebody switched the lights on and we can see we were doing it wrong all along. We have a laugh about it, and joke how much extra quality time at home and good night rests we have gained, and virtually everybody agrees this is a better lifestyle. We still have to travel to meet new clients every once in a while, but even that is rapidly diminishing as conferences and other events go virtual at a fraction of the original cost.

Sure, leisure travel will come back (I can't wait!), but business? A fraction of what it used to be... And even if we wanted to get back to our previous way of doing things, the travel budgets for 2021 and 2022 have -unfortunately for you guys- been slashed by management (rightfully so), and they are not coming back.

Aviation will have it's place; but I encourage everyone to get realistic about a full recovery.

True
 

FMS82 - Spot on.

That’s why Zooms share price tanked nearly 20% the second a vaccine was announced. Business travel will recover. Eventually.

Funny how all the Schadenfreuders come out of the woodwork during an aviation crisis. FMS82 I have read many of your posts on pprune telling Pilots the glory days are over. I find it funny that people who are not even in the aviation industry feel compelled to jump onto a Pilot forum and spread their doom and gloom.🙄 Maybe you should be on here instead of Pprune https://forum.all-energy.co.uk/

27,000 pilots needed worldwide in 2021 is quite close to CAE’s projection of 264,000 pilots needed worldwide over the next 10 years!

Sounds wonderful until you do the maths. Now I appreciate there are a lot of small nations and in aviation demand terms quite insignificant, but that is balanced by some very large and high demand countries. There are 195 countries in the world.

264,000 divided by 520 (weeks in 10 years) brings that number down to 507.
Divide that 507 by 195 countries and the number comes down to 2.6

Obviously that number needs proportionality weighting for each countries realistic demand, however Two and a half pilots a week per country doesn’t sound quite as exciting, I am guessing that’s why they chose the figure they did?

OutsideCAS

A lot here want to reassure themselves, but don't take your dreams for a reality. Vaccin is not here yet, and virus is changing...
airlines won't hire in the next few years, any wannabes. Get new skills and stop believing BS from medias. Luck though

All IMVHO

If there's a successful vaccination program, (and that includes international recognition of such a vaccination):

Leisure travel will return fairly quickly, business travel not quite as quick, and perhaps never in the volume it was pre-Covid, which has implications for pilot recruitment.

So those who have a dream of soaring like a bird will at least be in with a shot of getting up at o'dark thirty to go off and fly an ILS into somewhere in the next 5-10 years...

The 100 k question however for those that are more financially driven and/or who see all this as an "investment" need to ask themselves is how long will it take T&Cs to recover to anything like pre-Covid levels...by that I mean pay, rostering, for long haul operators time of down route, quality of facilities down route....

..Because as someone posted on a parallel thread the shine does wear off and bills always need to be paid...

not to mention conditions will be very bad post covid 19 .....

“conditions very bad post Covid...”. Yes. Salaries back in many cases to what they were decades ago...For those “lucky” few who find any kind of flying job.

people living alone should be paid more
 

dns

Yes, people living alone don't have the distractions of a nagging wife or screaming kids, so they can devote more time thought and energy to the job. Significantly more pay for them, only them, could defuse the negative thoughts that you mention and could be very cost effective in terms of superior productivity.

ShotOne

In many cases the salaries actually were better decades ago. I still have the wage slips to prove it!

fastidious bob

Thanks for the feedback, good reminder to focus on more productive pastimes.

I'll have a look at that other forum, thanks.
Best of luck to all.

PS: I count 2 posts on the topic. No schadenfreude by the way, plenty of people close to me hit by this...

People are apparently confused between working from home and traveling for business. The former will change as covid19 passes, the latter will be a fraction of what it used to be. Permanently.

Do you really think those 9.99€ tickets purchased 7 months in advance keep the airline afloat? Nah, it's the last minute business flyers buying premium.

Any recent grad or in-training student that hasn't seriously considered changing careers at this point is about to have a tough wake up call of how cyclical this industry is and how low it goes during the bad times. You don't want to be caught on the next downturn (implying there is an upswing after all this) finding out that literally no one cares about flying experience outside of well... flying.

You only have to look back at 2008 to see a "death of business travel" prediction. This of course didn't happen and business travel will be back again with time.

It's difficult to convince people to sign a million dollar contract based on a few zoom meetings.

And what about 9/11? That was also predicted to be the end of ALL mass air travel, not just business travel. Lots of experts suggested that people would be so scared of the prospect of their plane becoming a weapon that they would change behavioural patterns in favour of driving. Some were even making educated guesses on the number of surplus road accidents to occur as a result of that shift from flying to driving.

In the end of the day, people remain people, not biorobots programmed into performing a set of instructions over and over again. And the latter is precisely what cancelling all meetings forever looks like. Satisfaction and productivity in a job as a laptop operator is a lot lower than in one where you actually go to places, meet people and your brain is far more stimulated then in the same room behind the same screen day in and day out. Not to mention that business travel isn't only about meetings. In Europe, a massive number of families live in separation because their members work in different countries. Those are people who fly literally every weekend - because that's the only way they have to keep their job AND their family. Movement of skilled manual workers will also not stop being a thing. Even during the April lockdown there were flights with construction personnel, crop harvesters, ship crews and all sorts of other working people who need to be physically present at their place of work. So, while the premium cabin close to the pointy end of the plane will likely no longer be there on most short-haul routes, volumes will still remain decent enough to eventually give jobs to those who want them badly enough and are ready to do whatever it takes to get there.

Blimey, really? 9/11 and GFC?

I'll raise you. By a multiple of 50x at least, and give you our gift from China.