Pilot shortage
 

Get your hands on tomorrow’s (Thursdays) Australian newspaper.

The shortage of pilots in Australia is on the front page.

No mention of how our friends the Regulators have bastardised the training industry so badly that flight training is nonexistent or owned by foreigners.

What a debacle.

I have written an opinion piece that explains how CASA has a cult attitude to not looking at cost and affordability . May be run in the Aus tomorrow. Who knows!

Everyone can then attack me and claim that it was all my fault because before my time we had un affordable safety and that was lots better.

Dick, I think we can put the blame on the Airports Act for much of this, industry has seen this coming for 20 years. It would have been great if you could have focussed your resources and public profile on the rampant exploitation of aviation businesses by property developers but it's too late now. Successive governments have just sat back and let this happen.

I thought foreign pilots have already been working here?! We have plenty on the 457.

Fake News...unless the media has a handle on strangulation by regulation.

Dick, we will never know what might have happened if all the old hands didnt take VRs back in the day. Unintended consequences. This beast is unrecognizable!

Meanwhile Australian pilots struggling to get jobs are moving to America on E3 Visas in their droves......

.....by the way....how is OneSky coming along? Hear about lots of construction happening without any idea....maybe an extention lead or two required in Brisvegas? How about dialing 1100 before you dig in at ML? If the construction is shoddy, whats happening behind the scenes with data connection and security......AirServices isnt a phone company......and a phone company isnt AirServices!

Opinion piece by former CASA Chairman Dick Smith in The Australian. Dec 28 TH 2018

“I don’t think you should ever regard Aviation safety as what is affordable “
- Transport Minister John Anderson Oct 5 th 2000

I welcome the appointment of Barnaby Joyce as Australia’s new Minister for Transport. He certainly has a challenge in front of him when it comes to Australia’s General Aviation industry, which is in a state of near collapse after years of failed government policy.
It will take someone as senior as the deputy Prime Minister to sort this mess out. As The Australian has reported, General Aviation – so vital in a big country like ours – is in serious trouble. Crippled by skyrocketing regulatory costs and pointless red tape, businesses are closing and much of the flying training industry is being sold off to Chinese buyers at bargain rates.
A federal government report last week showed the drastic decline brought on by the excessive costs: General Aviation flying hours ,which includes the vital flying training industry , have declined by 40 per cent in just five years.
But none of this is new. I have been warning that introducing regulations which ignore cost has been crippling the industry for years. 17 years ago I got into a very public disagreement with Mr Joyce’s predecessor as minister, John Anderson who introduced the polices that have resulted in today’s mess.
At the time I was chairman of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority and I warned Mr Anderson that the substantial additional costs that had been placed on the industry by the sell-off of the airports and the “ user pays” air traffic control system would have to be balanced by a reduction in other costs.


Driven by bureaucrats with little understanding of business, he pursued a policy of regulations regardless of cost, with the inevitable result that ridiculous levels of regulation have made it impossible to maintain a viable industry . It seems that for the bureaucrats, the safest skies are empty skies similar to the “Yes Minister” episode of the hospital with no patients!
The Minister refused to meet with me to discuss the issue, releasing a public statement that showed how little he understood: “I don’t think that you should ever regard aviation safety as what is affordable,” he claimed. “Safety is something which has the highest priority – it is not a question of cost.”
In effect he was saying that with air safety there was no cost that was too high to pay, ignoring the fact that this would make the cost of air tickets un affordable to anyone other than the ultra wealthy.

Mr Anderson’s public statement was quickly embraced by the bureaucrats within the Civil Aviation Safety Authority and the denial that cost should be considered became an almost cult like belief which still exists in the organisation to this day .
Aviation is like anything else in life. The amount of money that you can spend on safety is always limited by what the marketplace can afford. If regulations are written which increase the cost of flying too much , people can’t afford to fly and businesses go broke.
The inevitable result of this stubborn insistence that there are no limits to the costs that could be imposed on the Aviation industry is a situation where operators simply can’t afford to meet the red-tape and expenses.

It has done nothing to improve safety, and will very likely lead to a situation where the majority of pilots in Australia will come from Asia. The losers are many of Mr Joyce’s constituents in rural and regional Australia who rely greatly on general aviation as a vital link in Australia’s transport system.
It means we will lose hundreds millions of dollars in export earnings from flight training and other operations that are no longer Australian owned
Before Mr Anderson became Minister, the CASA Service Charter directed that Australia should follow “ proven safe procedures and standards from leading aviation countries which best allocate finite safety resources, to protect fare paying passengers and encourage high participation levels in aviation.”
But this directive was removed from the charter in the Anderson years. I fought these changes while Chairman of CASA, but failed to overcome an entrenched public service and a minister in denial . I resigned rather than be held responsible for the slow death of an industry that I have been a part of for more than 40 years.
I hope now that under a new Minister, we can get back to a sensible policy that balances costs and regulation in a rational way. Mr Joyce will need to move quickly to reverse the disastrous “ ignore cost “ policies of the past. I will give him every support and I do hope he listens to the industry before it is too late.

Hopefully aussie pilots vote with their feet and follow the coin. I honestly think the whole aviation system is screwed in Oz. I left for an overseas gig earlier in the year and couldn’t be happier.

Where did you go to Duxnuts?

Do not over think this. It is very simple, its not a shortage of flight training schools or caused by overseas companies buying up flight schools or a general lack of pilots.

Its because the low end of GA has died.

The nursery of all our pilots no longer exists. I know I was one of the GA AOC holders that took on newly qualified CPL's with pride and guided them up through the ranks to get them to a highly skilled MECIR pilot stage ready to take the jump into regional airlines and they did.

30 years in the Aviation business and we bump into or are still in contact with ex pilots of ours are captains and first officers on everything from regional airlines to long haul. They are very quick to comment to me about the quality of Cadets compared to industry trained pilots that spent time bashing around the bush.

There is still a large oversupply of new CPL's out there thanks to Vet and Help fees (dont get me started on that one) but no first jobs like sitting in a 172 doing scenics, waiting to crawl up the experience ladder for the little GA AOC holder as they no longer exist. Those that do are just hanging on in the hope it will get better. A lot of these operators don't have the time and money to employ newly minted pilots but are looking for 400 hr pilots as a minimum.

Safe skys come from experience however we have lost such a wealth of knowledge from the demise of the Dad and Mum passionate piston AOC holders and the crusty old Flight instructors that this experience isn't getting passed onto the new guard. The quality of pilots is declining.

Governments are insisting more and more and more that contracts go to turbo prop pressurized aircraft on routes that have been served well over the years by piston engine aircraft, without incident, because of perceived safety, but at what cost to the industry? Who is going to put a good 210 driver into a King Air or a Conquest? The Chieftains and the 402 and Barons were the training ground for the Kingairs and Conquests. There is no bottom rung on the ladder anymore. Therefore the regional RPT operators have no choice to source pilots from overseas or they have to increase their Cadet ships.

RIP GA

Mick

Whilst I can certainly understand why you have chosen to vote with your feet, that does not address the underlying problem.

The sheer vastness of the Australian continent, coupled with low population outside the capital cities and a general decline in regional infrastructure, means that Australia will always be reliant on general aviation. I would hate to see a situation where the RFDS had to curtail their services, and they are but one example of an essential component of what we refer to as GA in Australia.

Regional Australia has perhaps the greatest opportunity it has ever had to become the food basket for Asia, but inevitably this will rely in part on decent infrastructure and a healthy GA sector.

I applaud Dick for being willing to stick his head up and speak for our industry. Much better than having someone state (10 years down the track) ".....how did this happen......." or "....why didn't someone say something....."

Plenty of people were saying something, when the property developers were spreading fake news that they were the "owners" of Jandakot and were going to "Relocate" it, thus creating a sovereign risk for all tenants and making their investments in infrastructure worthless. They couldn't close Jandakot but it took years of hard work and lobbying by the tenants, while Dick was still talking about airspace, just to be able to maintain our right to quiet enjoyment of our leases without harassment from the leaseholders, who are not Australian, nor are they Chinese. ..in fact China Southern as tenants were a powerful ally in the battle to keep Jandakot as an airport.

"took our jerbs" is much more newsworthy I guess. Not sure where al these pilots are going to come from?

How long since you were a cadet TM?

Why do you ask?

TM, your attitude honestly says a lot to me and others about yourself. Irrespective of your own path into Aviation Mick Stuped has clearly been around for a very long time and so have the Pilots he has kept in contact with and that by itself deserves a bit less of an attitude from yourself. When experienced Pilots (Not just Experienced in GA but obviously high time Captains of Jets) are commenting on the Quality of Cadets perhaps you should listen instead of brushing it off simply because you feel that you're more than qualified and therefore everyone else must be as well. Perhaps instead of doing the same basic brand of bashing you're accusing them of you could simply relay your own experiences instead?

Both routes produce both good and bad Pilots for various reasons, after several hundred hours I don't doubt that a Cadet and someone who came up through GA will be indistinguishable all other things being equal but at the beginning would you rather a GA Pilot who has been through stressful situations in a Cockpit sitting next to you helping you deal with it or a raw cadet for whom this might be the first real situation outside of a Sim that they're dealing with?

Personally I think one of the biggest problems with the current generation (Including myself) are the way that Sims are viewed, yes they're stressful for anyone but I believe we view it as more of a game, it's not a life or death situation so how you react there can be extremely different to how you could react once you're sitting upfront and the realisation hits you that there's now really a couple hundred tons of real metal, fuel and flesh behind you and that makes the Cadet at the initial stages more of an unknown quantity IMHO."

Getting back on topic though, I really do feel like this is a failing on the part of CASA for not doing enough to fully foster Australia's' potential as a Training ground that can provide some of the worlds best training, not just for bare CPL but for larger Type Ratings and everything else inbetween. I often seen FAA and EASA Courses that advertise CPL and then a Type Rating as well, but I can't think of a single training organisation in Australia that boasts the same and from what I've heard and been told cost is one of the biggest problems, it's simply not worth their effort which means when the Airlines go looking for Pilots with Type Ratings as a minimum of course they're not finding Australian Pilots, they're finding European and American ones who did it with their initial training.

TurboMaggot, I was listening to an experienced Chief Pilot of GA talking the other week. This man has over 30k hours and has flown in a number of countries, including in his beloved Australian Outback.

His comment on cadets vs GA:
GA pilots make a little error in a little aircraft, fix it, learn from it and move on.
Cadets make a little error in a big aircraft, sometimes manage to fix it, and hopefully move on.

And the gentleman I am referring to is neither Dick Smith nor Mick Stup.

However the pilot shortage is due to many factors, in my opinion, including (but not limited to):
Large RPT not willing to cough up big dollars for quality staff, but trying to employ pilots and base them off shore, and pay a contracted rate thus avoiding the princely wages, terms and conditions of the Australian award.
An insistence by some companies for turbine pressurised aircraft for jobs that up until 5 years ago were done by piston twins, thus reducing the amount of work available for piston twins. Piston twins being the natural stepping stone between single engine pistons and turbines.
Higher maintenance costs under Australian Regs - I would love to see a comparative maintenance costs on standard aircraft in different first world countries where GA is thriving vs Australia.
The cost of training vs the declining standard of product being put out by flight training schools, thus giving a rise in organisations providing post CPL training which includes - how to land on a dirt strip, how to refuel from drums, etc
And the unending cost of rewriting the Regs - money for consultants and experts and dedicated personnel - money which must come from somewhere......
The diversion of the taxes on Avgas from funding aviation infrastructure into the bottomless pit that is politicians perks.
And a regulator that is rarely challenged, that is governed by a minister who doesn’t know sh!t from shoe polish about the industry he is trying to monitor, and that is answerable to no one. A regulator that is both law maker and law enforcer....

Alas if I was a young lad I would be striving for 1500 hours and running to the states, unless that horse has bolted...

Think about it, 1500 hours, get a jet FO seat, flying in a first world country with now decent money with cost of living. What? 3/4 years upgrade, yes if we were Aus 10/15 years ago but now even LCC what 10? Years? Surely 457’s won’t be DEC? Or will they.

Why do Aussies go the expat option? Money? Yes, career progression? Yes? Lifestyle? Maybe? But no it’s not Aus....

So many countries have or allow expats because they NEED THEM, aka UAE. Does AUS? No there are enough blokes belting around in GA that should get that airline chance, ok maybe then GA will need 457’s, but give he local bloke a shot first.

And as for expats returning to the bottom of the seniority list, yep if enough coin saved, otherwise why?

Remember life’s not perfect anywhere and it’s becoming less and less perfect in the lucky country.....

Fair enough.

There's obviously a reason behind why I wrote what I did but with hindsight and a swift kick up the arse I can see that it was incredibly impulsive, misplaced and rude.

I apologise for my disrespectful comments.

Edit: I've removed my original comment. I realise it still exists as a quotation but for the sake acknowledging my error it was appropriate to do so. Once again I sincerely apologise to all concerned.

Actually, I read that as commenting about the high quality of cadets... :)

I fly with cadets all of the time. They actually are high quality - even cadets have had a couple of years worth of training and many test opportunities that remove the unsuitable.

Raptor090, I agree wholeheartedly

Upgrades in the regionals in the US are basically as soon as you can meet the captain requirements ie 1000 hours part 121 time. So initial training takes about 3 months and then another 12 months to get your 1000 hours part 121 and then upgrade right away in an Emb145, 175 or CRJ.

We are so short of captains that basically any iligeble FO that meet captain mins are being displaced (forced upgrade) to captain in recent vacancy bids. I fly for a wholly owned regional of American Airlines.

I would love that but how can it happen? I would love to see instructor wages higher and would love to see an uplift in the quality of teaching (including the quality teaching of instructors).

In an ideal world I would love to see schools where well trained, enthusiastic career instructors were given the time to work with students and while doing that to be recompensed well.

To pay instructors more and encourage it as a career path you need schools to make more money and for it to be a more secure business.

Flying school margins are very tight. Many have gone to the wall. Running a school is not a way to riches and security. Sadly.

Do we make students pay more? It would reduce the number of people entering the door and close off aviation to many of the young motivated, bright eyed and passionate who are exactly what we want in aviation leaving it just for the well heeled (or those with well heeled parents) to indulge in.

Do we reduce overheads and increase the ease of learning to fly by reducing school requirements? - simpler lower cost instructor ratings and lower training standards meaning higher throughput and succes rates? moving to simpler to fly, lower cost training aircraft? How will that increase the quality of pilots that get churned out?

Fuel costs, maintenance costs, site lease costs, movement costs, costs to meet compliance, insurance costs, aging aircraft and the gradual reduction in interest in learning to fly are all atrophying the GA training industry. :(

Without more people entering GA and lower operating costs how do we make that happen? Genuine question.

I don't have answers but without reduced costs/increased income and better industry, instructing will always be something you do because you love it or because you need to build hours, not because of the money or prestige.

Wishful thinking, clients will generally go with the cheapest option (within reason) regardless of instructor experience.

In my view it’s not just a shortage of pilots that is of concern. There is a shortage of experienced capable people across many sectors in the Australian economy.
The underlying causes will be many and too complicated for mere mortals, however may include the following.

While the Australian economy has experienced an unprecedented period of growth, this growth has been primarily in Mining , some sectors of agriculture , Federal Gov. via Royalties/tax on mining thence Public sector and the finance industry who gets to play with the superannuation generated.

The rest of the economy has been either stagnant or going backwards in real terms, despite what politicians and the media have said !
There is also an underlying wealth transfer underway from the lower and middle class to the wealthy and super wealthy … again at unprecedented rates in human history.

This has meant the lower income would be pilots never had a chance , and the wealthy would be pilots didn’t want a bar of investing 150K on an insecure career such as aviation … Medical , Law , I.T or buying a Café makes much more sense . And they don’t even need to leave home town !

Yes , no doubt the lack of investment in shiny new Glass cockpit trainers for local student pilots , or Charter still done in 40 year old aircraft hasn’t helped , but surely that was always a symptom of lack of money in the general economy making those upgrades financially unviable .

I’m fully aware most training in Australia the last 15 years has been by foreign owned schools training their own cadets using our facilities / Instructors and good weather … and low and behold mostly in new glass equipped machines . Those Asian companies are spending their nations money !

And god help us from a Regulator whose contribution the last 20 years has been a never ending stream of useless bureaucracy , pointless changes and cost escalations beyond comprehension .

You can maybe add issues including aviation not having the sex and ego appeal it had 30 years ago , the fact Millennial's want it all and now , sliding pay rates , 457 visa pilots and whatever else you'd like to throw into the mix

Does anyone know what some of the Schools and such are being slogged these days for Leases at Airfields like Archerfield, Bankstown, Jandakot etc...? It seems like the Governments extremely short sighted decision to privatise them has massively raised the costs and created a massive burden on anyone wanting to run a Charter Company or a Flight Training School at these prime locations.

1000 hours experience is a total bollocks requirement for a new hire FO. Give me any number of 250 hour CPL+IR with 5 hours each in a Level D FFS and I’ll tell you which of them are worth investing in a TR course and job as a FO. Easy.

Something I struggle to get my head around is the multi-engine requirements for any FO job in Australia. Personally, I don't see the need for any more than the rating. Even under the USA's 1500 hour rule only 25 of those need to be in a multi-engine aircraft, something most will cover during MECIR training in Australia. There are very few opportunities in Australia currently for guys to build multi hours. I know numerous guys who have 1000s of single time but little or no Multi

When i look at hour requirements i see it as being about having experience in different situations, airports, weather, airspace etc, something you will get regardless of how many engines you have.

There are currently numerous Aussie pilots picking up E3 jobs at US regionals simply because they don't have the multi hours needed by Australian regionals and majors 250 multi hours to fly a Saab 340 - really? There cadets don't have totals hours of that.....

What happened in the UK is the set up of "academy-style" instructing schools. Live-in full training, level 5 full motion flight sims etc etc. The cost of a licence at these is over £100,000. :eek:

That's in an environment where "mon & pop" flying schools can give you a licence for £40,000. Yes, the toys to train on at these local flying schools are of a lower standard - but the licence at the end is the same.

So - how did the UK manage to triple the cost of training, and still be swamped with clients? The "academy-style" businesses approached various airlines and tailored their training to specific airline SOPs, and they included early "job interviews" in the mix, with the result that those airlines only accepted candidates from those schools. If you want an airline job, you had to go to one of those schools (regardless of how good you were.).

So if you want instructing to pay - you need to work with the end employer of your student product. You increase the value of your training by getting the quality recognised not by the student, but by the end employer. Once you can prove that quality results in an increased chance of airline employment only THEN do you have a product that students will be willing to pay more for.

It's the reason Harvard can charge $62,000 a year while South Texas college only charge $1300 a year. People expect that the job opportunities with a Harvard degree are better than an STC one.

Not sure how desperate companies truely are.
Applied to VA with over 3200 hours, +700 multi ifr, little bit of turbine, night, atpls and the rest....got rejected for not being competitive enough. Couldn’t even sit aptitute testing.

Finally a pilot shortage but let's dumb down the job even more? Make command training simple by eliminating some core skills?

If you can be replaced quickly by an inferior product you will be!

You blokes would be 700K a year if you had to demonstrate the skills of an airline pilot 20+ years ago- you can thank the original dodo's at Virgin Blue pay for a crap rating, pay for a job.

I fly with cadet pilots in Asia who can't fly raw data, can't fly visually or if they do it looks more like an abbreviated ILS and have no rules of thumb for jets or a concept of TLAR ! It's not a lunar moon shot!

However, when something really bad happens, all those folks with their $99 tickets are expecting Captain Sullenberger up front. But it won't be. His skill-set is from yesteryear. But the blame will lay on the pilot with perhaps his very poor training and generational loss of skills.

Gnadenburg,

https://www.flyingmag.com/why-learni...r-is-important

500 PIC Multi-Engine Requirement.
 

Australian CPLs struggling to get their foot in the door are questioning the "ridiculously high multi engine minimums" for direct entry FO positions when the Airline's own cadets are sitting in the cockpit at 300 hours. Well, its like this: CAO's state [how quickly we forget our Air Law] that to have command in Air Transport Category Regular Public transport operations, to fly as a Captain the minimum requirement to gain command is 500 hours multi-engine PIC experience. So, as a direct entry FO, without this minimum requirement, you ain't getting up graded. As to the cadets, there is a provision in the regulations that allows for company trained, under a fully approved company training system, for cadets to gain a full career with full progression to the left seat within that airline. BUT here's the catch, you are an endured slave to that airline and its seniority system. If you leave that airline, and you do so without 500 hours PIC multi-engine experience, then you become just another career jet FO. Only way out......pay to get multi time....then join the queue.

There is one thing for sure, based on my "professional" experience, is that Australia, in a time when every other Nation State is making it harder and harder for expatriate contract pilots to gain direct entry positions in favour of their own 200-250 hours fresh CPLs, is going 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Despite political correctness, Nationalism and Nationalist labour policies are alive and well. What is it with Australia??? 17 years of looking in from outside......just say'in :ugh:

I think this provision applies to any pilot employed by the airline. An airline could employ someone direct entry with zero multi (if they wanted to) and give them the appropriate ICUS training for command upgrade just as they do for their cadets.

Errr wrong on both counts. Plenty of airline Captains in Oz who got the position without 500 multi command (or any command beyond CPL training and basic ATPL requirements).

Hmmm, strange. I have been out of the Australian system for 17 years - (last position was a Chief Pilot of a piston charter company), so I stand corrected by the "slap down". It has changed....

ATP(A)L, CP(A)L does not permit a person to fly as PIC of a multi-crew aircraft in CHTR and RPT operations.

CAR 1988 5.105 (1) "(b) to fly a multi‑pilot aeroplane as pilot in command while the aeroplane is engaged in any operation other than a charter operation, or a regular public transport operation;"

Aeronautical expereince required is covered in CAO 40.1.0 para 8A.2, basically 50 hours ICUS, or 25 hours ICUS after an approved course.

The 5700KG threshold was dropped.

When researching my response, I did fine a Senate Inquiry .pdf on "Pilot Training and Airline Safety".
<http://www.aph.gov.au/~/media/wopapub/senate/committee/rrat_ctte/completed_inquiries/2010-12/pilots_2010/report/c02.ashx>

Point of note is Recommendation 5.

"Recommendation 5
2.282 The committee recommends that the Civil Aviation Safety Authority
(CASA) ensure that Part 61 of the Civil Aviation Safety Regulations currently
being reviewed place sufficient weight on multi-engine aeroplane experience as
opposed to the current recognition of glider and ultra-light experience."

This will go along way to answer the "ridiculously high multi engine minimums" question.:ok:

To Clarify cokebottle, CAO 82.3 stipulates the 500 Multi PIC/ICUS for LC-RPT operations. Rex have an ICUS program for their cadets to log ICUS time to meet this requirement.

They now have several Captains in the LHS with 2000 hours SAAB and 500 ICUS time.

Half the problem for experienced guys who are getting turned away and trying their hardest to get into the airlines is HR.

If you don't tick some little box that HR has come up with you don't get the job. No matter how well you did in your SIM or Group assessment. They are turning away very experienced people who would not have any issue slotting in to the right seat of a jet (Including me), people who are already proven in the right-seat of a regional sized transport category aircraft.

We will have un-crewed aircraft parked against the fence and rusted through before HR do away with their cancerous "psychometric" and "tell me about a time when" nonsense.