Aircrew Wanted
 

Got your attention?
Good, now listen up, here is the situation.
Details below.

Pilots Sought to Fill Cockpits as Rising Travel in Asia Creates Shortage
By Chan Sue Ling - Sep 5, 2010 2:00 PM MT
Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd., Qantas Airways Ltd. and Emirates Airline are awaiting deliveries of about 400 planes to capitalize on Asia’s rising prosperity. Finding pilots is the next job.

Boeing Co. expects the region’s carriers to be the biggest buyers of twin-aisle planes as travel grows in China and India, home to a combined 1.1 billion middle-class people. Asia-Pacific airlines will buy about 8,000 planes worth $1.2 trillion over the next 20 years, Airbus SAS said.

Airlines worldwide need an average of 49,900 pilots a year from 2010 to 2030 as fleets expand, yet current training capacity is only 47,025, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal. That is sparking bidding wars as Emirates offers tax-free salaries and four-bedroom villas for captains, and AirAsia Bhd., the region’s biggest budget airline, gives tuition-free training.

“It’s a major issue and will be a big challenge to the industry’s growth,” said Binit Somaia, a Sydney-based analyst for the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation. “Even if you can find the pilots, you have to pay top dollar for them because they are so scarce.”

China, India

China, the world’s fastest-growing major aviation market, likely will account for a third of the region’s orders, Airbus, the world’s biggest aircraft maker, said in February. Its economy will grow 10.5 percent this year, compared with world growth of 4.6 percent, according to International Monetary Fund estimates.

India, with estimated growth of 9.4 percent this year, may overtake China as the world’s fastest-growing major economy as early as 2013, according to Morgan Stanley.

This year, the region’s carriers ordered 133 commercial jets with more than 100 seats, or 23 percent of the global total, according to Ascend Worldwide Ltd., a London-based aviation forecaster and data provider.

“There will be a shortage of pilots, and this is going to last for a while because it takes time to produce a good pilot,” said Elmer Pena, president of the Airline Pilots Association of the Philippines.

Philippine Airlines Inc. canceled flights in July and August and rebooked passengers after losing 27 pilots to higher paying jobs abroad.

Fleet Doubles

The demand in Asia contrasts with the 4,500 U.S. airline pilots on furlough, according to figures compiled by Kit Darby, a retired United Airlines pilot now running an Atlanta-based consulting firm.

That situation shouldn’t last long. The global fleet of cargo and large passenger planes will double to nearly 32,000 by 2028 from 15,750 last year, according to Airbus.

The major U.S. airlines are expected to hire more than 40,000 pilots in the next 12 years, said Louis Smith, president of FltOps.com, which provides career counseling services and sponsors job fairs.

World passenger traffic is expected to increase an average of 4.7 percent a year between 2009 and 2028, according to Airbus.

“I believe one can expect serious shortages among the foreign carriers who can’t afford to pay what it takes to attract qualified pilots,” Smith said.

$28 Billion Expansion

Emirates is the largest Arab airline with more than 200 planes on order. It aims to recruit 250 pilots this year and double that number in 2011, it said in a statement.

The company, which needs more than $28 billion through 2017 for expansion, sought to recruit in Houston, Madrid and Singapore.

Cathay Pacific, Hong Kong’s biggest carrier, will recruit 1,000 people, including crew, Chief Operating Officer John Slosar said.

PT Garuda Indonesia placed a newspaper advertisement last month seeking pilots “fluent in English and of good character.” Jetstar, the budget arm of Qantas, plans to recruit 120 more pilots by next summer.

Singapore Airlines Ltd. and AirAsia, based near Kuala Lumpur, set up their own tuition-free training academies. Singapore Air’s flying college graduates about 150 cadet pilots a year, while AirAsia’s facility trains as many as 500 a year.

Graduates must stay with the budget carrier for five years, AirAsia Chief Executive Officer Tony Fernandes said.

Villas, Dry Cleaners

New flight schools also are opening. CAPA is investing at least $125 million to build an aerospace university in India that can train about 300 pilots a year, Somaia said.

The shortage, and hiring by a new crop of budget carriers, also could push wages higher.

“There is a misconception that low-cost airlines pay lower salaries,” said Tony Davis, chief executive officer of budget carrier Tiger Airways Holdings Ltd., part-owned by Singapore Air “We couldn’t do that in a competitive market.”

Basic pay for Singapore Air captains flying twin-aisle Boeing 777s or the Airbus A330s begin at S$9,300 ($6,870) a month, excluding allowances, said P. James, president of the Air Line Pilots Association of Singapore. They also earn a productivity allowance of as much as S$3,800 for flying 70 hours a month.

Emirates offers a starting monthly salary of 34,410 dirhams ($9,370) for captains, according to its website. That excludes benefits such as hourly flying and productivity payments.

Its other perks include a tax-free basic salary, profit sharing, villas for captains and free dry cleaning of uniforms, its website said. Those incentives help attract candidates to an increasingly demanding job, said Barry Jackson, president of the Australian and International Pilots Association, who has been a pilot at Qantas since 1987.

“Young people these days prefer to become doctors or lawyers,” he said. “This sort of career path is becoming less desirable.”

Courtesy, bloomberg.net

This isn't news... this has been predicted since around 2007. Nice to see it coming to fruition though... hopefully the knock-on effect will be huge.

Makes the future sound rosy doesn't it? ;)

Unfortunately we all know it that reality is far from the situation depicted. The key words right now are "suitably qualified pilots" I also think the article fails to relate the predicted shortage to greater macro economic issues on a global scale.

Beyond that, (as noted) the shortages will become (are) apparent mainly in Asia. Regulation and complete lack of harmonisation on licencing will prevent (at least in the short/medium term) a transfer of skill from the areas where there's a glut of licenced and freshly trained pilots to the areas of the world that really need them.

You don't see many newly minted JAA/FAA CPL's being snapped up by Asian carriers do you? Hopefully time will change things...

:ok:

They've got the solution to that issue.
Retirement at 70...
The problem is after 60 you only get pilots that used to be good:}
Is that fair enough?:cool:

Enough to suck in a whole new generation of cannon fodder....

way-hay! some good :mad: fodder for those selling integrated courses!

To my kids today : stay away from the business. Poor T&Cs and airlines taking the piss. No private life (or crap one). Go for finance and management : more money for less responsibility and less taking new looks at yourself. Better Return on investment and home everynight. One or two business travels here and there, for the sake of renewal.

RTO
 

Spot on mate... they will fill seats with rookies... never been a prob before.. look at EK now, they desperate for drivers, what did they do? Lower the mins. Simple.:cool:

So Qantas will employ you via Jetstar on sh*t money, paying for a type rating and Cathay will put you on let me think have they got to the Z payscale yet? Hardly worth the effort is it?

All you have to do is move to the other side of the world, which might not be feasible for many.

I think it's pretty obvious that there is already a shortage of qualified pilots. Some of incidents on the list below are essentially murder by proxy: corrupt civil aviation agencies hand-in-glove with local airlines to put incapable numb-nuts in flight decks:

-737 in the ocean off Sharm-al-Sheikh
-A320 in the ocean off Bahrein
-A310 in the ocean off Comores
-A330 into the ground at Tripoli
-A320 into the sea off Sochi
-B737 into the sea off Beirut
-B737 off the end in Cochin

Several years ago I remember reading in Flight a prophecy that the increasing size of the airline fleet worldwide and the decreasing pool of capable aviators would combine to produce a hull loss per week in the near future. At the time I thought it was absurd and alarmist but here we are.

It will get worse.

Caught a snippet on TV last night about a certain Irish "gentleman" being reported as saying F/Os were not needed and their seat could be filled by a Flight Attendant. I wonder how much it will cost them to get their rating. F/A P2F rating? :ugh:

I suppose next he will introduce an extra fee the passenger will need to pay if they do not have a CPL with a type rating on the airliner. This is just in case the Captain gets taken ill and the F/A needs someone to handle the radios, land the plane etc. :uhoh:

You left out AirFrance A330 into the south Atlantic
And, the AirFrance off the end in Canada.
Not to mention, of course, the BA 777, short at LHR.

Listing is never fair but:

Airfrance over run :- Pilot error, landing in a heavy thunderstorm.
Air France A330 :- Cause, as yet, unknown, speculation as to unreliable airspeed.
BA777 :- Caused by ice build up leading to loss of thrust above idle, simultaneously on both engines at low level spool up. Crew commended for rapid handling decisions which avoided a much worse incident.

numb-nuts? Possibly in one case for a bad decision. The other unkown and the final one definitively not.

At the specific time of the accident, I would certainly agree.
This leaves us with the possibility that during an earlier portion of the referenced flight, improper and/or questionable decisions were made, that could well have been a causative factor.

I would be interested to know what they would have been? The aircraft was cold soaked during a Siberian transit as far as I remember and the tanks recorded low fuel temperatures which were mitigated by a reduced flight level being sought.

The idea that ice crystals of the type found could block the engine fuel filters had never even been considered by Boeing and took them a long time and exhaustive testing to find. (Possibly fitting a centrifugal fuel filter could have avoided it)

Sadly, as has been the case for many years, the flight reference cards for many aircraft are written in blood as it takes an accident to show what hasn't been thought of. Luckily in this case they all walked away.

More or less correct, however, as I recall, the descent requested in the effort to mitigate the low fuel temperature, was severely delayed, thereby leaving the airplane in those much colder ambient temperatures for a longer period.
Other aircraft along more or less the same routing, descended earlier, or, possibly diverted.

I agree that the fuel temperatures were low, I am not flying the 777 so I don't know what the minimum fuel temperatures are, as such I cannot assess whether the decision was timely or not.

Obviously there would need to be a valid reason for continuing flight at the planned level if the temperatures were below limits. Again, that is information to which I don't have access, only that the crew were not held to account for such a decision as far as I recall.

think we could add the Kenyan 737 in east Africa to the list

411a, buy Peter Burkill's book and see what he said about it. Maybe then you could apologise to him for quoting other's incorrect "opinions" and treating them as gospel on a Rumor Network. :yuk:

Why....has it gone to near the top in the fiction category?:}