A 'quality' pilot shortage?
 

There has been talk of a pilot shortage many times during the course of the past 20 years or so.

Never in my experience as a commercial pilot have I ever known the 'flag carriers' advertise on TV for pilots.

Currently I have seen British Airways and Cathay Pacific adverts which are, I'm sure, unprecedented.

Is it a case of a 'quality' pilot shortage with pilots from other carriers not matching up to the stringent requirements of these leading airlines in the numbers required?

The current training of so called 'cadets' suit applicants who have the mental and physical aptitude to pass the courses - but have they got the all round 'gravitas' required of these airlines.

Maybe not it seems - or have I missed a dire shortage of pilots not mooted elsewhere on this Forum?!

... and how you identify pilot with qualities?:)

There is no shortage of pilots (tens of thousands unemployed and withouy hope of ever being employed)

There is shortage of experienced pilots with experience in type. But only when there is an abrupt expansion. These become stagnant sooner or later and then there is no pilot shortage at all, but layoffs.

Pilot shortage was the excuse to change licensing laws and saturate the market with pilot licenses so airline profits increased.

I think the BA ad ties in with their need for 800 pilots over the next 4 years!

Would hate to be at the bottom of that seniority list in a few years time.

Not really. You don't have to be 'quality' to get into BA, you just have to be good enough on the day. The proof being that I know people who passed BA after their 4th attempt!

And I also know people who passed at their first attempt but into the hold pool which sadly for them, expired. So they were made to do it all again and many of these people failed second time around.

Silly process really.

... and now they are flying in the sandpit, isn't it!

Bloody hell ... being lucky is more important than being well prepared!

It cannot possibly be a 'shortage of quality pilots' when there is:

a) an abundance of qualified pilots looking for work, the vast majority experienced in regional, turboprop, air taxi aircraft;
b) the airlines have unanimously sidelined these pilots in preference for 200 hour guys, new to the industry, and looking to jump the experience hurdle by self sponsor themselves.

Now, you can make the argument that the pilots in situation 'a' above are inherently unsuitable because they are too moulded in lighter aircraft, etc... or whatever the current mindset of the airlines/flight schools is. You can also argue that pilots in situation 'b' are 'easier to mould', etc... Both view being championed by parties with a great deal to gain from selling SSTRs, strangely enough. If the situation was true, and supported by a relevant safety analysis with empirical evidence, then I imagine the US would have changed it's route to the majors a long time ago.

Frankly I believe the bottom line is that all airlines need to create revenue from tratining to compete with the mass subsidization of certain airlines by people paying ratings. I don't believe that pilots in situation 'a' are less suitable at all. They may be less willing to pay ratings, but they've worked their way up and earnt the hard hours. I've never seen any evidence of a high washout rate for experienced pilots transitions to jets or off regional jets onto narrow bodies. I think its easier for the airlines to dress it up in a more palatable 'safety' shroud rather than saying, 'we don't want the best, we want the cheapest'.

In conclusion, there cannot be a shortage of 'quality pilots' when a large portion of commercial pilots are not eligible to apply (1-2000 hours, no TR and not eligible to join a sponsored ab initio course) and therefore not assessed.

That's how I see the industry at the moment - and sadly I don't see it changing.

You need to be well prepared AND lucky with BA. Just being lucky is very unlikely to get you through the many hoops in the BA selection process.

You need luck in any interview process. After all it is a human designed process. So BA is hardly 'silly'. Exactly the same issues as any other job selection process. That is no compensation to those that passed and then didn't pass second time round of course.

I do think there is a shortage of pilots with personalities these days.

Maybe if we substitute 'suitable' instead of qualified. Emirates, Cathay, BA all seek different attributes. Whereas the low cost sector have a different agenda totally. I have a feeling most of us will have a whole career waiting for the 'pilot shortage' ..

@ Private Jet, :D Heard them referred to as "Canned Pilots".

Donie, same argument - how do the airlines know if they don't invite applications from non-TR guys, or offer a SSTR and only invite low houred guys?

I am fascinated by the description "quality pilot". Can anyone out there furnish the definition of a "quality pilot"?

I spent 18 years flying for Mrs Windsor and I was often assessed as "Above the Average" but I never considered myself to be a "quality pilot".

I then went on to have a modestly successful 27 years in civil aviation and the only grading that I can remember receiving or giving as an examiner was "Satis" or "Unsatis".

Perhaps the modern term of "quality pilot" means the same as what we used to say;

"Can he shift aeroplanes or can't he"?

If they're looking for "A" quality pilots, CX got a few ;)

TNT have got loads!!!!

Hear it every time they call up on the radio :E:E:E :E:E

No shortage, you are right about that.

Defo no shortage. In today's HR driven world, it all can all come down to whether or not you demonstrate the competencies that they are assessing you for. Hours and ratings these days count for little, apart from meeting requirements for ZFT conversions or those required for DEC, or to have stayed 'current' etc. HR peeps are not Pilots and they simply don't understand flying, or flight training.

the explanation
 

You have made a fortune training thousands of pilots during the last ten years.

Then, you change industry regulation so that you can make a large part of those pilots not qualified enough, so there is a pilot shortage

Then you propose a new way of training pilots to meet demand.

Then you make another fortune training thousands of pilots...

"I do think there is a shortage of pilots with personalities these days."

I totally agree on this one, but then I have the impression that today's airline ignore people with a personality. It's all about being formed into that "lost looking character" with two stripes you see at every airport nowdays.

Pilots of a character and quality as elusive as this perhaps?

The Scarlet Pimpernel - YouTube

That's because management try their best to stamp out personalities..!

It's all about the SOP and not the 'Practical Drift'.

Surely this is an easy one to define lads.

A quality pilot is one that has 35k to pay to fly.

Or

Is prepared to sign a financial training bond that puts all the risk on them and not the airline.

:ugh:

Quality Training?
 

Airline pilot training revolution needed



"Resilience is not being delivered by today's normal training systems, the RAeS conference heard. The only pilots who have this quality tend to either have a military background or have been employed by an airline which has a selection procedure and recurrent training *regime that goes well beyond the legal *requirement - which most do not.


The crash of a Colgan Air Bombardier Q400 in Buffalo, New York, was an example of a loss-of-control *accident

Robert Scott, of Scott Consulting, says the problem is built into the training system. The standard training template is set by pilot licensing and training regulations, which have not changed in their fundamentals since the 1950s. In addition, pilot attitudes to their employment are conditioned by a relatively new phenomenon - a broad-based Western airline withdrawal from accepting any part of the *financial responsibility for the provision of a sustainable supply of quality pilots to fly their aircraft. Anthony Petteford, of Oxford Aviation Academy, recognises this as a major influence both on the kind of applicants for pilot training - those with access to funds - and the output from the training industry - pilots saddled with stressful levels of debt.

But there are also many causal factors for the reduction in crew competency, Scott argues, and some are cultural and societal. That starts with the "educational norm" in schools of "teaching young people to tests, instead of teaching them to competency", and this links seamlessly with the new Western pilot training norm, in which aspiring pilots self-select and self-finance for training to licence level - and in many cases purchase their type rating.

SOFT SKILLS FOCUS

"The intellectual and physical skills once *required of the pilot have largely been replaced by an emphasis on 'soft skills' and *automation management," Scott says. "The pilot who once cynically challenged sources of information now readily accepts information from a variety of sources, many computer-generated, without question." This system delivers ready-cooked, *apparently cost-free ab initio flight crew with licences and ratings."

Amen to that PJ.................... I seem to be flying with cardboard cut-outs a lot of the time!!!!

DR? Never heard of it!
Map reading? What?
Line up behind the 727! What's a 727?
You wanne fly a visual? A What???????????

Aviation is a job! Flying (on the other hand) is a skill and vocation........

Re: The Colgan crash mentioned above, it's probably worth mentioning that the C/A was a former "20th passenger" (ie. He had paid for the position of "first officer" flying a 1900 for Gulfstream International). As, IMS, were the pilots in several other recent crashes in the US.

I'm afraid we aren't so different over here...PIC time and real world experience is no longer at all the thing. More emphasis every year on "advanced simulator training" and/or having attended some sort of puppymill which will make the doormat buttonpusher to order!