I’m considering retiring from my current professional athletic career and joining the sky. I’ve been doing a lot of research, and this is one of the first articles I’ve come across calling the “shortage” a myth. Which kind of caught me off guard on the mass amount of info/opinions to the contrary. I will do more research on this topic, but I’m curious to know the insider view point from pilots, directly.
The article arises what seem to be valid points; however, it also really does seem like there is a serious shortage(from the outside looking in). Potentially both could be true? It wouldn’t surprise me that a business that was created to “turn a profit” is focused on profit orientated goals for their future. Even though they’ve received tens of billions of our hard working money, they, and all businesses intended on continued profits will always try to get/make as much as they can.
Thank you for your time, I really look forward to hearing from the insider knowledge.
As a long time ALPA member and former ALPA pilot Rep I can tell you (as with most things), there are pros and cons to the union and there are often unseen reasons and agendas behind many of their positions.
While it’s clear the message here is that if the airlines chose to share the wealth, there’d be more pilots produced and those who left due to their dissatisfaction and disappointment with the industry might return, which would of course address and mitigate some of the shortage. Thar said the reality is, regardless of how we got here, we are in fact VERY short on pilots. Many airlines are currently in contract negotiations and the union is making statements like the above to help with contract gains (as they should) and I believe we’ll make some significant strides in many areas thanks to the unions efforts. But it’s also clear the airlines are coming to the realization they’re literally fighting for bodies and must up their game if they want to recruit and keep their planes flying.
Long/short, despite ALPAs claim that if the airlines would simply do more pilots would magically appear and fill all the empty cockpits that simply ain’t so and it’s an amazing time to get into this industry.
I remember when that article came out, reading it and thinking that ALPA really missed the mark on that one. I understand what they are saying, but they applied a very simple mathematical formula to a complex problem to get those results. They failed to take into account those that have moved on from the industry, have medical issues, maybe got the license for fun, etc.
There absolutely is a shortage now and it is huge. Where ALPA is correct is that the shortage was absolutely created by the airlines. For two decades, the 1990’s and 2000’s, the airlines did everything they could to drive pilot wages down, sometimes as low as minimum wage. The word got out that pilot training was expensive and that there was no pay off for it. Even when I got hired at Continental, I was paid $28k my first year and was not offered health insurance for six months. In the 2010’s, it started to become apparent that there was a pilot shortage brewing and the airlines started raising wages, but the damage was done in the eyes of the public and the airlines have been having to crawl back from that ever since.
The good news is that wages are going up in ways I have never seen before, especially at the regional level, and those that enter the industry now are well positioned to take advantage of this.
I can’t comment on the inner working of ALPA, however, I can say from experience that the pilot shortage is very real. Just on an operational side of things, you can see and feel the effects of it daily. The number of trips in open time with no crew on them, training delays because there aren’t enough LCAs, pressure to upgrade at minimum time, etc. It’s very early on in the scope of a shortage projected to last the next 8 years. I can only imagine how difficult that’s going to be for management.