How to solve the US pilot shortage

Jackk said:
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Really? So the consumers who want to fly on turbo props instead of Gulfstreams, but no longer can because no one wants to fly them is ok with you. The sense of entitlement I see these day is unbelievable.
 
Republic first year is $41,700 and no bonuses for F/Os at the moment.
 
Just put a 250 hour pilot in the seat, then watch him or her like a hawk.
 
My son is a first-year FO with a major. His pay doubled when he went from FO to Captain at the regional, went up something like 50% going from regional captain to major FO, will double after he completes his first year as FO, and double again when he’s promoted to captain.

The problem isn’t money. Millennials care a lot more about lifestyle than money — Gen Z’s even more so. And airline flying is a bad lifestyle. I’ve looked from the outside and thought 12-14 days off every month looked pretty sweet. But now I see his wife dealing with wild children, school, ball games, and piano recitals by herself 14-16 days a month while he’s hanging out in a hotel. It doesn’t matter if it’s Boise, Boston, or Berlin; he’d rather be home.

Most training is done at the students’ expense — on spec, if you will. That’s something else millennials don’t like and Gen Z’s hate. They don’t want to borrow or spend $50-100k for training with no guarantee of a reasonable return.

So, I see two major problems: the lifestyle and training at high financial risk. One solution to the first problem is more out-and-back flights. Put them in their own beds at night and you save the cost of putting them up and feeding them. You might also help reduce their divorce rate. Allegiant already does this. For the second, we should consider ab initio training along the lines of LIFT academy. For over a hundred years, railroads have been able to turn high school graduates into locomotive engineers. There’s no reason that can’t be done for airliners. Honestly, an Airbus is a lot easier to operate than a steam locomotive.
 
OneCharlieTango said:
For over a hundred years, railroads have been able to turn high school graduates into locomotive engineers. There’s no reason that can’t be done for airliners. Honestly, an Airbus is a lot easier to operate than a steam locomotive.
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We still have steam locomotives????
 
bflynn said:
Their willingness to borrow such money is pretty well established, especially when choosing college majors which have no rational career path.
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You're confusing millennials with gen Z. College enrollment rates have been declining.
 
Dave Theisen said:
Really? So the consumers who want to fly on turbo props instead of Gulfstreams, but no longer can because no one wants to fly them is ok with you. The sense of entitlement I see these day is unbelievable.
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If they don’t want to be competitive in the free market, it’s their choice to fail.

How is the free market “entitlement”?

Pay peanuts, can’t even get as many monkeys as before, and it’s everyone else’s fault?
 
MauleSkinner said:
Who’s gonna watch him? The 1500-hour captain can barely watch himself.
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The biggest issue, IMO, is the hours from a wet commercial to ATP qualifying mins. I learned a lot flying 135 single pilot before jumping into the 121 world. These new kids just check the box riding around as a CFI in a 172, and then get to fly a jet. They don't develop any real airmanship skill along the way, because the pilot mills don't let them make weather decisions, it is made for them. They get to the jet, and quite frankly, the training programs aren't doing what they need to do. Training gets them a type rating, that's it. They get dumped on the line woefully unprepared for actual line operations.

How do we fix the "shortage", it's not lowering standards. Beyond that, I'm not sure you can. Accept the fact that small cities are going to not have service going forward
 
Well, I’ve got the hours, but they will need to raise the maximum age several years…. wait a minute! I’m retired and don’t want to go back to work.:eek:
 
OneCharlieTango said:
One solution to the first problem is more out-and-back flights. Put them in their own beds at night and you save the cost of putting them up and feeding them. You might also help reduce their divorce rate. Allegiant already does this.
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Allegiant does point-to-point flying, does not offer connections, and often has just one flight per day with two to four flights per week. What works under that model doesn't work in a model that attempts to provide a comprehensive national, or global, transportation system.

Another problem with Allegiant is that there are only a handful of pilots at each domicile. A few lucky pilots get to be based in their home city but the rest can't hold it. Commuting is very difficult with their schedules so base closures or upgrade opportunities are likely to require moving the family to somewhere that they don't want to be in order to be "home every night".

If out-station basing was more efficient for large network airlines, large network airlines would use out-station basing.
 
Larry in TN said:
Allegiant does point-to-point flying, does not offer connections, and often has just one flight per day with two to four flights per week. What works under that model doesn't work in a model that attempts to provide a comprehensive national, or global, transportation system.

Another problem with Allegiant is that there are only a handful of pilots at each domicile. A few lucky pilots get to be based in their home city but the rest can't hold it. Commuting is very difficult with their schedules so base closures or upgrade opportunities are likely to require moving the family to somewhere that they don't want to be in order to be "home every night".

If out-station basing was more efficient for large network airlines, large network airlines would use out-station basing.
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Exactly, even most regionals have abandoned the outstation basing model, it just doesn't work out.
 
Larry in TN said:
Allegiant does point-to-point flying, does not offer connections, and often has just one flight per day with two to four flights per week. What works under that model doesn't work in a model that attempts to provide a comprehensive national, or global, transportation system.

Another problem with Allegiant is that there are only a handful of pilots at each domicile. A few lucky pilots get to be based in their home city but the rest can't hold it. Commuting is very difficult with their schedules so base closures or upgrade opportunities are likely to require moving the family to somewhere that they don't want to be in order to be "home every night".

If out-station basing was more efficient for large network airlines, large network airlines would use out-station basing.
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Yes. This is true, it’s not a model that scales up to replace the big three.
 
Morgan3820 said:
Wouldn't that require the FAA to kinda admit that they over reacted by instituting an hours requirement that both pilots had already met?
My wife once admitted to me that she was wrong. But, turns out that she was mistaken.
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Was not the FAA. That was congress, and the families left behind the 2009 Colgan air crash. The FAA actually at the time was against the 1500 rule. Now, they did not push, but when asked, they did say it would not make material difference.

Tim
 
Jackk said:
Do you need me to fully articulate how more experience is more better? Really?
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In IT there is/was a popular saying.
Do you have 25 years experience or one year of experience repeated twenty five times?

The point of the article is mots pilots today getting to 1500 hours are in the second group. Repeating 1000 hours flying around VFR teaching students does not help.

Tim
 
Larry in TN said:
Allegiant does point-to-point flying, does not offer connections, and often has just one flight per day with two to four flights per week. What works under that model doesn't work in a model that attempts to provide a comprehensive national, or global, transportation system.

Another problem with Allegiant is that there are only a handful of pilots at each domicile. A few lucky pilots get to be based in their home city but the rest can't hold it. Commuting is very difficult with their schedules so base closures or upgrade opportunities are likely to require moving the family to somewhere that they don't want to be in order to be "home every night".

If out-station basing was more efficient for large network airlines, large network airlines would use out-station basing.
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This was how it was explained to me. It is cheaper to park a plane at small regional airport (think KPSM), then at Orlando (KMCO). So Aligiant structured their solution to reduce the parking costs for planes, which apparently adds up to a nice chunk of money.
There is nothing that actually prevents the larger airlines from significantly increasing the number of flights which are out and back in a single day; there likely is a practical limit around three hours flight time to avoid timeouts.
Three hour flight times would effectively allow for roughly half the country... Which covers a lot of the available and used capacity of the system.

Tim
 
tspear said:
Repeating 1000 hours flying around VFR teaching students does not help.
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There is no 1,500 hour rule. You can't do the same hour over and over again. You have to meet all of the requirements for the ATP. You can do that with 750, 1,000, 1,250, or 1,500 total time but you still need all of the experience and training requirements for the ATP.

14 CFR 61 - Subpart G has the complete list.
 
tspear said:
There is nothing that actually prevents the larger airlines from significantly increasing the number of flights which are out and back in a single day; there likely is a practical limit around three hours flight time to avoid timeouts.
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Out and back would not work for airlines using the network (hub-and-spoke) business model, which employ the vast majority of 121 pilots. They don't put crews in hotel rooms every night for the heck of it.
 
dmspilot said:
Out and back would not work for airlines using the network (hub-and-spoke) business model, which employ the vast majority of 121 pilots. They don't put crews in hotel rooms every night for the heck of it.
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I disagree, but then I am not in the airline industry. So what the heck do i know?

Tim
 
Larry in TN said:
There is no 1,500 hour rule. You can't do the same hour over and over again. You have to meet all of the requirements for the ATP. You can do that with 750, 1,000, 1,250, or 1,500 total time but you still need all of the experience and training requirements for the ATP.

14 CFR 61 - Subpart G has the complete list.
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From what I have read, most pilots are still coming in under 61.159; the 1500 rule. Of the 1500 hours, it has:
500 hours x-country
100 hours night
50 hours in type
75 IFR
250 as PIC or SIC

Somehow that adds up to a lot less than 1500. Especially when you consider that the 500 hours can be pretty much duplicated with all the other conditions.

So yeah, it is an artificial barrier, that likely had good intentions, and worked well a long time ago. But the total time requirement is basically BS.

Tim
 
Larry in TN said:
There is no 1,500 hour rule. You can't do the same hour over and over again. You have to meet all of the requirements for the ATP. You can do that with 750, 1,000, 1,250, or 1,500 total time but you still need all of the experience and training requirements for the ATP.

14 CFR 61 - Subpart G has the complete list.
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Dumbing down the ATP to the lower standards was a silly move.

And I agree with the rest,
 
tspear said:
In IT there is/was a popular saying.
Do you have 25 years experience or one year of experience repeated twenty five times?

The point of the article is mots pilots today getting to 1500 hours are in the second group. Repeating 1000 hours flying around VFR teaching students does not help.

Tim
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This is not IT.
 
tspear said:
I disagree, but then I am not in the airline industry. So what the heck do i know?
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Disagree with what? The legacies make their money off of connecting passengers. They're not going to fly hub-spoke-hub just so the crews can be home at night. It has to be spoke-hub-spoke or it won't work financially.
 
KSCessnaDriver said:
The biggest issue, IMO, is the hours from a wet commercial to ATP qualifying mins. I learned a lot flying 135 single pilot before jumping into the 121 world. These new kids just check the box riding around as a CFI in a 172, and then get to fly a jet. They don't develop any real airmanship skill along the way, because the pilot mills don't let them make weather decisions, it is made for them. They get to the jet, and quite frankly, the training programs aren't doing what they need to do. Training gets them a type rating, that's it. They get dumped on the line woefully unprepared for actual line operations.

How do we fix the "shortage", it's not lowering standards. Beyond that, I'm not sure you can. Accept the fact that small cities are going to not have service going forward
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However, unless the CFI is majorly abusing the students, like practicing stalls 51nm away, or doing everything at night, they won’t meet the real 1500hr ATP mins, by the time they have all the other boxes checked as a CFI they’ll probably have 2500hrs.

The nice thing is the ATP forces a good amount of the puppies out of the mill
 
dmspilot said:
Disagree with what? The legacies make their money off of connecting passengers. They're not going to fly hub-spoke-hub just so the crews can be home at night. It has to be spoke-hub-spoke or it won't work financially.
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There is a reason why the spoke-hub-spoke is the most desirable. Passengers want to leave the outlying spokes earlier in the day to make connections at the hub. Then they want an arrival in the evening so again, they can connect on the way home at the hub. This provides the best of both worlds, a desirable outbound and desirable inbound flight, with the crew and aircraft overnighting at the spoke (RON - Remain Over Night).

Our airline recently cut RON flying due to the pilot shortage, and there is a shortage whether you want to admit it or not. They simply don't have enough pilots to fill the schedules and the impacts are worsening.

Without our RON flight, we have a morning arrival, that is usually half empty because there aren't many connections at the hub in the morning, but have a full morning departure. Then in the evening we have a nearly full arrival, with a half empty return flight back to the hub, since there aren't many connections that late. Very non-optimal schedule for travel, but more efficient for crew scheduling which is the driving factor these days. Our passenger numbers would be much better if we could return the RON flight.
 
The other issue is the bail outs, when bad business decisions don’t have consequences there is little motivation for the companies to change their behavior.

As a simple pilot everything I do has a consequence, every small mistake, no excuses and zero tolerance to the grave, it is bothersome to be held to a higher standard than the big 3.
 
MauleSkinner said:
How did they dumb it down? They actually increased the training/testing requirements.
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Experience is the best teacher

Lowering the hours if you went to XYZ Inc for your training, that is dumbing it down.

I would much rather have a pilot who had more time in the sky vs in a testing center.
 
tspear said:
This was how it was explained to me. It is cheaper to park a plane at small regional airport (think KPSM), then at Orlando (KMCO). So Aligiant structured their solution to reduce the parking costs for planes, which apparently adds up to a nice chunk of money.
There is nothing that actually prevents the larger airlines from significantly increasing the number of flights which are out and back in a single day; there likely is a practical limit around three hours flight time to avoid timeouts.
Three hour flight times would effectively allow for roughly half the country... Which covers a lot of the available and used capacity of the system.

Tim
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It works ok for allegiant operating 100ish airplanes. Not so well for an American/Delta/United flying 1000ish airplanes. Allegiant’s business model does not scale up well. Works great for direct marketing of leisure travel. Most big airlines already have a fair amount of one day trips. Just not all of them like allegiant. It’s not that way by choice. There is a point where outstation basing of aircraft and crew doesn’t continue to scale up and operational problems begin to overcome any savings in facilities and payroll cost.
 
Jackk said:
Experience is the best teacher

Lowering the hours if you went to XYZ Inc for your training, that is dumbing it down.

I would much rather have a pilot who had more time in the sky vs in a testing center.
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XYZ Inc has nothing to do with it. The lower hours assume higher levels of immersion, and assume more diverse knowledge. I can’t say that it’s a direct replacement in all cases, but it can allow better pilots to excel sooner.
 
tspear said:
From what I have read, most pilots are still coming in under 61.159; the 1500 rule.
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I've never seen such stats published. Where did you read that?

The 750, 1,000, and 1,250 options include military pilots, two-year aviation degree programs, and four-year aviation degree programs. Those programs make up a significant amount of the pilots being hired by airlines. I don't know the breakdown. Those programs provide training and education that must be more structured than a pilot trained under part 61 alone. That is why it allows for the lower total flight time levels.

500 hours x-country
100 hours night
50 hours in type
75 IFR
250 as PIC or SIC
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All significantly more experience than is required for a Commercial Pilot at 250 hours TT. That experience is what the "ATP rule" adds to the first time airline pilot.

It's not a 1,500 rule. It is an ATP rule.

Especially when you consider that the 500 hours can be pretty much duplicated with all the other conditions.
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Not sure I see the equivalence. Those requirements are not the kind of experience that a freshly-minted CPL with 250TT has.

So yeah, it is an artificial barrier
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All of part 61 is "artificial". The way it is structured now is you have a choice between more total hours or a more structured training and education program. It isn't about the total time.
 
MauleSkinner said:
XYZ Inc has nothing to do with it. The lower hours assume higher levels of immersion, and assume more diverse knowledge. I can’t say that it’s a direct replacement in all cases, but it can allow better pilots to excel sooner.
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Higher “immersion” and “diverse knowledge”

I’m kinda old school, what the heck does any of that even mean?

I’d say flying in a actual plane is pretty immerse when it comes to aviation, and anyone who has worked a job as a greenhorn knows how “diverse” that experience can be.

Again, class time < Air Time
 
Jackk said:
Higher “immersion” and “diverse knowledge”

I’m kinda old school, what the heck does any of that even mean?

I’d say flying in a actual plane is pretty immerse when it comes to aviation, and anyone who has worked a job as a greenhorn knows how “diverse” that experience can be.

Again, class time < Air Time
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So you’re a “same hours 1500 times” kinda guy?

see Larry’s post above for a more structured explanation.
 
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