Is There a Shortage Of Airline Pilots?

If you want job security in the future, the sky may be the place for you. A new mandatory retirement age, and tougher certification requirements have left a huge deficit of airline pilots in the world, and it's not getting better.

So, if you learn to fly, you may have a good job for years to come.

The shortage is already hitting regional carriers and is expected to spread, says Capt. Steve Jones, director of flight operations at the WMU College of Aviation.

"When a major airline or legacy carrier loses a captain to retirement, they reach into their right seats and upgrade a first officer to captain, and then they reach down to the regional carrier and grab a captain and put them in that right seat of that same legacy carrier's aircraft," Jones says. "The regional carrier takes their first officer and upgrades them to captain, and then looks around for somebody to fill that right seat."

Jones says all of the capacity at the nation's flight schools is insufficient to fill the void. Part of that has to do with raising certification requirements to 1,500 hours of flight time for first officers, which decreases the supply. So demand is high, while supply is low.

Jones says the mandatory retirement age for pilots was 60, but was raised to 65 about eight years ago. Those pilots, who delayed retirement, are now retiring in large numbers.

"Delta Airlines said that of the 12,000 pilots they've got, approximately, they're going to see in the next 20 years, 7,000 of them retire," Jones says. "That rate of retirement is in excess of their current training capabilities."

Delta has already dropped routes because they don't have enough pilots to fill them.

Big manufacturers like Boeing and Airbus, meanwhile, are predicting a big increase in demand for pilots based on planes they are selling, Jones adds.

"We're seeing the shortage in regional carriers, who are coming to us now," Jones says. "Where before we went to them to sell our graduates to them, now they're coming to us and saying 'We need more.' The fact is that the regionals are canceling flights because they can't man the airplanes."

Jones says something has to give. "The issue goes beyond the United States. It's worldwide. The demand for pilots, especially in the Far East, is much more severe than it is in the United States."