Being a commercial pilot is still seen as one of the world’s most glamorous jobs,
but as parts of the industry face pilot shortages and planes become more automated, I want to
find out what it takes for today’s future pilots to get their wings.
So you have control.
Let’s turn around towards Brighton.
It’s a weird sensation, turning an entire plane.
I’ve come to the south coast of England, to a commercial pilot academy called
Flying Time Aviation or FTA.
This is where hundreds of students take their first steps toward achieving their dreams
of becoming an airline pilot.
What do you think will be the biggest challenge for me up in the air?
So you need to have a reasonable level of hand/eye coordination.
We have a vast array of abilities and some students will struggle.
It’s very, very rare that we get students that don’t have the ability to pilot an aircraft.
So what draws people to a career of flying planes all around the world?
Being up front.
That’s I think the key part, you get the full spectrum of what’s ahead of you.
You can feel everything a bit more.
It’s not the same as pressing against a window in the back.
You get to see a lot of places for your day job.
I think that’s definitely a perk of becoming a pilot.
That first moment where you got in a plane and took the controls.
What did that feel like?
That was terrifying.
That exhilaration, it’s like, this is the beginning.
But is a career as a commercial pilot as glamorous as it once was?
Paul Heaver flew for British Airways for more than 40 years.
I think pilots are working harder today.
I was probably flying 500 hours a year, whereas today I think the maximum legal limit is 900
hours and I believe that pilots are right up against the 900 hours.
The main line, full-time pilots are actually working really quite hard.
Typically for a lesson we’d go either east or west.
So east towards Brighton or we could go west towards Worthing.
Wherever your heart takes you.
Well you’re the one flying.
Yeah, that’s true.
What we want to focus on today is looking out the window
and using the surroundings to position the aircraft.
Pilot academies like these are becoming more important, as concerns spread over a pilot
shortage in the commercial aviation industry.
One reason for the decrease, according to industry experts, was the 1978 Deregulation Act.
It removed federal government control over the U.S. airline industry and began the era
of the low-cost carrier. As a result, airlines such as Pan-Am went out of business.
This led to widespread redundancies across the industry, and the pilots that kept their
jobs saw a decline in wages. Just look at this graph.
In 1980, there were about 827,000 pilots in America.
That means there are more than 200,000 fewer pilots flying in the U.S. today,
despite increasing demand for air travel.
The number of global air passengers is expected to double to 8.2 billion by 2037.
The 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 also saw many major airlines declare bankruptcy and
caused further job losses. U.S. passenger airlines employed about 520,000 people in 2000.
By 2003, this fell nearly 15% to about 445,000.
Employment in the U.S aviation sector continued to fall for the next seven years.
American aircraft manufacturer Boeing say that by 2038 the global industry will need
more than 800,000 new pilots to keep up with demand, with the Asia Pacific region leading
the growth, requiring 266,000 pilots.
The airline industry is particularly lacking female pilots.
There were more than 9,000 female commercial pilots globally in 2019.
That means that just over 5% of commercial pilots are women.
I read the in-flight magazine and it was talking about the lack of females in the industry,
and it was like 4% at this time and I was like, why’s it so low?
And then it talked about the criteria needed and what this industry entailed
and I was like that’s it, sign me up.
I made the financial means come together and I'm here.
We’re going to climb out at 100 knots.
So we’re on the runway. We’re cleared for take off.
Hold the brakes. Advance the power to full.
Temperatures and pressures are all good. Off we go.
There you go. 35 to 50.
So here we go. 72. Off the ground.
Then there’s not enough runway left. Positive rate of climb. Gear up.
Just before landing. Let the nose come round.
There’s one wheel, wheel and then the nose.
I can see the pure enjoyment of being a pilot, and why someone would want to become a pilot.
Yeah, absolutely.
It’s just the cost is the big barrier.
You know a commercial pilot it’s really rewarding, it’s lovely conditions, not all the time.
Learning to fly any plane is no small task, but how much more skill and knowledge
do you need to fly a commercial aircraft?
Located thirty miles north of FTA is a company called Jet Masterclass.
This is where pilots from FTA come to do their multi crew training, the last stage of an
expensive, two year long commercial pilot’s qualification.
The training for a commercial pilot’s license costs around $146,000.
To pass the FTA integrated course you need:
188 flight hours, 50 of which are without an instructor.
Six months studying in the Airline Transport Pilot License ground school
that ends with 14 written exams.
And finally cadets need 45 hours of multi crew training - which involves 25 hours theory
in the classroom and 20 hours in a simulator.
The simulator is the first time cadets will experience the feeling of flying in a commercial airliner.
We take them from a basic commercial license on a light multi-pilot airplane and we deliver
the multi crew training on a complex 737-800 simulator.
Which these trainees have to do, prior to embarking upon seeking employment with the airlines.
Here we are.
That’s our office.
Wow. It’s quite spacious, isn’t it?
Yeah.
Amman is a recently fully qualified commercial pilot and is currently interviewing with several airlines.
What do you think though, the unique challenges will be when you become a commercial pilot?
To pay back the loans, I assume.
We’ve trained on a propeller aircraft and now going into a jet, you know more thrust, it’s heavier.
Even though it’s in a sim, you can still feel it on your controls.
Gear up here. Yup. Okay.
But how much time will future pilots be spending with their hands on the controls?
Autopilots have evolved into flight-management systems that can run almost every part of a journey.
Automation’s been around for many years.
Advanced navigation equipment nowadays that allows you to fly very efficiently whereas
in the older days it was much more sort of conventional navigation from point to point.
If you buy a car, you don’t go straight to learning the cruise control, you learn to
drive it first and our multi-crew courses are fully manually flown to ensure that the
underlying competency is there.
When the automation is not doing what it should be doing or what you ask it to do, then you
need to be able to revert back to manual flight.
To really get an idea of how automated planes can be.
I’m going to do an auto landing.
85 knots.
Ok
Ok, so you can do that.
Ok and by doing that you’ve just commanded the auto throttle.
So the next stage of flaps is flap 5.
So you call for it.
Ok, flap 5.
So you can turn left to a heading of 350 degrees.
If we push this button here which is the approach button.
Ok
That’s now going to arm the automatics to what we call lock on to the final approach
profile.
You’re kind of still flying even though you’re not.
You’re managing the aeroplane
Yeah.
Still no visibility whatsoever.
Correct.
We’re at two thousand feet.
We’re about eight miles from the airfield.
Right, ok.
You’re going to set the final speed of 147.
Ok, we’re clear to land.
Although the automation’s engaged what you would be doing as a pilot flying is guarding
the controls.
Also you’ve got to really trust the automation because I can’t see anything.
50, 40, 30, 20, 10.
Ok, there we are.
So that was a full auto land.
So with your right hand, these are the thrust reversers, you can select those.
Just pull them all the way up.
Well done, your first auto land.
Oh, that was fun.
Despite the reported demand for pilots, will they be needed in the future?
Both Airbus and Boeing are preparing for a single-pilot commercial aviation world, re-designing
cockpits and now testing in simulators single pilot operated aircraft.
Airlines are particularly keen on the financial benefits.9
A report published in 2017 by the bank UBS, suggests that moving a two-pilot set up to
a single-pilot operation could save the civil aviation industry $15 billion a year.
Going fully pilotless would increase that figure to $35 billion.10
We could be looking at a future of commercial air travel with single pilot planes or no
pilot planes, do you think that’s a good thing?
Automation is a highly valuable thing; it decreases your workload absolutely.
What I would say is when things go wrong and you’ve got to make a decision it’s always
best to be able to put that decision through a second person and come to a consensus,
rather than one individual making that decision.
The degree of sophistication in automation of airplanes has improved enormously and
so I think one of the biggest hazards, threats, call it what you wish is complacency, but
I somehow cannot see 300+ members of the public getting on board a large metal tube and taking to the
skies for 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 thousand miles without there being some form of human interface in control.
However, in a recent survey of 22,000 people in the U.S., 70% of respondents said they
would fly without a pilot in their lifetime and 58% said they would consider it in the next 10 years.
There are some that believe single pilot planes are just the next step in aviation.
Ali Baghchehsara is CEO of Lisa Group, a company that develops aviation automation systems.
Right now you are exactly right on the edge for the next generation.
Pilots have been always getting new training and they still make mistakes.
Single pilot operation is requiring a lot of mindset change as well because we are going
to rely on something that we haven't been relying on much.
The commercial airline industry has become a symptom of the increasingly automated world we live in.
Autopilot can now fly the majority of commercial flights and single pilot planes are being considered.
But it’s clear that the ability to fly the plane and not just manage them is still as
important for tomorrow’s pilot as it is for today’s.
Hi guys, thanks for watching our video.
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becoming a pilot. Have you ever considered it?
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