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For the longest while airlines treated pilots as a renewable resource.
It was long considered one of the best jobs one could have—to make good money flying
around the world in comfort—but as aviation has become more commonplace the job of pilot
has too become more and more just like any other job.
While in the 50s the job garnered the same respect and pay as a doctor, entering the
industry today earns you not much more than you’d make at a fast food restaurant.
Before a pilot can even perform their first take-off with passengers in the back they
have to get licensed.
Most top airline jobs require or strongly favor those with a college diploma so for
those that want to go all the way in the field they have to start by getting a degree.
The cost of that averages $133,000 in the US and then every aspiring commercial pilot
first needs to get a private pilots license which requires 35 hours of flight-time.
These first bits of flight time, which are with an instructor, typically cost about $140
an hour or $4,900 total.
You also have to take classes which have their own fees so getting a private pilots license
usually costs about $8,000 all in.
To start actually making money as a pilot, though, you need 15 additional hours of instruction
for an instrument rating costing $900 and an additional 215 hours of flight time costing
$23,500.
There are also tons of other smaller costs for books and housing and transportation and
other things which bring the total cost of pilots training to at least $80,000.
Having done all that, having spent $213,000 on education so far, one finally receives
a commercial pilots license but still, at that point, one can’t work for most airlines.
To get an Airline Transport Pilot License, the one needed to work for large commercial
airlines by the likes of Delta or KLM or Cathay Pacific, one needs, with some exceptions,
1,500 flight hours.
That would cost an additional $136,000 in rental fees alone if one were to pay for the
flight time themselves so pilots normally let someone else pay for it by working at
a job that doesn’t require a full ATP license.
The most common job used to get from 250 to 1500 hours is as a flight instructor but some
also work flying skydiving planes, towing banners, or for airlines flying small single-engine
planes.
Once that’s all done, after having been in education continuously for a quarter of
ones life until the age of 23 and having spent hundreds of thousands of dollars one can finally
start flying commercial passenger planes and earning $30,000 a year.
That’s a typical and even fair starting salary for a first year first officer and,
considering these individuals often have tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt,
young pilots are often in a tough financial situation.
Most Americans pilots start their commercial careers at regional airlines.
The largest of these is SkyWest airlines which is an airline that flies for other airlines.
You could be flying any of the three major American airlines—Delta, United, or American—and
actually be on a Skywest operated flight.
Skywest, along with other regional airlines, operate all planes for these US airlines with
under 76 seats.
They fly the smallest planes which are actually more expensive on a per passenger basis to
operate than the larger planes.
The regional airlines’ primary purpose is to lower cost.
The aviation industry is heavily unionized so the major airlines would never be allowed
to bring in pilots at a yearly salary of twenty or thirty thousand dollars.
Therefore, they contract these regional carriers to operate the small expensive planes so the
crew can be employed at a different pay-scale even if the flights are branded as United
or Delta or American.
While a first year first officer for American Airlines makes $88 per flight hour, a first
year first officer for SkyWest only makes $37.
Pilots are only allowed to fly 900 hours per calendar year in the US which works out to
75 hours per month or about 17 hours per week.
Now, the idea of a 17 hour workweek probably sounds great but these are only the hours
in command of an airborne aircraft.
They don’t account for the time it takes to get to the airport, clear security, brief
for the flight, inspect and prep the aircraft, board passengers, deplane passengers, pack
up, file paperwork, and get home or to a hotel.
Pilots are primarily paid based on hours in the air which is why you tend to see the more
senior pilots flying the longer routes.
A typical four-day trip for a regional pilot in the US might see them flying on Monday
from Minneapolis to Fargo, Fargo to Minneapolis, Minneapolis to Pittsburgh, then Pittsburgh
to Boston where they would stay overnight.
The next day, Tuesday, they would fly from Boston to Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh to Boston,
and Boston to Nashville.
After an overnight they would fly Nashville to Boston, Boston to Jacksonville, and Jacksonville
to Boston.
Finally, on Thursday, they would fly from Boston to Norfolk and then Norfolk to Minneapolis.
Over that four day, twelve leg trip they would be in the air for just over 19 hours.
That regional pilot would have been almost constantly either working, sleeping, or eating.
Compare that to a long-haul pilot flying an a330.
They would leave Atlanta on a Monday night, fly to Amsterdam arriving Tuesday morning,
and fly back Thursday after having had a full 48 hours free in Amsterdam.
On that trip the pilot would have accumulated 16 flight hours—not all that different from
the hours that the regional pilot gained after working constantly for four days.
It’s no wonder why the most senior pilots, who have the seniority to decide which type
of plane and routes they fly, almost always go for the long-haul routes.
Meanwhile, while the young pilots don’t get paid much and work tougher schedules,
the advantage for them of working for these regional airlines is that they can gain the
experience and hours needed to get a job at a more desirable airline.
The problem that the airline industry if facing is that not enough people are willing to put
themselves through all the years of expensive training, low pay, and long hours to get to
the stage where they make good money and fly the most interesting routes.
There is a shortage of pilots but it’s hard to know how bad this shortage is—some say
it’s a myth, others will say it’s already chronic—but by one estimate the US alone
will have 1,600 pilot jobs unfilled by 2020.
While the problem is only predicted to get worse, the shortage of pilots is already having
consequences.
Emirates Airlines denies having any pilot shortage but the reality is that in April
2018 they flew 36 777’s and 10 a380’s over to Dubai World Central Airport, a less
busy airport than the main Dubai airport, and left those airplanes there on the ground
for months because there just weren’t enough pilots to fly them.
The concerning thing is, Emirates pilots are some of the best paid in the industry.
Even young Emirates pilots make more than $200,000 a year and, thanks to local laws,
that’s tax-free income.
Emirates has come under criticism for long work hours, insufficient rest periods, and
minimal pilot staffing for their longest haul flights which is likely a contributing factor
to their difficulty in attracting pilots but, if they’re having trouble recruiting pilots
while paying so much that’s not a great sign for the industry.
These high salaries from some airlines are also a contributing factor to the shortage
in the US and Europe, though.
The UAE is a small country with two massive airlines so they rely on recruiting foreign
pilots.
China, while not a small country, also doesn’t have enough local pilots to staff their tremendously
fast growing airline industry.
The country’s airlines therefore pay a starting salary of $312,000 per year to foreign pilots
and some make up to $500,000.
While working conditions are tough, it’s still no wonder why 10% of all pilots in China
are now foreigners.
With more and more pilots heading overseas to the best paying pilot jobs the US, Europe,
and other western countries are left with fewer and fewer people to fly their planes.
The short-term solution for airlines in the US has been to fast track pilots through the
early phase of their careers flying small jets for low pay and get more pilots flying
the larger planes earlier.
That leaves the brunt of the impact of this shortage on small towns served by these small
planes.
US airlines especially, thanks to the country’s vastness, operate with route networks emphasizing
service to small airports.
Rather amazingly, there are 553 airports in the US with commercial service.
United is perhaps the most focused among the big three US airlines on small town service
with 235 domestic destinations but, due to the lack of pilots, it’s having to cancel
routes.
In September 2018 alone the airline stopped service from Chicago to Willard, Illinois,
Mobile, Alabama, and Manchester, New Hampshire even though these routes were likely profitable.
United isn’t alone in this.
Horizon Air, the subsidiary operating Alaska Airlines’ regional flights, had to cancel
thousands of flights in 2017 due to a severe lack of pilots.
There are a couple of possible solutions to this crisis.
The most obvious one is to increase pay and to improve working conditions but, from the
airlines’ perspectives, that’s the last-ditch solution as they focus on their bottom lines.
While it’s tough to sympathize with these billion dollar businesses losing some money
as a result of paying a more livable wage, the reality is that if they’re having to
pay more for the pilots to serve small towns it’s going to cost more to fly to small
towns and those living in small towns are often the ones least able to pay.
Another commonly proposed solution is to attract more women pilots.
Only 6.7% of the world’s pilots are female and so, by putting more effort into recruiting
that half of the population airlines could potentially increase pilot numbers without
increasing pay.
More and more airlines, such as Lufthansa and Emirates, are also operating up their
own flights schools where cadets can train for reduced rates or for free as long as they
end up working at the airline.
Airlines are also working to reduce the number of pilots needed.
Emirates, for example, reduced the number of pilots it uses on some of its longest flights.
On the 13 hour flight from Dubai to Sydney, for example, they now only staff three pilots
instead of four which means that each only gets four hours of inflight rest instead of
six.
Finally, one of the more controversial proposals to fix this issue has been to increase automation
in the cockpit to the point where only one or possibly zero pilots are needed to fly.
This proposal has met criticism from pilots, cabin crew, and the public alike as many opponents
point out that the cockpit is already highly automated and the pilot’s main role is to
troubleshoot if things go wrong.
Nonetheless, with captains of wide-body planes earning more than $300 per flight hour the
cost of crewing the cockpit can be as much as $19,000 each way on the longest flights
like San Francisco to Singapore so there’s certainly financial pressure on airlines to
cut down the need for pilots if they can.
There are thousands of people who become pilots each year but there are millions more who
want to become pilots.
To bring more people into the industry all airlines need to do is to lower the extraordinarily
high barrier to entry since as the industry grows worldwide, the allure of the skies won’t
be enough to get enough pilots into the cockpit.
If you want to become a pilot two of the major things you absolutely need to have a solid
grasp of are math and physics.
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