Feb
5
Pilots turning scarce as demand takes wing
Filed Under Airline, Flying General, The World and everything, The aviation industry | Leave a Comment
After years of layoffs and pay cuts, expansion of air travel creates shortage of qualified crews
By Julie Johnsson
Via: Chicago Tribune
Published February 4, 2007For the first time since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, all major U.S. airlines are hiring pilots or recalling those laid off during the industry’s five-year downturn.
But the airlines are discovering that many of the 10,000 pilots who lost their jobs during those bleak years aren’t interested in returning to their old lives.
Many pilots, faced with salary cuts of 35 percent or more, moved to overseas carriers, such as Emirates Airline and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. Others took higher-paying jobs with overnight carriers such as FedEx Corp. and United Parcel Service Inc.
Joe Marquardt, 50, left a 17-year career at Northwest Airlines last year for Emirates, as the Minnesota-based carrier phased out the DC-9 jets he flew.
He already had lost one-third of his salary in pay cuts, Marquardt said, and he faced a demotion to a smaller plane, which would mean another pay reduction.
“It got to the point where we couldn’t keep the house,” Marquardt said.
Now, Marquardt enjoys a life of golf and beachcombing in Dubai, as well as the free housing provided by Emirates, which employs him as a Boeing 777 captain.
“It’s hard to match that back home” Marquardt said.
After slashing pilot jobs and pay to survive the last downturn, old-line carriers may find it tougher to hire pilots to keep pace with the industry’s rebound, experts say. In fact, they appear to be facing a shortage in the decade ahead.
The trend is a byproduct of the loss of financial security and prestige suffered by the airlines that have long dominated U.S. travel, increased recruiting of American pilots by foreign carriers and the global boom in commercial aviation and airliner sales.
“It is a wild and crazy time, and it’s really just begun,” said Kit Darby, an expert on pilot hiring trends and pay. He is president of Atlanta’s Air Inc.
About one-third of the world’s airline pilots work in the United States, the largest market for air travel. But U.S. pilots are becoming hot commodities for overseas carriers, which need large numbers of experienced pilots to fly the fleets of wide-body aircraft they have on order from Chicago’s Boeing Co. and Europe’s Airbus SAS.
Boeing predicts that the total number of planes used by airlines around the world will more than double by 2025, to 35,970. To keep pace, Darby estimates airlines will need to hire more than 210,000 pilots globally, more than double the number currently working.
Moving the mandatory retirement for pilots to age 65 from age 60, as proposed by the Federal Aviation Administration last week, will help a little. Darby estimates that relaxing retirement rules will reduce U.S. airlines’ hiring by about 3,800 jobs during the next five years.
“That’s only a drop in the bucket compared to the need,” he said. “There are many, many airplanes coming, and with them large increases in air service.”
Ed,
I have been banging on about the looming shortage for the last five years. It is definitely coming and that must be a comfort for the new hires, those gloomily looking at lengthening time to command after increases in the retirement age both in Europe and the US, and those who are overseas and want to return home.
The flowering tigers of the East, after years of poverty enforced isolationism now want to travel. China, it is estimated, needs 10,000 in the next eight years, India needs thousands to meet her domestic expansion driven demand. Where are they going to come from?
The best news of all in this is set aside for those who have the experience required for command in the seat of their choice. When the shortage bites, the seat may well become vacant, even in larger carriers as expansion arrives with airlines either swallowing and expanding smaller carriers or increasing their fleet size to grab market share to prevent their own absorption.
Direct entry commands will change the recruiting landscape. There are major carriers with highly experienced people in the lower strata of their seniority lists who, until now have been looking upward through serried ranks of blushing youth rubbing their chins as they contemplate their prospects. They can now look forward to a move with little jeopardy into a situation with another carrier where the expectation of rapid promotion above those who simply do not have the experience to occupy the left seat is a reality. Emirates with an acute shortage has been doing this off and on for several years now. This is of course frustrating for those who mark time but a reality that must be met.
And what of the airlines contemplating this movement? For years they have colluded to hold down pilots contractual terms and conditions of service. They insist that this has not happened but like other cost control/profit management measures, the practice is revealed by the evidence.
One analyst said when remarking on the looming shortage. At some point there will be those airlines who will stagnate, those who have pilots, and not much in between. Bring it on!
Well, thats got the excitement out of the way, what about the downside – there must be one?
The counterbalance to these ‘fine’ theories always seems to intrude to pee on the fireworks in this game. I wonder if our analyst had factored into his prophesy the H5N1 virus, global warming or slavering environmentalists brandishing quarto’s of ‘dubious’, aviation targeted research.
Still, what would life be without its swings and roundabouts?
See what Rob Mark has to say at Jetwhine.
Tags
Airline, Flying General, The World and everything, The aviation industry