Higher entry-level pay at regional airlines, a growing job
market and a spate of new collaborations in recent years among airlines,
universities and flight-training schools have combined to spur renewed interest
in commercial piloting as a career path.
Still, the regional airline industry finds it has much work
to do to prepare for the looming bubble of pilot retirements that is expected
to peak beginning in 2023.
"We've started to sort of stabilize as an industry,"
said Faye Malarkey Black, president of the Regional Airline Association (RAA). "Folks
aren't saying that they are universally filling their openings, but they are
doing better. There is pretty broad-scale agreement that we haven't solved the
pilot shortage problem, but temporary measures have helped."
SkyWest, the largest regional carrier, reported during its
second-quarter earnings call that pilot recruitment is up 20% year over year.
Similarly, pilot hiring has exceeded attrition each month of
this year at Mesa Airlines, CEO Jonathan Ornstein reported in the carrier's
second-quarter earnings call.
And Republic Airways, which is the nation's second-largest
regional airline, has hit pilot hiring targets thus far this year, according to
Matt Koscal, the carrier's chief administrative officer.
The situation for the regional airlines, many of which
operate flights under the American Eagle, Delta Connection and United Express
brands, is significantly different from the one it faced a couple of years ago,
when a dwindling pilot supply was forcing service cuts, bankruptcies and
outright closures.
Notably, Republic went through a preemptive bankruptcy in
2016 and 2017 in order to extract contractual concessions from the Big Three
carriers on route cutbacks. At Alaska's regional subsidiary, Horizon, the
shortage was so acute in late 2017 that it was forced to preemptively cancel
flights over a several-month period, including 700 flights ahead of that
October.
Industrywide, regional airlines saw enplanements drop from
163 million in 2010 to 153 million in 2017, a contraction that the RAA said was
due to the pilot shortage.
In addition, the shortage has prompted regional airlines to
sharply increase pay. According to a January analysis by Kit Darby, whose
KitDarby.com Aviation Consulting focuses on pilot career services, regional
pilot pay has jumped 200% since 2014. The average first-year pay as of January
at regional airlines was $57,000.
"Once you tell people about this career, there is real
interest in it," SkyWest CEO Chip Childs said in a recent interview. "It's
a very high [return on investment] career."
Mike Wiggins, aeronautical science chair at the Daytona
Beach, Fla., campus of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said the higher
pay has spurred renewed interest in commercial piloting following a period of
decreased interest that began after 9/11 and was exacerbated when airlines put
a delay on hiring as a result of the 2008 recession. The onset in 2013 of a
rule increasing the minimum number of flight-training hours for commercial
pilots from 250 hours to 1,500 hours also raised the barrier to entry.
This year, the Daytona Beach campus reached the enrollment
cap for its pilot-training degree program for the first time in nearly 30
years, Wiggins said.
"From what I understand, almost all schools around the
country are growing like crazy," he said.
The story is similar at vocational flight-training programs.
Darby said, "Everybody with a flight school is
basically sold out."
Along with higher pay, new pilot-pathway programs are
facilitating pilot entry and easing recruitment. American, Southwest, United
and Delta have all implemented pathway programs in the past two years, working
with regional airlines, universities, colleges and flight-training academies.
While the programs don't typically guarantee the students a
job, they do usually provide mentoring and guaranteed job interviews to help
participants earn the required certifications. Many regional airlines also have
their own pilot-pathway programs, as do other mainline carriers.
In addition, last September, Republic became the first U.S.
airline to open its own flight-training school with the launch of its Lift
Academy in Indianapolis. Graduates of the program are guaranteed a job at
Republic, Koscal said. The program is currently at its capacity of 200, and
Lift has received more than 3,000 applications.
Yet despite these positive developments, industry officials
warn that they are far from being out of the woods when it comes to overcoming
the pilot shortage.
Darby asserted that while regional airlines are now managing
for the most part to meet their pilot needs, they've done so by altering their
business models to fly larger aircraft and fewer frequencies, steps that are
bad for consumers, especially in small communities.
Meanwhile, mandatory pilot retirements in the commercial
U.S. industry, which kick in at age 65, will continue to increase through 2023,
then plateau. This year, approximately 2,000 pilots at major airlines will
reach retirement age, according to the 2016 University of North Dakota Pilot
Supply Forecast. That figure will increase to approximately 3,000 annually from
2023 through 2026.
At Republic, meeting that growing replacement demand as well
as the demand of a growing industry is why they founded Lift. The carrier
expects to hire 700 pilots this year, but it said it will be hiring more than
900 pilots a year by 2023.
The carrier's investment in recruitment, Koscal said, has more
than doubled in the past three to five years.
"I wouldn't say recruitment has gotten easier," he
said, "I'd say recruitment is more challenging than it has ever been."