I believe that the pilot shortage is real, and will continue to be in affect for the near future. Aviation is a very expensive industry to enter. To start with, the average cost to obtain your private pilot's certificate ranges between $10,000 and $16,000 depending on the type of aircraft flown. For most people, this is a very large commitment and can't be done due to financial reasons. Due to this, the number or student pilots and recent private pilots has decreased significantly. According to AOPA, the number of student pilots decreased by almost 10,000 individuals between 2009 and 2010. They projected that in 2013 there would only be 69,000 student pilots, which is down from the 81,000 in 2010 (Twombly, 2010). In recent studies, there prediction was very close with the actual number of student pilots for that year. With this decrease, there are not a lot of pilots earning enough hours to fly with the commuter or regional airlines. If a pilot does actually have enough hours, they are leaving the commuters and being hired on with the large airlines almost instantly.
Regional airline pilots have been known to have a very low standard of living. When they are first hired on, they are not making much more than a flight instructor would make. Back about 10 years ago there was a pilot surplus and jobs were almost impossible to get. In fact, there are some people that believe the pay went down because young pilots were offering to fly for free just in order to be able to get flight hours. However, this has dramatically changed over the past few years. Regional airlines are having such a hard time with keeping pilots, they are increasing the pay as an incentive. For example, the average salary of a 1st year officer at a regional two years ago was $21,000, and now it is up to approximately $27,000 without including any of the large signing bonuses or other incentives (Bachman, 2014). Yes, the base pay is only about $27,000; however, most companies are giving a $10,000-20,000 bonus for the first three or so years you're with them. The bonus is the latest effort to try and keep pilots in the regional positions so that they don't have to cancel flights. Overall, the salaries of regional pilots is increasing and number of students starting their initial flight training is decreasing, which means that this shortage is real and will last until something else changes.
Talking about changes, there has a been a major change in the regulations with airlines. The FAA has mandated that airlines can't keep up with their old ways due to safety concerns. In an effort to increase safety, the FAA has created new regulations that give pilots more rest in-between flights to try and minimize the fatigue factor. This has causes stress and worry among the regional carriers for two main reasons. First, as mentioned before there is a pilot shortage and regional carriers are having a difficult time keeping pilots. Another regulation has stated that pilots must have 1,500 hours before they start flying for the regionals as another attempt to increase safety concerns. Due to the increase in hours and the decrease in pilots, the regionals should be concerned with hiring pools because they don't have a big selection to choose from. Currently, they are hiring anyone they can get. . Another reason carriers should be worried are due to the regulations about rest. In order to provide pilots adequate rest, the carriers will need more pilots. This is a huge issue since they are already short pilots. To help out both the pilots and the carriers, I think there should be an incentive program for young pilots. Regional carriers should offer to help pay for the students training in return for a few year flying commitment. This would help individuals with eh expensive training costs, but it would also help the carriers because they would have pilots lined up to fill their empty spots.
One of the largest management organizations is the American Association of Airport Executives, or AAAE for short. AAAE is the world's largest professional organization for airport executives that represents thousands of airport management personnel at public-use commercial and general aviation airports ("About AAAE', n.d).
On the other side of the industry, there are organizations that represents aviation manufactures, such as AIA and GAMA. AIA is the Aerospace Industries Association and GAMA stands for the General Aviation Manufactures Association. GAMA exists to foster and advance the general welfare, safety, interests, and activities of the global business and general aviation industry (GAMA, n.d).
Professionalism and Flying Cheap:
In my own words, I believe that professionalism can be best defined as: the required work to not only do what is required of you, but to go above and beyond in order to stay proficient with your work.
For example, instrument flying is a unique and difficult task. Yes, you can legally do the 6 approaches, holds, and tracking to stay current, but at that point you aren't proficient. It takes more practice to become proficient with flying and it will help you be a safer pilot. I would much rather be proficient than current with the minimum requirements when I am putting not only my life in danger but also my passengers.
Throughout the documentary, Flying Cheap, there were many different examples of a lack of professionalism. One of the biggest examples of unprofessionalism during the movie was involving a weight and balance of the aircraft. The captain of the aircraft knew that the plane was too heavily loaded, yet he changed the numbers to make the aircraft within limits. Not only is this unprofessional, but it is also very dangerous. The aircraft is designed and tested within certain limits and exceeding those means that the structure and flight characteristics of the aircraft can drastically change. Another example of a lack of professionalism was the pilot and co-pilot's lack of training or flight experience. From the beginning of a student pilot's training they practice stall recovery procedures. When you begin flying a new aircraft, you usually always practice stall recoveries to see how that specific airplane handles. The probable cause of this accident was due to the wrong recovery procedures from a stall. If the pilots were proficient with their flight training then they should have easily been able to recover. Instead, they basically did the complete opposite of what they were supposed to do. As their airspeed decreased and the stall warning horn came on, the pilot pulled back on the controls instead of pushing the nose down. Then to make the situation even worse, it is believed the the pilots retracted the flaps. Both of these actions go against everything that is taught when recovering from a stall, so it shows that the two pilots lacked professionalism when it came to their knowledge of stalls and their flight training.
As presented in the documentary, I do believe that the first year pay of pilots lead to a lack of professionalism. The pilots weren't being paid well at all and were unhappy. Having distractions such as money concerns in a busy work environment is very unprofessionalism. They are allowing distractions to concern them when they should be only focused on the flight at hand and the safety of all the lives on board. In the end, they should not have allowed themselves to worry about outside issue while at work.
Even with the pilot shortage in today's industry, professionalism is still key. Passengers and the flight attendants rely on the pilots to transport them safely from point A to point B. In most cases, these pilots will have anywhere from one to a few hundred passengers at once. Once I am hired, I will maintain my professionalism by not only doing what is required of me but going beyond those requirements. I will do this by setting personal goals for myself to accomplish during the flight such as trying to have all the radio frequencies plugged in prior to ATC giving me the frequency upon a transition, keeping the glide slope and localizer completely centered during an instrument approach, doing all of my own flight planning in addition to what the dispatchers provide for me, etc. Another way to not only maintain professionalism but also expand it can be done by keeping a flight journal. Most regional and airline pilots have troubles keeping up with their logbooks. I plan to not only stay up to date with my logbook but to also keep a flight journal with me for every flight. I will be able to note what I did well, what went wrong, any surprises that I could account for next time, etc. Mentally noting all of these details will help me improve my flying skills and thus make me a better pilot.
References:
About AAAE. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.aaae.org/about_aaae/
Bachman, J. (2014, February 11). Yes, There's a Pilot Shortage: Salaries Start at $21,000. Bloomberg.
Retrieved from http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-11/pilot-shortage-regional-
airlines-are-cutting-flights
GAMA. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.gama.aero
Twombly, I. (2010, March 10). FAA Forecasts Dwindling Student Pilot Numbers. AOPA. Retrieved
from https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2010/march/15/faa-forecasts-dwindling-
student-pilot-numbers
The drop in student pilots in 2009 is a very real number to me. I was one of those missing students. I'm almost certain a large number of those missing students could be linked to recession of 2008.
ReplyDeleteYour idea of a journal is an excellent way to maintain professionalism and achieve goals. I found that having a goal for even routine tasks improved my skills. Many skills including piloting skills can be greatly improved by systematically focusing and reducing tolerances and increasing the requirements for success.
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