When was the last time you priced out the airfare for a family vacation or business trip? Yep, like pretty much everything else in life over the last couple of years, it’s gone up. This is largely due to a shortage of pilots, air traffic controllers, and mechanics, all of which increase the cost of flying. This article will focus on the pilots and how we can get more of them. 🤔
First, let’s review where we are now. Due to staffing issues, airlines haven’t reached pre-pandemic levels in 42 states. 136 airports can’t operate a fourth of their flights. Also, 11 small city airports have shut down completely. Unfortunately, in the next 15 years over 50% of all current US pilots will reach the mandatory retirement age (65). 😱 Pilot salaries have gone up quite a bit, but we're still not getting enough new pilots.
Side note: if you want an interesting and lucrative career, check out being a pilot! ✈️
Anyway, how do we fix this pilot shortage?
Here are Five Fast Facts on ways to end the pilot shortage:
- ↗️ Raise The Age - One obvious response is to raise the retirement age. A bill to do just that has recently passed the House (by a shockingly bipartisan 351-69 vote!) and is now going to the Senate. The White House has signaled that it’s on board with a few small tweaks, so this seems likely to happen. Also, the end of the world.
- 🏫 More Flights Schools - There are currently around 1,600 flight schools in the US. That may sound like a lot, but it was 2,400 before 9/11. Efforts should be made to start new flight schools or expand current ones.
- 🛫 More Training Planes - Like everything, planes are more expensive now, and there’s a backlog of orders. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rejects the use of really small training planes since they can carry the pilots and fuel and that’s about it, and they don’t handle high winds very well so bigger flight schools avoid them. But small schools (with small budgets) could still use them, freeing up bigger training planes for the bigger schools.
- 🖥️ Go High Tech - The FAA doesn’t count the use of virtual reality training tools toward the required hours, but it’s been proven to help pilots learn faster. Students who use VR training get to their first solo flight 22% faster, meaning their training is shorter and costs less. Everyone wins (and it’s more fun, too!)
- 💰 Airline Sponsorships - Getting a pilot’s license ain’t cheap - it can cost over $100k! Most flight schools aren’t eligible for federal student aid, and low-income students usually don’t have good enough credit to get a loan. The feds can set up a governing body to give flight schools accreditation, thus allowing federal aid to flow. Airlines could also sponsor pilot training in exchange for time working for them after graduation (they actually used to do something like this, years ago.) It’s a model that works for lots of other industries, and it would here, too.
🔥Bottom line: There are other ways, too, but these are a few good ones to start with. It’s great to see Congress taking action on the first one already, but more needs to be done. The worse this problem gets, the more expensive flying gets. And that impacts not just our vacations and business travel, but also how products get shipped around the country (and the world.) This has a major effect on our Paychecks, whether we are buying actual plane tickets or just buying something that took a ride to get to us.
What other ideas do you have for fixing this problem?
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