Prepare for Takeoff: ‘Extraordinary Demand’ for Pilots Provides Lift to Aviation Students
Tyler Holmen of Redmond, Washington, knows what he wants to do in life. The 18-year-old aviation student at Central Washington University wants to become a pilot.
“Flying has just always fascinated me,” he said. “I kind of settled on it at an early age. It’s kind of a dream come true here.”
He and his classmates could hardly have picked a better time to become professional pilots. The Boeing Company is forecasting “extraordinary demand” worldwide for airline pilots and technicians. In a recent analysis, the jet maker said the world’s airlines will need 617,000 new pilots during the next 20 years. Boeing expects the greatest demand will come from Asia and North America, because of economic expansion and swellingairline fleets.
From college to cockpit
Gage Geist graduated from Central Washington earlier this year. The 22-year-old is now giving flight lessons to undergraduates in the program, which helps him accumulate the flight hours he needs to qualify for an airline job.
A first officer, or copilot, slot awaits him at his chosen Horizon Air as soon as he logs 1,000 hours at the controls.
“By the time I graduated, I had three conditional job offers,” he said. He estimates his starting pay would be in the $30,000-$35,000 range.
Geist says that’s a big change from just a few years ago. “When I first started off, it was once in a blue moon we would have a recruiter come by, maybe once every other month. Now, it’s almost every other week.”
Aviation economist Dan Akins of the consulting firm Flightpath Economics described the regional airline sector as “the tip of the spear” for fueling the pilot shortage.
“There aren’t enough pilots being supplied to the industry to sustain it,” Akins said in an interview. He contended that smaller cities risk losing air service unless the current trajectory changes. “I think we are in the very early stages of a really hard landing for the industry.”