Pilot Shortage to Get Worse Through Next Decade
Early in the pandemic, airlines had most their fleets grounded as travel restrictions went in effect. Most pilots were no longer needed at the time, so airlines stopped hiring and started offering buyouts to employees. The number of pilots was reduced even as domestic airlines received $54 billion in government pandemic relief to pay employees.
With the lifting of COVID-19-related sanctions on air travel, demand saw a quicker rebound in North America than elsewhere. But over the last year, airlines have struggled to hire the staff they need, including pilots. As a result, the region already has an acute pilot shortage, equivalent to 11% of pilot supply, or about 8,000 pilots, Oliver Wyman reports. And that gap is expected to widen throughout the decade.
The number of active pilots is being challenged by multiple factors, including a wave of early retirements at the height of the pandemic, a mandatory retirement age of 65 for a workforce that is older on average than the broader workforce, a shrinking pool of potential candidates. There’s also a significant training bottleneck that is limiting the number of pilots that airlines can train and hire.
The supply of new commercial pilots is expected to pick up over the next few years, but it will not be enough to match the increasing demand and the wave of retirements. As a result, Oliver Wyman predicts that North America will be short nearly 30,000 pilots by 2032.
But this is not a regional issue. Global aviation faces similar challenges and is expected to be short nearly 80,000 pilots by 2032.
The pilot shortage is expected to hit regional airlines the hardest, as they are the ones that struggle to keep employees even during normal times. Pilots often leave for larger carriers, and those reginal airlines are now experiencing unsustainable attrition levels. Regional airlines also have to pay higher salaries to keep pilots, which is harder to do with their smaller budgets.
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