Asia’s travel boom is in trouble with fewer pilots to fly airplanes
SINGAPORE: An unprecedented travel boom in Asia has spawned new budget carriers and millions of first-time fliers, but a shortage of pilots is threatening to choke that demand.
Bamboo Airways Co. in Vietnam was the latest low-cost carrier to start services this year and more are expected to join the race. In South-east Asia alone, low cost carriers have about 1,400 aircraft on order, compared with fewer than 400 for full-service carriers, according to Capa Centre for Aviation.
With the supply of pilots lagging behind, the airlines will struggle to find skilled cockpit crew.
“There’s a real crunch coming,” Peter Harbison, executive chairman of Sydney-based Capa said in Singapore. “For new airlines, it’s much, much harder and it’s going to be a real struggle.”
Global traffic is set to double in the next two decades with the biggest increase expected in the Asia-pacific region, where almost 4 billion passenger journeys are expected, according to the International Air Transport Association.
Boeing Co. forecasts the region needs 16,930 new planes and about 261,000 pilots through 2037. That means the current fleets and the number of pilots will need to double during that period, according to the planemaker.
The strain is already showing. Indigo, Asia’s biggest budget car- rier by market value, last month decided to scrap dozens of flights every day through March after many of its pilots exhausted their annual limit on flying hours.
Even some outside Asia are running into problems: Emirates, the world’s biggest longhaul airline, said in April that a shortage of pilots forced it to cut flights.
“Complex training of pilots requires time, so the rate of supply growth doesn’t meet market demand,” said Dang Tat Thang, chief executive officer (CEO) of Bamboo Airways.
To avoid a squeeze, some airlines have set up their own academies to build a pool of pilots they can tap into. Jeju Air Co., South Korea’s biggest budget carrier, Airasia Group Bhd., Southeast Asia’s largest by fleet, Indigo and Indonesia’s Lion Air are among the airlines that have set up training schools.
Capa’s Harbison says Southeast Asia and India are likely to face the brunt of the shortfall, with the most impact felt by four carriers—airasia, Indigo, Lion Air and Vietjet, the Vietnamese airline that has embarked on one of the biggest international expansions by a budget carrier in the region. Indigo said it’s “confident that the airline won’t face a pilot shortage” and it has “all the requirements for a self-sustained growth of its pilot numbers.”
In the meantime, their fleets have been expanding rapidly. For instance, Indigo is likely to add at least 40 more aircraft in the year ending March 31, 2020, after inducting about 62 in the current year, according to Capa.