More pilot jobs will be cleared for takeoff
Michelle Hynds was working at a security job seven years ago when she began to take flight lessons at an airport near Ventura, Calif.
Hynds, 42, decided to make flying a career instead of a hobby. She gained experience at the controls, got a job piloting a propeller plane for a traffic reporter in Los Angeles and then went to work for a charter jet company. Now, she thinks she can move up to a regional airline, which would put her on a track for a job with one of the big U.S. carriers.
“It’s the job seeker’s market,” she said. “I need them, for sure, but there’s so many companies that need me.”
Thousands of pilots at the country’s largest carriers are nearing retirement, opening up opportunities for those, like Hynds, who pay up to $200,000 for the training necessary to advance as an aviator.
Although big airlines can recruit qualified flyers by turning to smaller affiliates and other regional carriers the way major league ballclubs dip into the minors, some regional carriers are having trouble replenishing their own rosters.
“I’ve never seen the industry be at this level of pilot demand,” said Kenneth P. Byrnes, the chairman of the flight training department at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s campus in Daytona Beach, Fla. The tighter market, he added, extended to flight instructors, who can earn more as airline pilots. Helane Becker, an airline analyst at the Cowen Group, said in a research note in 2017 that about 22,000 pilots — about 2 in 5 — at the five largest domestic carriers would reach mandatory retirement age, 65, by 2026.
The strengthening economy has also helped drive the increase in demand, with major airlines adding flights in some markets. At the same time, the supply of qualified flyers has dropped, as the stream of military aviators the big carriers have long relied on dwindles, and even the Air Force struggles to find pilots.
Many aspiring pilots, drawn partly by wages that can top $300 an hour, want to end up at one of those big carriers. Doing so requires extensive training and years of practice — with good reason, as an April episode on a Southwest Airlines flight showed.
An engine on the plane had an uncontained failure, throwing off debris. One piece pierced a window, partially pulling a female passenger out through the hole. She later died.
The incident might have been worse if Tammie Joe Shults, the former Navy pilot who was flying the plane, had not calmly steered it to a safe landing.
In a sign of the smaller airlines’ increasing need, they have been raising pilots’ pay. Average annual wages for new first officers flying the smallest planes rose to almost $38,600 in January from $24,355 in 2014, a 58 percent increase, according to data compiled by Kit Darby, a career consultant for pilots.
New hires sometimes get bonuses, too. Trans States Airlines, based near St. Louis, said in January that it would offer incoming first officers $44,000 over two years. Air Wisconsin said it offered bonuses of up to $57,000.
“The regionals have been bending over backward to bring pilots in,” said Patrick Smith, a pilot who has written about the profession.
Despite the higher pay, the Regional Airline Association, a trade group in Washington, said its members were having trouble finding and keeping pilots.