David Leamount's article this week in Flight Magazine:
ANALYSIS DAVID LEARMOUNT
Airline recovery will be hampered by crew shortages
Rapid and sustained return of demand inevitable, says ATA, but it will be held back by lack of expert personnel
As soon as economic recovery delivers the prospect of air*line growth, struggling carriers will collide almost immediately with a barrier to expansion, ac*cording to analysis by the Inter*national Air transport Associa*tion, Airbus, Boeing and the Flight Safety Foundation. That barrier will be the lack of expert personnel, including pilots, avia*tion mechanics and engineers, and air traffic controllers.
These predictions, together with fairly desperate suggestions For last-ditch measures that might ameliorate the situation, were de*livered by speakers at Flight Inter*national’s Crew Management conference in Dubai on 1-2 De*cember.
The rapid and sustained return of demand for air travel is not de*batable but inevitable, says IATA, driven by the “massive growth of the middle class throughout the developing world, which is not likely to stop”.
This is a problem that IATA, the FSF and others had flagged in 2007 when they launched the in*dustry training and qualification initiative (ITQI). Now, however, the association is worried that the current economic downturn has allowed the airlines to believe the problem has gone away when it has only been delayed slightly.
FSF Fellow Dr Earl Weener pointed out at the conference that, since carriers have frozen training and recruitment in their present constrained circumstanc*es, the situation may worsen. This has been confirmed by Eu*rope’s largest pilot training organization, Oxford Aviation Acade*my, which said that the training industry can no longer afford to compensate for the airlines’ lack of planning for pilot provision. Periodically starved of custom by the retrenching airlines, the schools are not going to be able to recover to produce the IATA-pre*dicted requirement for 19,000 new pilots a year for the sched*uled jet operators alone.
ITQI studies have established that the problem “is most severe in places that historically have not been aviation leaders”. The researchers observe that:
• Many developing countries have been unaware of the conse*quences of not matching growth to resources.
• (poaching across regions).
• Regulators lose pilots, reducing their oversight capabilities.
• Language and culture problems
on the flightdeck are real.
Just one example of the changed demographics, Weenor told the conference, is that 30% of Indonesia’s pilot workforce has been attracted to Middle East carriers.
Meanwhile, Weener warned, in countries and regions with a long-established commercial air transport industry, the dramatic relative contraction of the mili*tary as a pilot supplier to the air*lines has robbed the traditional airlines of the steady pilot supply flow to which they had become accustomed. The marked distor*tion of the civil-trained pilot sup*ply routes to the “legacy carriers" caused by the success of low-cost carriers, and the rapid growth of business aviation, have also con*tributed to the supply shortage.
Existing training resources can*not produce the numbers re*quired to service the doubling of the world fleet over the next 20 years that is predicted by both the major aircraft manufacturers. Weener said that new training ideas like the multi-crew pilot license will not compensate for the lack of strategic thinking: “Early experience with MPL shows it may produce better low-time pi*lots, but not quicker or cheaper, and that MPL teaching requires more experienced instructors.”
Behind the potential solutions to the problem being studied under the ITQI is the need to at*tract pilot applicants in greater numbers. Potential pilots are in*evitably discouraged by the aver*age $100,000 cost of training, fol*lowed by low initial rewards. The difficulty of borrowing in the present economic climate to fi*nance a career in a cyclical indus*try is exacerbating the problems. Not only that, says Anthony Pett*eford, managing director of ab* initio training at the Oxford acad*emy, but exposure of young people to the idea of commercial flying as a career has been dam*aged by the post-9/11 locking of airline flightdeck doors, so fewer conceive the job as being real.
Emirates’ senior vice-president fleet Capt Ed Davidson acknowl*edged that the training cost issue is a barrier that must be faced. He suggested that the airlines might have to co-operate to provide a financing solution that would work for aspiring pilot trainees. >>
Happy landings
ANALYSIS DAVID LEARMOUNT
Airline recovery will be hampered by crew shortages
Rapid and sustained return of demand inevitable, says ATA, but it will be held back by lack of expert personnel
As soon as economic recovery delivers the prospect of air*line growth, struggling carriers will collide almost immediately with a barrier to expansion, ac*cording to analysis by the Inter*national Air transport Associa*tion, Airbus, Boeing and the Flight Safety Foundation. That barrier will be the lack of expert personnel, including pilots, avia*tion mechanics and engineers, and air traffic controllers.
These predictions, together with fairly desperate suggestions For last-ditch measures that might ameliorate the situation, were de*livered by speakers at Flight Inter*national’s Crew Management conference in Dubai on 1-2 De*cember.
The rapid and sustained return of demand for air travel is not de*batable but inevitable, says IATA, driven by the “massive growth of the middle class throughout the developing world, which is not likely to stop”.
This is a problem that IATA, the FSF and others had flagged in 2007 when they launched the in*dustry training and qualification initiative (ITQI). Now, however, the association is worried that the current economic downturn has allowed the airlines to believe the problem has gone away when it has only been delayed slightly.
FSF Fellow Dr Earl Weener pointed out at the conference that, since carriers have frozen training and recruitment in their present constrained circumstanc*es, the situation may worsen. This has been confirmed by Eu*rope’s largest pilot training organization, Oxford Aviation Acade*my, which said that the training industry can no longer afford to compensate for the airlines’ lack of planning for pilot provision. Periodically starved of custom by the retrenching airlines, the schools are not going to be able to recover to produce the IATA-pre*dicted requirement for 19,000 new pilots a year for the sched*uled jet operators alone.
ITQI studies have established that the problem “is most severe in places that historically have not been aviation leaders”. The researchers observe that:
• Many developing countries have been unaware of the conse*quences of not matching growth to resources.
• (poaching across regions).
• Regulators lose pilots, reducing their oversight capabilities.
• Language and culture problems
on the flightdeck are real.
Just one example of the changed demographics, Weenor told the conference, is that 30% of Indonesia’s pilot workforce has been attracted to Middle East carriers.
Meanwhile, Weener warned, in countries and regions with a long-established commercial air transport industry, the dramatic relative contraction of the mili*tary as a pilot supplier to the air*lines has robbed the traditional airlines of the steady pilot supply flow to which they had become accustomed. The marked distor*tion of the civil-trained pilot sup*ply routes to the “legacy carriers" caused by the success of low-cost carriers, and the rapid growth of business aviation, have also con*tributed to the supply shortage.
Existing training resources can*not produce the numbers re*quired to service the doubling of the world fleet over the next 20 years that is predicted by both the major aircraft manufacturers. Weener said that new training ideas like the multi-crew pilot license will not compensate for the lack of strategic thinking: “Early experience with MPL shows it may produce better low-time pi*lots, but not quicker or cheaper, and that MPL teaching requires more experienced instructors.”
Behind the potential solutions to the problem being studied under the ITQI is the need to at*tract pilot applicants in greater numbers. Potential pilots are in*evitably discouraged by the aver*age $100,000 cost of training, fol*lowed by low initial rewards. The difficulty of borrowing in the present economic climate to fi*nance a career in a cyclical indus*try is exacerbating the problems. Not only that, says Anthony Pett*eford, managing director of ab* initio training at the Oxford acad*emy, but exposure of young people to the idea of commercial flying as a career has been dam*aged by the post-9/11 locking of airline flightdeck doors, so fewer conceive the job as being real.
Emirates’ senior vice-president fleet Capt Ed Davidson acknowl*edged that the training cost issue is a barrier that must be faced. He suggested that the airlines might have to co-operate to provide a financing solution that would work for aspiring pilot trainees. >>
Happy landings
