Delta Air Lines and AirTran Airways had no shortage of candidates when they started hiring pilots again earlier this year.
Airline cutbacks and other factors had put a virtual hold on airline pilot hiring for the past couple of years. Delta and AirTran, in fact, are the only two carriers among the top seven that have hired any pilots since 2008, according to Kit Darby, who tracks pilot hiring as part of his aviation consulting business in Peachtree City.
But some believe the oversupply of pilots is temporary, and the industry could be headed for a new surge of hiring.
“It’s catch-up time,” said Louis Smith, president of FltOps.com, a career-prep website for pilots.
Delta announced plans to hire about 300 pilots this year, while AirTran announced plans to hire 158 new pilots. Atlantic Southeast Airlines, a Delta Connection carrier, has hired 48 pilots this fall and already filled all of its openings.
AirTran has received more than 3,000 applications and hired 114 pilots since it began hiring in February. It is putting pilot hiring on hold with its last class of new pilots coming in October and is not currently accepting applications.
“Many airlines have been cutting capacity so we have really had our pick of the litter of pilots,” said AirTran spokesman Christopher White. “We’re getting very, very experienced aviators that are coming from the biggest mainline carriers in the world.”
Travis Wood, for example, is a former UPS pilot who was furloughed in August and was hired on at AirTran last month.
“I was very fortunate,” Wood said. “There’s not many companies that are in the hiring mode right now.”
White said that the first officer, who sits in the right seat of the cockpit, has traditionally been the “fresh-faced rookie,” but that’s changed. Now the first officer could be the “the 777 pilot from UPS [or] the 757 pilot from American.”
“Obviously it’s good for an airline, but it’s also great for a passenger,” who has more experienced pilots flying the plane, White said.
White said the company is determining its needs for next year. Although Southwest Airlines plans to buy AirTran, “For now and for the foreseeable six months or [until] the deal closes, we’re going to continue to operate as an independent airline and that means if we need pilots, we’re going to hire pilots,” White said.
Meanwhile, at Delta a pickup in Pacific passenger traffic -- it was up 21.6 percent in September -- is encouraging, Paul Repp, manager of pilot selection for the carrier, told a group of pilots seeking positions at a FltOps.com job fair in Atlanta in August.
“We’re also seeing business traffic pick up,”Repp said.
Airline pilot hiring has long followed cycles dictated by major industry events, from deregulation in the ‘70s and ‘80s to recessions in the early ‘90s and in this decade.
One recent factor that helped depress hiring was an increase in the mandatory retirement age from 60 to 65, which took effect in 2007 and slowed attrition. Combined with the economic slump and airline cutbacks, hiring slowed to a trickle.
“Everybody is really excited to see things starting to move,” said Lee Roberts, a pilot at the job fair who was interested in a job at Delta. “It’s been stagnant for so long.”
Boeing, which has a training and flight services unit along with its aircraft building operations, forecasts North America’s commercial aviation industry will need 97,350 pilots over the next 20 years.
Aviation growth on other continents also fuels demand.
“This is a very real pilot shortage that’s starting to happen right now,” driven by overseas growth, said Paul Templeton, regional jet program director of Airline Transport Professionals, an airline pilot training business. Asia, Africa and the Middle East don’t have the flight training infrastructure that the United States has, he said, and “they’ve started to hire our pilots.”
The supply of new pilots could be tightened by a few factors. The cost of flight training can run up to $60,000 and loans to fund the training have become scarce, Templeton said. While the military historically has been a big source of pilots for the airlines, many military pilots are extending their careers rather than shifting to the unstable airline industry, Smith said.
“Relative to the airline career, the military compensation and benefits look a lot better,” he said, noting that airline pilot pay dropped at some carriers during hard times earlier this decade that sent Delta and United into bankruptcy.
Big carriers typically hire heavily from the ranks of regional carriers, which in turn must refill pilot slots. The Federal Aviation Administration has increased qualifications required of regional pilots in the wake of the February 2009 crash of a Colgan Air flight in Buffalo, N.Y.
The FltOps.com job fair drew more than 500 aspiring pilots who aren’t deterred by the obstacles to landing a job that could eventually lead to the cockpit of a major airline.
“For this industry, it’s really tough to find a job now,” said Stan Geda, a 23-year-old from Harrisburg, Pa. “I don’t think there’s as much interest as there was years ago. It’s just not as high-paying a job.”
But, Geda said, “My father was a pilot. It’s what I’ve wanted to do my entire life.”
While the military historically has been a big source of pilots for the airlines, many military pilots are opting to spend their careers with the military instead of shifting to the relatively unstable airline industry, Smith said.
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