David Learmount/LONDON
The pilot shortage in the USA has become critical, according to US airlines. A flightcrew deficit in the USA has affected the regionals, but it looks set to hit the major airlines soon.
The US Airways Group says it is reducing the growth rate of its MetroJet regional operation, citing pilot shortage, while Wisconsin-based Midwest Express is to reduce frequencies on some routes between August and October because there are not enough pilots.
Midwest operations director David Reeve blames poaching by major airlines as the main reason for the pilot shortage. He expects charter as well as scheduled flights to be affected, he says, adding that the airline intends to allocate more resources to pilot training, and put newly hired pilots on to the line more quickly.
Top pilot training schools in the USA, however, warn that the pilot supply pipeline is in danger of being shut off. The reason is that their own instructors - newly trained pilots who are instructing only to accumulate enough flying hours to become attractive to the airlines - are being hired by the regionals with far fewer hours than previously. As a result, the schools are running out of instructors.
The US Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) points out that there are fewer ex-military pilots on the market. Airline expansion was traditionally supported by huge numbers of ex-military pilots available after major conflicts. Over the next five years, however, the pilots who joined the airlines after Vietnam are set to retire in particularly large numbers, says ALPA employment specialist Bob Flocke, while the airline expansion over the last five years has not been provided for by the military, because the post-Glasnost military exodus ended in the mid 1990s.
• US air traffic controller retirements from 2003 will leave the Federal Aviation Administration 2,500 controllers short of its requirement until 2007, says a survey of its membership by the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.
The association says the shortage will be caused by a retirement increase by controllers hired in 1981 following the strike by the then Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organisation, 11,350 of whom were fired.
Source: Flight International
