Like lawyers gunning for partner or professors aspiring to tenure, the ultimate career goal of many professional pilots is to fly for a major airline or corporate jet operator. The work to get there is hard and the investment of time and money steep, but the rewards are worth it with a great salary, nice pension, and an undeniable aura of “cool” that will draw interest from others for the rest of one’s life.
A generation ago, there always seemed to be many more pilots than open positions with commercial carriers. But things have changed with time. Over the past 10-20 years, this pilot surplus has all but disappeared as training costs associated with professional flying have soared. Meanwhile, pilots who joined the industry in the 1990s during a cyclical hiring boom are approaching mandatory retirement age, compounded by many airlines’ decision to trim ranks during the pandemic through encouraging early retirements of their senior and best-paid pilots.
The result? There are now more openings at the top of the pyramid than qualified pilots to fill them, causing major carriers to cut back on service, including the elimination of less-traveled regional routes.
So, what is the industry to do?
To start, the aviation industry needs to focus on bringing new talent into the pilot pipeline. This is easier said than done, as training takes time and the nature of the industry itself is highly cyclical, making it challenging for big carriers to plan their ‘big picture’ 5 or 10 years down the road.
Casting a wider net for applicants is one way to move forward, though this can be tricky. In April 2021, for instance, United Airlines announced a noble goal of training 5,000 new pilots by 2030, half of whom would be women or minorities. The airline subsequently caught some flak or its focus on diversity, with the usual (read: most vocal) critics asserting that United was prioritizing “wokeness” over qualifications, and in turn placing the lives of its customers at risk.
This ensuing backlash completely missed the main point. At the heart of United’s move was its acknowledgement that major carriers need to do more than just say “we’re hiring” these days. Rather, they should be providing training ab initio – a Latin term commonly used in the aviation world, meaning “from the beginning” – by funding and facilitating structured programming which transforms individuals with little or no flying experience to competent, skilled pilots. In other words, what United’s critics didn’t grasp is that training is what truly matters: a highly trained and capable pilot is ready to fly, regardless of their race or gender.
The aviation industry also needs to understand that rigorous, formalized training at every stage of a pilot’s progression should be the norm. When large numbers of people aspired to be pilots, they built basic skills via apprenticeships, preparing them for their later careers. It was a very effective, ‘learning by osmosis’ process, but it also took time.
This system is now outdated, alas, as airlines and corporate jet operators in today’s day and age need pilots within three years, not ten. So the entire industry, from top to bottom, ought to be heavily investing in programming, with the fundamental realization that structured training and career progression go hand and hand.
We have experienced this need ourselves at Tradewind. Twenty years ago, pilot applicants came to us with a lot of apprenticeship under their belts. These days, the applicants we accept are still highly skilled, but we also aim to advance them to become the best Tradewind pilot possible, which typically requires significant flight simulator and ground training, in addition to structured time on the line and in the cockpit. Our ideal candidate is a pilot who has worked in a structured flight school environment for at least several years, honing their flying skills and serving as an instructor to others in the process as well.
What Tradewind does is teach pilots how to operate aircraft in the real world of customer service, air traffic control, customs requirements, severe weather, unexpected passenger issues, and, most recently, a pandemic and public health and safety. Such training requires a significant investment of time and resources on our part, but the results speak for themselves, as we are proud of our fantastic pilots who are adept at flying all the turbine aircraft in our fleet while catering to passengers with Tradewind’s customary gold-level standard of service.
As a mid-level operator, Tradewind occupies a very critical spot in a pilot’s career: the first time they’ll fly the general public. The success we’ve had molding talent is no secret, as acknowledged by JetBlue Airways who recently approached us to sign on as a partner for their Gateway training program, designed to provide highly qualified pilot applicants valuable flight time and experience in preparation for careers as line pilots with the carrier.
Our Gateway partnership with JetBlue benefits Tradewind as well, offering our pilots an opportunity for careers with a major carrier while providing us with longer and more consistent pilot tenures.
Regardless of the path pilots choose to take, the most important thing for young pilots on their way to joining a major carrier is to remember that professional pilots succeed at their jobs because they’re passionate about flying, not the paycheck that comes with it. With supply and demand the way it is, now is a great time to aspire to fly with the biggest players in the industry. Twenty years from now – well, who knows?