5 ms·

Yes, exactly. The 1500 hour rule is a factor in the pilot shortage. Not the only factor—low pay at regionals, generational demographics, and changing perception

Yes, exactly. The 1500 hour rule is a factor in the pilot shortage. Not the only factor—low pay at regionals, generational demographics, and changing perceptions of the career also play a part—but it's definitely a big factor.

erentz 8y ago
How can there both be a shortage and low pay? Shouldn't the need for pilots drive up pay as demand for air travel itself isn't going down.
- schoen 8y ago
  Probably one factor is the extreme time lag between someone becoming interested in becoming a commercial pilot and actually becoming a commercial pilot (for example, because of the need to get so much experience). It might be similar with doctors, where the required credentials take years to achieve—so if people say "hmmm, I might want to go into medicine, I think I'll do pre-med" they could still be more than a decade away from practicing medicine. It seems from upthread comments that the institutions to train prospective doctors are somewhat better-developed than the institutions to train prospective commercial pilots. (My understanding is that this used to be primarily military, but now pilots are coming in through a greater range of paths.) If people think they want to be doctors, they can apply to certain schools, get certain loans, participate in an established process to find internships (which their schools will guide them through), and so on. I don't know that there are really institutions to help the pilots this way. That doesn't mean that supply and demand somehow don't apply or don't influence people's behavior, but a need for massive amounts of training and credentialing (literally years' worth that themselves come at a high financial cost) surely slow down the response.
  - khuey 8y ago
    If it takes a long time for additional supply to become available the price spike in response to demand changes should be even more pronounced.
    - munk-a 8y ago
      This is the expected market reaction when the market is free, but if there is a oligopoly effect in play it can distort this and defer that response. The average age of airline pilots is going up very quickly though, so these terrible practices will eventually illicit a market response, since nobody (or very few people) actually wants to do this.
      - frutiger 8y ago
        > will eventually illicit a market response Completely off-topic and unrelated, but on the small chance that this helps you (or anyone else reading): illicit is something forbidden or illegal, while elicit is to evoke a particular response.
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  That's paradoxical seeming isn't it? But low-pay + labor shortage is seems to be a common thing. I would speculate it's driven by the production of a very price sensitive commodity. Lots of people choose the cheapest flights possible regardless of other considerations so a significant rise in pilot pay might make a given airline unprofitable since they can't raise prices to compensate. So airlines feel strong pressure to keep wages down. And really, you could say a "labor shortage" is what every high volume, low margin operation complains about but the reality is basically "we pay low wages so it's hard to get enough people to work for our low wages". (Obviously, with airline pilots, it's low wage relative to the cost of gaining the skills etc). We can see similar language with H1b visa proponents and even fast food restaurant operators use it periodically.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - jamesmaniscalco 8y ago
    I'm not sure if the cost of flights would really go up that much. Just to play with some numbers, let's consider a pilot with a salary of an astronomical $1,000,000/yr who flies transatlantic flights on wide-body jets (300 or so passengers). She is limited to 1,000 flight hours/yr, so each hour costs the airline $1,000. For an 8 hour flight, $8,000 split between 300 passengers is about $26 per person. Given that these flights come in around $150 at the cheapest, often going up to $1,000 at peak times, this (quite high) wage estimate doesn't translate into a huge price for the consumer (especially since you could shift more of the cost towards the first- and business-class passengers). I think the numbers work out similarly for regional flights which have fewer passengers but shorter time in the air. These pilots start with base salaries in the $30,000 range; if that were raised to $100,000 for flying (for example) 3 hour flights with 50 passengers, that's only ~$4 extra per passenger per flight. There might be other factors I'm missing - do these pilots actually fly significantly less than 1,000 hrs/yr?
    - joe_the_user 8y ago
      Your $4/pilot/flight misses the overall point. A company in a highly competitive industry is going to be minimizing costs across the board. To keep a plane in the air, you need mechanics, pilots, flight crew and so-forth. You could be completely spendthrift with just pilots and hold the line on everything else but then the potential for the rest of your personnel to be jealous is high. Moreover, what's the motivation? "You cheap bastards could easily afford XXX" misses the point. A large company runs on general principle, and company that's producing at minimal cost is going to run on the principle of saving money everywhere.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- munk-a 8y ago
  I think a large portion of the issues surrounding pilot pay are 1. Airline companies are few and far between, it's basically an oligopoly and getting black listed by one company might impact your job prospects in another 2. Pilots invest a lot of time into qualifying for their jobs and the sunk cost fallacy traps them into looking for jobs flying planes. Also, there might be some strong self-motivated reasons, not wanting airplanes to go without pilots due to altruism, just generally enjoying flying... These aren't IMO strong financial drivers so they seem like weaker points, but they may provide some influence.
- Aloha 8y ago
  Market response of raising pay is always slower to respond if there are other mechanisms to try first.
- drdrey 8y ago
  Something I haven't seen brought up: if pilots are passionate enough about flying, then that's what they're going to do no matter how little they get paid. Companies don't have an incentive to give a raise to people who are not considering a different job.
- _0nac 8y ago
  Two words: unions and seniority. Here's a good intro: http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines It's also worth noting that this is largely a US-only phenomenon. It has led to a lot of junior US pilots heading overseas to fly with other carriers, most notably in the Gulf, although that party is slowly starting to wind down.
  - _0nac 8y ago
    Please have a read of the article before downvoting: it's not some random neoliberal "unions are evil" rant, but a very coherent explanation of how seniority-based pay works and how the system is set up to ensure senior pilots get paid $300,000 while juniors get $16,000.
  - kelnos 8y ago
    Given that the author's experience (as referenced in the article) covers a period of time before the Colgan reforms, I'd expect that a decent amount of what he's written is outdated.
  - Tsubasachan 8y ago
    Luckily a pilot license can be used anywhere in the world so people can find a job abroad. At some point when US airliners can't find enough pilots something will have to change.
- marcosdumay 8y ago
  There is arguably a shortage of pilots with more than 1500 hours and good salaries for them. There is a glut of pilots with less than 1500 hours, and bad salaries for them.
- jmpman 8y ago
  Pilot unions still exist even for these regional carriers. How has collective bargaining worked so well for 737 pilots but not for a regional pilot?
- jrnichols 8y ago
  Same way that there's a shortage and low pay for emergency medical services staffing, unfortunately.

erentz 8y ago

How can there both be a shortage and low pay? Shouldn't the need for pilots drive up pay as demand for air travel itself isn't going down.

schoen 8y ago
Probably one factor is the extreme time lag between someone becoming interested in becoming a commercial pilot and actually becoming a commercial pilot (for example, because of the need to get so much experience). It might be similar with doctors, where the required credentials take years to achieve—so if people say "hmmm, I might want to go into medicine, I think I'll do pre-med" they could still be more than a decade away from practicing medicine. It seems from upthread comments that the institutions to train prospective doctors are somewhat better-developed than the institutions to train prospective commercial pilots. (My understanding is that this used to be primarily military, but now pilots are coming in through a greater range of paths.) If people think they want to be doctors, they can apply to certain schools, get certain loans, participate in an established process to find internships (which their schools will guide them through), and so on. I don't know that there are really institutions to help the pilots this way. That doesn't mean that supply and demand somehow don't apply or don't influence people's behavior, but a need for massive amounts of training and credentialing (literally years' worth that themselves come at a high financial cost) surely slow down the response.
- khuey 8y ago
  If it takes a long time for additional supply to become available the price spike in response to demand changes should be even more pronounced.
  - munk-a 8y ago
    This is the expected market reaction when the market is free, but if there is a oligopoly effect in play it can distort this and defer that response. The average age of airline pilots is going up very quickly though, so these terrible practices will eventually illicit a market response, since nobody (or very few people) actually wants to do this.
    - frutiger 8y ago
      > will eventually illicit a market response Completely off-topic and unrelated, but on the small chance that this helps you (or anyone else reading): illicit is something forbidden or illegal, while elicit is to evoke a particular response.
joe_the_user 8y ago
That's paradoxical seeming isn't it? But low-pay + labor shortage is seems to be a common thing. I would speculate it's driven by the production of a very price sensitive commodity. Lots of people choose the cheapest flights possible regardless of other considerations so a significant rise in pilot pay might make a given airline unprofitable since they can't raise prices to compensate. So airlines feel strong pressure to keep wages down. And really, you could say a "labor shortage" is what every high volume, low margin operation complains about but the reality is basically "we pay low wages so it's hard to get enough people to work for our low wages". (Obviously, with airline pilots, it's low wage relative to the cost of gaining the skills etc). We can see similar language with H1b visa proponents and even fast food restaurant operators use it periodically.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jamesmaniscalco 8y ago
  I'm not sure if the cost of flights would really go up that much. Just to play with some numbers, let's consider a pilot with a salary of an astronomical $1,000,000/yr who flies transatlantic flights on wide-body jets (300 or so passengers). She is limited to 1,000 flight hours/yr, so each hour costs the airline $1,000. For an 8 hour flight, $8,000 split between 300 passengers is about $26 per person. Given that these flights come in around $150 at the cheapest, often going up to $1,000 at peak times, this (quite high) wage estimate doesn't translate into a huge price for the consumer (especially since you could shift more of the cost towards the first- and business-class passengers). I think the numbers work out similarly for regional flights which have fewer passengers but shorter time in the air. These pilots start with base salaries in the $30,000 range; if that were raised to $100,000 for flying (for example) 3 hour flights with 50 passengers, that's only ~$4 extra per passenger per flight. There might be other factors I'm missing - do these pilots actually fly significantly less than 1,000 hrs/yr?
  - joe_the_user 8y ago
    Your $4/pilot/flight misses the overall point. A company in a highly competitive industry is going to be minimizing costs across the board. To keep a plane in the air, you need mechanics, pilots, flight crew and so-forth. You could be completely spendthrift with just pilots and hold the line on everything else but then the potential for the rest of your personnel to be jealous is high. Moreover, what's the motivation? "You cheap bastards could easily afford XXX" misses the point. A large company runs on general principle, and company that's producing at minimal cost is going to run on the principle of saving money everywhere.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
munk-a 8y ago
I think a large portion of the issues surrounding pilot pay are 1. Airline companies are few and far between, it's basically an oligopoly and getting black listed by one company might impact your job prospects in another 2. Pilots invest a lot of time into qualifying for their jobs and the sunk cost fallacy traps them into looking for jobs flying planes. Also, there might be some strong self-motivated reasons, not wanting airplanes to go without pilots due to altruism, just generally enjoying flying... These aren't IMO strong financial drivers so they seem like weaker points, but they may provide some influence.
Aloha 8y ago
Market response of raising pay is always slower to respond if there are other mechanisms to try first.
drdrey 8y ago
Something I haven't seen brought up: if pilots are passionate enough about flying, then that's what they're going to do no matter how little they get paid. Companies don't have an incentive to give a raise to people who are not considering a different job.
_0nac 8y ago
Two words: unions and seniority. Here's a good intro: http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines It's also worth noting that this is largely a US-only phenomenon. It has led to a lot of junior US pilots heading overseas to fly with other carriers, most notably in the Gulf, although that party is slowly starting to wind down.
- _0nac 8y ago
  Please have a read of the article before downvoting: it's not some random neoliberal "unions are evil" rant, but a very coherent explanation of how seniority-based pay works and how the system is set up to ensure senior pilots get paid $300,000 while juniors get $16,000.
- kelnos 8y ago
  Given that the author's experience (as referenced in the article) covers a period of time before the Colgan reforms, I'd expect that a decent amount of what he's written is outdated.
- Tsubasachan 8y ago
  Luckily a pilot license can be used anywhere in the world so people can find a job abroad. At some point when US airliners can't find enough pilots something will have to change.
marcosdumay 8y ago
There is arguably a shortage of pilots with more than 1500 hours and good salaries for them. There is a glut of pilots with less than 1500 hours, and bad salaries for them.
jmpman 8y ago
Pilot unions still exist even for these regional carriers. How has collective bargaining worked so well for 737 pilots but not for a regional pilot?
jrnichols 8y ago
Same way that there's a shortage and low pay for emergency medical services staffing, unfortunately.