The complexity of the modern airliner is not always as daunting as it first appears. A fair proportion of the buttons on this Airbus A350’s flight deck make up multiple QWERTY keyboards for controlling even larger numbers of onboard computers.
Realisation of the growing shortage of airline pilots has reached mainstream media in New Zealand. Last month on its Six O’clock News, TV One ran a comprehensive piece about how the world is facing a huge shortage of pilots, which could dramatically affect aviation in New Zealand.
They referred to the Boeing Pilot and Technician Outlook 2017, a respected industry forecast of personnel demand, which projects that for the 20 years from 2017 to 2036, about 637,000 new pilots will be needed worldwide to meet growing demand.
I don’t know about you, but I struggled to appreciate the magnitude of this need, until I calculated that this equates to 87 new pilots per day!
I am not aware that the world has ever trained pilots at that rate, even at the height of training during WWII. Three years ago that target was 63 per day. The longer it takes to assertively tackle this problem, the worse it will become.
The following extract from the Boeing Pilot and Technician Outlook (2017-2036) offers some valuable guidance:
“Educational outreach and career pipeline program[me]s will be essential to inspiring the next generation of pilots, technicians, and cabin crew. Early student engagement and defined aviation career paths will help expand the reach to new demographics. The growing diversity and mobility of aviation personnel will require instructors to have cross-cultural, cross-generational, and multilingual skills to engage with tomorrow’s workforce.
“As personnel demand increases over the next two decades, the aviation industry will need to find innovative solutions to keep pace with training requirements. Course curriculums will need to be tailored to enable optimum learning and knowledge retention. Immersive technologies, adaptive learning, and new teaching methods will also be needed to effectively meet a wide range of learning styles.”
If you accept Boeing’s figures as reasonable (Airbus’s figures are remarkably similar) and if you accept that the world has never trained new airline pilots at that rate and is currently not set up to train at that rate, then you must accept that there is a significant and growing problem.
Or opportunity, depending on your point of view.
So what are some of the answers? I offer some thoughts. I will explore pathways from training to employment, the funding of pilot training and, perhaps most critically, the sourcing of flying instructors.
Pathways
In New Zealand there is currently no structured pathway from basic training to employment. Pilot trainees who have invested huge amounts of money and energy over significant periods of time are just left to progress their flying experience entirely on their own.
They graduate from their basic training with the usual comprehensive suite of qualifications but are currently deemed to be unsuitable to begin training with an airline. That is, they have passed their commercial pilot licence (CPL), multi-engine instrument rating (MEIR) and the airline transport pilot licence (ATPL) theory credits, but that is deemed by the current Civil Aviation Rules (Part 121.557(d)) to be not good enough to begin airline aircraft type rating training.
The conventional and historical wisdom is that these graduates need to go away (somewhere/anywhere…) and “build their hours”. Ostensibly the rationale is that these hours of flying experience will somehow mean they are better equipped to join an airline. There is absolutely no logical correlation between an arbitrary hour requirement and competence.
This situation has come about because in the past local airlines were spoilt for choice with far more applicants looking for pilot positions than there were positions available. But this is rapidly changing.
Also, this model is far from global. For many years overseas airlines have realised they needed to commit to airline cadet training programmes and the tentacles of this approach are reaching our shores in the form of airline cadet programmes that are now advertising for New Zealand school leavers.
There are also recent examples of regional airlines partnering with New Zealand flight training organisations (FTOs) to support graduates to transition into the introductory segment of their new pilot training programme.
However, in order to reasonably progress directly from basic training to employment with an airline, the design and quality of the basic training must be appropriate and the airlines themselves must redesign their induction/introductory training to adequately transition less experience pilots onto their fleets.
Nevertheless, many overseas airlines and the military have been doing this for years, so there are plenty of examples of what is required.
Funding
At present in New Zealand basic pilot training is essentially funded by the individual trainee, either through a student loan or through some form of self-funding. However, over the last decade there have been significant changes to the number of student loan EFTS (equivalent full-time students) available and to the amount available per EFTS. As a result, there is clear evidence of a significant reduction in the number of New Zealand school leavers choosing piloting as a career.
In anyone’s language and applying any measure, pilot training is very expensive. This is because it is time consuming, requires the extensive use of costly equipment (aircraft and simulators) and is very labour intensive. The skill and experience development aspects of pilot training require hours of one-on-one instructor/student time, and an overall instructor/student ratio of about one to four.
The cost base of the present training model in New Zealand essentially revolves around utilising novice instructors who, in order to build the flying hours presently considered necessary to join an airline, are prepared to work for a minimum wage and sometimes for nothing at all.
But as the demand for pilots increases, I would suggest that this old model is no longer sustainable.
In last month’s issue of Aviation News, Ian Calvert, CEO of Ardmore Flying School, wrote an excellent article encouraging a change in attitude toward and treatment of flying instructors. I agree wholeheartedly.
The inevitable result will be a significant increase in the cost of pilot training and the sooner a new model is introduced, the better for the future of our industry.
So what should that model look like?
Who benefits from having a trained pilot? Obviously, the individual pilot, but also the airline that requires highly competent professional staff, and the society that requires a safe and efficient air transport system.
So I would argue that the cost of pilot training should be borne by all three beneficiaries—the pilot, the airline and society.
I would suggest that access to government funding support (and not necessarily through the TEC-administered student loan system) should be available only in conjunction with a sponsoring airline or GA organisation which selects the applicant and fronts with a significant portion of the training cost. And the individual should also be required to contribute a significant portion.
The government’s funding might well include some form of interest-free loan paid back in a similar way to the current student loan system, but not necessarily tied to an academic qualification. The airline’s contribution may well be tied to a bond and/or salary sacrifice worked off over time.
This system, in conjunction with a clear pathway from training to employment, would be entirely workable.
While this is unlikely to be welcomed by the airlines which have enjoyed many years of pilot surpluses and consequently have not had to contribute directly to the cost of their basic training, I would suggest there is an inevitability to it.
The cheapest new pilot an airline can source and the fastest an airline can source them is often by attracting someone else’s. The industry is seeing a growing trend of competing for pilots and the realisation that pilots are a valuable and increasingly scarce human resource.
Sourcing instructors
Some of the most capable and experienced flying instructors in New Zealand are in the centre seats (second officer) of long-haul airliners and the right-hand seats of regional jets and turboprops.
It is my observation that, at the moment at least, there appears to be a high number of relatively inexperienced C category flying instructors around in New Zealand, but that more and more of the experienced, supervisory level instructors are being recruited into the airlines or are going overseas to progress their careers.
And as more are recruited or leave New Zealand, the situation is worsening—and quickly.
The flight training industry needs to encourage those current and retiring airline pilots who are interested in contributing back to help the next generations of pilots—as instructors, mentors and supervisors.
In conclusion
There is clear evidence that pilot demand is progressively growing and that training availability issues, both within New Zealand and internationally, are constraining supply.
A clear pathway between training and employment should be established and the current Civil Aviation Rules which impede this should be amended to allow for alternative means of compliance.
A new model for funding pilot training should be developed where all three beneficiaries contribute to the cost of training.
And we must think outside the square to utilise those instructors who are in airlines who want to contribute to entry-level pilot training. And we must think outside the square to attract instructors to stay in flight training as a career.
A failure to act swiftly to face these challenges will, in my opinion, lead to a crippling shortage of airline pilots in New Zealand and will seriously constrain our flight training industry’s ability to train in the near future.
It is time to act decisively, to link training to employment and remove impediments to this.
Time to change the funding model and to invest in this valuable resource.
Time to ensure adequate numbers of experienced flying instructors, who have graduated to the airlines, are able to maintain a role in flight training organisations, as supervisors, mentors and senior instructors.
And time to promote the advice necessary for some instructors to consider the pathway to a career instructor role.
In my opinion it is time to act.
- Report by Mark Woodhouse, photography by Peter Clark.