Wednesday, April 27, 2022
We have all seen the stories or maybe been victims of flight cancellations in the last few years.
Much of that has to do with what the airlines are calling staffing issues or a pilot shortage. You know the problem is real if you’ve had a flight cancelled in the past couple of years.
Tubreaux Aviation at the Downtown Shreveport Airport has seen the commercial airlines gobble up their flight instructors.
Some industry analysts are projecting North America will be short about 12,000 pilots by 2023 and by 2029 a potential shortfall of 23,000 pilots.
There’s a mandatory retirement age, people are having to retire from airlines at a given date no matter what.
So they retire, that opens up the top side of the window for people to come in on the bottom, and then some are just tired of working as hard as they were, some people decided to quit because of COVID-19, some just decided they’re done being airline pilots.
They’re done with the schedule they didn’t like life on the road, said Jeremy Williams, Tubreaux Aviation in Shreveport chief pilot.
The Air Force is not immune to this problem, too, not by a long shot.
According to the Air Force, the shortage of pilots in their ranks has been between 1,500 to 2,000 over the last two years.
So, the Air Force is offering large retention bonuses of up to $35,000 a year, among other things to try and keep the force fully staffed.
