8. Airline Hiring Frenzy
Some wise person (oh, yeah, that was me) once said that you can’t fool Mother Nature or demographic trends, and we’re seeing the latter in full bloom in the current state of the pilot marketplace. In short, there are not enough ATPs to go around, and you need an ATP certificate to get into the cockpit of an airliner these past many years. With tens of thousands of baby boomer pilots retiring, and the increase in air travel coupled with the higher pilot requirements, we have a perfect storm of demand. If you’re an ATP, less than 60 years old and still breathing, well, they’ve got a job for you. Wages are up, way up, benefits are up, pilot unions have newfound clout and aviation training organizations are filled to the brim. Twenty years ago when we did a survey of the pilot marketplace, the news was, well, exactly the opposite of this. It’s great news for pilots.
