Who is going to fly the jets ?

[Northbeach]

Sometime last decade I was sitting in the flight deck on the ground and at the gate at LAX. On this flight we had some extra time; I was relaxing and enjoying the sunshine when I became aware of a presence in the flight deck behind my shoulder. I turned around to see a young man, about 14, standing just outside the flight deck looking in. I asked him if he wanted to come closer and take a look. To that he answered yes; I invited him in and gave him the “tour”. I activated the light bulb test, illuminating every switch and light, the ground prox, most of the other audio/visual tests and did my best to provide an interesting visit of the flight deck. When I was all done, I nonchalantly asked him if he was interested in being a pilot when he grew up. I will never forget his response. He looked at me with an uninterested gaze and said: “Naw………..I wanna be an actor”, he then pivoted on his heels and walked away.

I was a little deflated.

Fast forward a decade. Amongst my teenage children, and their friends, there is virtually no interest in aviation as a profession. Being a second generation airline employee myself I have made the conscious choice to try and steer my own children away from commercial aviation as a career (that explains them). In the last 15 years I can’t remember flying with ANYBODY who is actively advocating commercial piloting as a career choice for their own children. How many of you Captains/First Officers (people who are currently doing the job) are eager for your own children to choose aviation; and/or are actively advocating aviation as a future career choice for your own children?

There looms a larger question: who exactly is going to fly the airliners of the future? This doesn’t bode well for the health of the industry.

I still like my job. But if I was 18 again (knowing what I know now) I am not at all sure I would make the same career choice again.

So: who or what is going to be flying the jets in the next decade? I am not sure I want to fly around after I’m retired, if none of the upcoming generations “best and brightest” are interested in flying.

[galaxy flyer]

Northbeach

I share your concerns about the future. I don't have children, but among my fairly extensive group of aviators, few, if any, have children interested in aviation. Even ANG/AF Reserve UPT slots are going unfilled. Much of the glamour and just about all of the money is gone from the field.

I grew up in Fairfield county, Connecticut, at the time (60's and 70's) loads of airline pilots lived there, so I was well coached. Pilots lived in Greenwich, Ridgefield, Westport and were known around town. Now, very few could afford to even think of living there. The respect and aura about flying has also disappeared. To some degree, flying has become so routine that the romance had to go; also, the degree of scrutiny and bad press (think: Colgan) has made aviation very unattractive.

The only hope is the bad press in banking, finance and law drives some back to the business.

GF

[ospreydriver]

My son (7) and daughter (5) both say they want to be Marine pilots! :ok:

Now, at their ages, they probably just want to do what daddy does, but I'll try to keep the dream alive!

I've only flown in the military, which is a completely different animal than "the industry," but I think that a looking to the sky and wanting to be there is something that appeals to most people, and certainly children.

Once kids get to the age where they legitimately start thinking about careers, aviation has to offer a real paycheck and real opportunities. Frankly, the commodification of commercial aviation works against that. A college degree, hundreds of hours of flight training, checkrides, etc, to get the same wage as a damn cell-phone salesman at the mall gets?

Flying is awesome, but I definitely want my kids to go to one of the academies or ROTC, and not Embry-Riddle. They can fly commercial after they build their hours with Uncle Sam and maybe have a pension to fall back on.

[Piltdown Man]

Damn good question and I really should be interested, but do you know what? I can't really be bothered. I will also not encourage my children to go into aviation either. The current route doesn't make economic sense, most employers are not really worth working for and security and other such hinderances are taking the shine off the job.

What do I see happening in the future? Well, one day we will run short of new pilots. That won't happen until the current bunch have got jobs and the market picks up again, so say another 5-7 years. Then the proverbial hits the fan. Assuming banks still won't be giving away their cash, very few people will have the funds to pay for their flight training. And that is when I'd like to be looking for a job flying and not working for an airline's HR explaining why I can't recruit the required number of pilots. It should also be good fun working as a union rep., squeezing out those golden eggs. Every last last one of them, making sure that we've got payback for the lean years.

So I hope the answer is nobody.

PM

[Northbeach]

Like I said, I can’t think of a single person I have flow with in the last decade that is satisfied with their career enough to want their kids to follow.

Every time we strap on the jet its “Showtime”. There is plenty of liability, responsibility, risk and exposure- few are willing to step up to the plate preferring to hide behind layers of bureaucracy and anonymity. It costs too much to acquire the training and experience to be paid like a phone salesman at the mall (ospreydriver). I hope Piltdown Man is right and the industry gets to a point where they can’t fill the front seats. I’m sure there are plenty of 250 hour wonder-cadets out there that think they are really ready for the left front seat of a 380/777. Unfortunately there will be more smoking holes in the ground as the best and brightest look to invest their lives elsewhere.

I spend some time on the wannabe forums and there seem to be plenty of people that still dream of flying. But for those of us who are doing the job, and I still like mine (for the most part), few if any would recommend the career.

So who is going to fly the jets? I’m with Piltdown Man (I don’t care), the sooner the Left & Right front seats are empty, with nobody coming up the better.