Attracting, retaining pilots an ongoing issue in Canada: industry analysts

Retirements, excessive coaching prices and poor pay are fuelling a pilot scarcity in Canada, business analysts say, at a time when journey has surged within the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Air journey has rebounded since public-health restrictions put in place to curb the unfold of COVID-19 grounded flights beginning in 2020.

As these restrictions have been lifted, journey has surged and been met with prolonged delays at airports and flight cancellations, most notably over the winter holidays as a extreme winter storm and a lack of planning and staffing contributed to the issue.

The variety of business pilot licences issued in Canada has additionally fallen by greater than 80 per cent since 2019.

“There’s … not enough people starting up at the bottom of the scale to get people interested in flying,” John Gradek, a lecturer in aviation administration at McGill University in Montreal, advised CTV’s Your Morning on Monday.

A 2018 report from the Canadian Council for Aviation and Aerospace discovered that based mostly on demand, the business will want as many as 7,300 extra pilots by 2025.

Forced and voluntary retirements have helped drive the yearslong scarcity of Canadian pilots, Gradek mentioned, however the pandemic has exacerbated the issue much more.

Quite a lot of new low-cost carriers have additionally entered {the marketplace} whereas others have expanded, resulting in extra capability but additionally a better want for pilots.

An individual can anticipate to pay as a lot as $100,000 or extra to coach as a pilot, Gradek mentioned, and there’s little monetary help obtainable to college students, one thing he believes wants to alter.

“They laid off thousands of pilots across the industry and now, with the start of a number of new carriers in the Canadian marketplace and growth of existing carriers, guess what we’re short and it’s going to be a tough summer to try to find pilots in Canada.”

Dave Boston, pilot and founding father of Pilot Career Centre, advised CTV News Channel final week that on prime of shedding pilots, flight colleges additionally suffered in the course of the pandemic whereas extra company jets got here in the marketplace to serve the “ultra rich.”

“So every airline across Canada is hiring pilots as fast as they can and they’re competing with one another for the same group of pilots,” he mentioned.

But even calling the state of affairs a pilot scarcity is oversimplifying an advanced subject, Tim Perry, president of the Canadian division of the Air Line Pilots Association, advised CTV News Channel in January.

Much of what’s occurring, he mentioned, is an attraction and retention subject on the a part of airways, with many new carriers not paying sufficient and making a “revolving door” the place pilots go away for higher jobs.

Sunwing has blamed its flight disruptions and cancellations over the vacations, partially, on the pilot scarcity, pointing particularly to the federal authorities’s determination to disclaim an software to rent 63 non permanent international staff.

However, Perry has known as that argument “absurd” and mentioned any Canadian airline that compensates pilots appropriately should not want to rent non permanent international staff.

“Attracting pilots is the first step and retaining them is the second step and airlines have a responsibility to do both in order to deliver on the services that they market,” Perry advised CTV News Channel.

With information from CTV National News Manitoba Bureau Chief Jill Macyshon, CTVNews.ca Writer Tom Yun and The Canadian Press