Airlines have warned for years about a looming pilot shortage, with the threat that smaller communities could lose regular airline service. But the debate is contentious because pilot unions contend that if regional airlines offered better pay, more candidates would embark on the costly training to join the industry."I think that it makes sense from the Air Force perspective to look at retired pilots for the needs of the military," said John Cox, a former airline pilot who is now a consultant as president of Safety Operating Systems.
"There is a pilot shortage, so it's going to have some effect," Cox added. "But the major airlines are still filling their classes. It's the regionals that are struggling a little bit, and some of the business aviation slots are proving difficult to fill."Boeing projected in July that airlines will need 637,000 new pilots over the next 20 years, including 117,000 in North America, for the anticipated growth in passengers.Meanwhile, the number of FAA pilot's licenses held by people 20 to 59 years old has declined nearly 20% from 2009 through last year, according to an analysis by the Regional Airline Association, a trade group for smaller carriers.The number of top-level Airline Transport Pilot licenses grew slightly during that span, to 126,070 last year. But the number of lower-level commercial licenses and private licenses, whose pilots could feed into the airlines, have declined from a combined 283,339 in 2009 to 198,551 last year.
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