Of course, it doesn't take much to get me to opine on matters related to aviation. I'm always open to engage in hypothesizing some of our challenges, like the pilot shortage. Or is it?
Leading up to our discussion on the alleged pilot shortage issue we first talked about the proposed third class medical revision. Someone in attendance made an observation that the average age of the pilots in the room was somewhere around 65. I hadn't even noticed until he said something because that's just our normal audience. Pilots are an aging breed.
I made the comment that I think that the third class medical is going to keep the old-timers flying longer, but will do little to help with new pilot starts. Keeping the older generation flying isn't a bad thing; we just need to keep in mind what problem we're solving with this third class medical change.
Then I thought of something. If this is seen by most pilots as a good thing for our industry, yet it doesn't address the issue of new pilot starts, what will? What is driving the shortage? What has changed? Why does it seem critical for this generation? Perhaps we don't have a pilot shortage at all. Maybe we're just reaching a state of normalcy in the industry. I'll explain.
Most of our aging pilot population are baby boomers, or products or WWII. Why is that? I think we can see a direct correlation to the activities of WWII and pilot starts from that era. Not only did we have very large military air forces, but several WWII veterans were able to use their GI Bill to learn how to fly. Because we were a manufacturing mecca, we had plenty of flying assets in the national fleet.
But did we, as a nation, create an artificial market? Without the assistance of government funding, most of the pilots from that generation may not have been able to afford pilot training. It's a similar state that we are in now. Without some level of financial assistance, the cost of learning to fly is keeping several people on the ground.
Not everyone can afford to fly, and maybe not everyone deserves the privilege to fly. So maybe we've reached a state of normalcy with our pilot population. I think this is similar to the concept of the airline industry. Because of government subsidy, everyone was afforded an opportunity to travel by airline. However, the ticket price didn't correlate to the true cost of operating an airline. To this day, everyone feels entitled to travel yet not everyone would be able to afford the ticket price if it was solely based on operating cost.
Have we been too coddled by our government all this time? As goes the military, so goes our industry. And right now you can see a trend in downsizing our military and shifting some flying missions to drones. Don't get me wrong, I believe there will always be missions for manned flights, but we can't deny the correlation between our industry and the military trends.
And let's be frank, this administration has not been entirely friendly to general aviation. When business tools, such as aircraft, are systematically demonized then it impacts us all. Those corporate pilots started somewhere. Not everyone can or does enroll at a university to get into a pilot program.
Taking a purist viewpoint of a free market, one can argue that any industry that can't sustain itself without government intervention shouldn't be in the game. It's clear that in our current political climate, we aren't likely to see assistance from either side of the aisle.
With that said, it's all up to us. What are we willing to do to help develop general aviation pilots? Are we content to sit back and accept that we've reached a state of normalcy in the market? Or will we rise together to start tackling these challenges head on with creative solutions? What say you?
