No More Pilot Shortage?

No More Pilot Shortage?

Is this the beginning of the end of the pilot shortage? UPS let go of 200 pilots, as pilot hiring levels off.??

Why is this important: UPS recently provided buyout severance packages to approximately 250 pilots, citing a lack of shipping demands. FedEx might be looking to do the same. It is said that there was an increase in pilot hiring post-pandemic. We must remember that a lot of the hiring that was taking place was from a low baseline given the furlough and early retirement that took place during the pandemic. Nonetheless, these recent developments are worth following.

Continue reading to learn more about the current situation with the pilot shortage or the lack thereof.

Get Involved: Do you believe that this marks the beginning of the end of the pilot shortage? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.


UPS reduces pilot head count by nearly 200 with buyouts

Nearly 200 senior pilots at UPS have accepted the company’s voluntary severance package, and regional passenger airline PSA Airlines is trying to recruit them to close a crew shortage.

The head count reduction at UPS Airlines is much more limited than one envisioned at rival FedEx Express, where management has acknowledged it has more than 700 excess pilots and on Friday urged flight crews to quit for the same type of offer at PSA Airlines, an American Airlines subsidiary that operates in the Eastern half of the United States.

UPS (NYSE: UPS) in late August offered early retirement to veteran pilots as part of an effort to reduce costs in the face of shrinking parcel volumes.

By Eric Kulisch | Yahoo Finance?

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American Airlines offers $250K bonuses to poach FedEx and UPS pilots

American Airlines is on a hiring spree — and is offering $250,000 bonuses to poach FedEx and UPS pilots to jump from piloting cargo carriers to working as captains on its passenger planes.

PSA Airlines, a regional carrier owned by American, is dangling the six-figure bonus for UPS and FedEx pilots who can help fill a gap in service to smaller US cities — which has widened over the past year as smaller airports have been forced to cancel flights due to a lack of pilots, according to The Wall Street Journal.

PSA is reportedly desperate for aviators with enough experience to join the cockpit as a captain after being forced to keep many of its planes grounded.

Last year, 30 airports in the continental US lost at least half of the departures they had in 2019, The Journal reported, citing figures from Airline Data Inc.

By Shannon Thaler | New York Post

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United Doubles Down on Pilot Hiring, Sets New Record

Amid a recent flurry of headlines around slowdowns in hiring among some airlines, United is keeping its foot on the gas. The Chicago-based carrier just hired a record number of pilots in October.

According to data from FAPA – a pilot career advisory group that’s been tracking hiring trends across 13 major U.S. airlines for over 30 years – United hired 270 pilots in October 2023, the carrier’s highest amount of new hires in a single month. This boils down to nearly 70 new hires each week.

Last year, the airline hired 2,500 pilots, making 2022 a record-setting year for new aviators on United’s property. The 270 new hires in October bring United’s total to 2,296 new pilots so far this year.

By Ryan Ewing | Flying Magazine

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Pilot Hiring In The US Is Starting To Level Off

The cyclical nature of the airline industry was on full display during and after the COVID-19 pandemic and even now with the fluctuations in hiring trends, particularly for positions inside the cockpit. Not too long ago, airlines went on a pilot hiring spree, as the Airline Pilots Association projected demand for more than 128,000 new pilots in the US alone, but recent trends suggest that it has hit a plateau in recent months.

The COVID-19 pandemic was particularly challenging for airline pilots, whose jobs were threatened significantly during its peak. While it was assumed that re-hiring would take place once the pandemic subsided, airlines actually went all out to hire new pilots in a post-pandemic network and fleet expansion program. US airlines, in particular, saw a great demand for cockpit crew and handed out new offer letters and contracts to attract the best talents in the industry. And while pilot hiring continues, the latest trends show that it has leveled off in the last couple of months.

By Gaurav Joshi | Simple Flying?

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Note: The views and opinions expressed in the content shared in this digest are for informational purposes only, are solely those of the original content creators, and do not constitute an endorsement by or necessarily represent the views of On Aviation? or its affiliates.


Thank you for reading this week's On Aviation? digest. Do you believe that this marks the beginning of the end of the pilot shortage? Please share your thoughts in the comments below. Remember to check out our On Aviation? Podcast and continue the conversation on our Twitter and Instagram.

Orlando - On Aviation?

Trina Graham

Registered Dental Hygienist

1 年

Way of delivery, but UPS has always been known as a traditional company (a company that is good to employees for long-term/life and follows the old way of maintaining employment) so they are releasing or giving their pilots opportunities to leave with a package thay they have all worked and earned throughout their career with UPS. This moral act of kindness allows the pilots to retire and/or continue working with other companies and helps other companies in the industry bc now they are able to hire good seasoned pilots and feel secure with running their own business. Many businesses have built a stigmatized profile for older employees and label them as resistant and harsh about growing. Well this behavior is sometimes for good reason because it keeps companies safe and productive in the long run instead of constantly losing money and cycling through employees over and over. I can say all of this because I hear stories all day everyday about almost every industry. Depending on area I would say that about 10% of working people have been with the same job since they graduated or started working and 75% have changed jobs 2-10 times in past 15 years. It's no wonder we have so many problems in the American industry. Do your research!

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Trina Graham

Registered Dental Hygienist

1 年

Our country is transitioning rapidly all at the same time due to Covid. Otherwise most of the job transitioning would have taken place in increments. Unfortunately the theory of pilot shortage came from the commercial airline industry because their Captains or Senior Pilots have been with the company so long that they were going to lose a detrimental abundance in a short period of time. The airlines require pilots to have a certain time frame before upgrading and they work for MANY years to build status and choose their schedules. This can be beneficial in several ways including financial incentives, family time incentives, and travel incentives. This is also beneficial for the public because as of right now we know that when we fly on an airline we have 1 pilot that is well experienced with years of flying airplanes. MANY other smaller charter airlines or private business corporate airlines do not have the same standards so you will be on a flight at sometime, somewhere with 1 or 2 pilots that have very minimal experience and make numerous detrimental mistakes daily. Some businesses such as UPS and FedEx are at war with competitors (Amazon, Wal-Mart, etc) that provide their own this time of industrial employee shortage

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Gilles Hudicourt

A lifetime in aviation

1 年

During the COVID crisis, thousands of wide body airliners in whose holds much of the World’s cargo was carried, were grounded. This situation created a temporary surge for all cargo airlines operating cargo aircraft. Now that the trafic is back to its pre-COVID levels and that the wide-body passenger aircraft are back in the air, that cargo went back to them. Nothing to do with the pilot shortage or supply.

Captain Khalid Alhashmi (FRAeS)

Aviation Training | Airline | Management | Human Factors | Leadership | B787 | MBA | FRAeS | MLE? | LinkedIn Top Voice | #FlyingHub | Views are my own

1 年

Mmmm, interesting

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