<p>The US-based Regional Airline Association (RAA), which represents regional carriers across North America, has for many years been one of the vocal bodies regarding both the pilot shortage which the country is now facing and the quality of pilot training.</p>
<p>Within the US, RAA’s 20-plus member airlines carry out 41% of all scheduled passenger flights. Moreover, at 63% of US airports with scheduled passenger service, regional airlines are the carriers providing that service.</p>
<p>While Captains and senior pilots are enticed from one regional to another by bonuses <a href="https://jobs.flightglobal.com/article/commutair-increases-sign-on-bonus-for-captains/">(see Flight Jobs: <em>CommutAir increases sign-on bonus for Captains</em>)</a>, the major challenge for the regionals is to attract more new pilots. The next task is to ensure their training they receive is of the highest quality.</p>
<p>Assessing this scenario, RAA president, Faye Malarkey Black, is pleased to start with something positive. “The good news is that globally the demand is up and there are more people flying to, from and within the United States, whereas before our industry was completely contracting and enplanements were down,” she notes. “Those enplanements are starting to rebound a little, so for the first time in a couple of years we are carrying more passengers.</p>
<p><img alt="Faye Malarkey Black" src="/getasset/629e1c91-60f7-4dbe-bc36-e475adeaf99e/" /></p>
<p>“If you look more closely at the data, departures are down, suggesting that carriers are coping using upgauging. You can upgauge for lots of reason, of course, but one reason is to carry more passengers on one aircraft and therefore you use fewer pilots. That’s one practical way that carriers are responding.</p>
<p>“More broadly though, you can see efforts to renew interest in a career [as a pilot]. These efforts are thoughtful, they’re not just about compensation but about carriers are being more long-range in their thinking. It’s not enough to continue playing musical chairs, we want to make this profession more attractive,” adds Black, before turning her attention to “the other issues out there”.</p>
<p>“First, we’ve got to reach more people and achieve more diversity in our cockpits. Every airline CEO says, ‘We want our flight decks to look more like our cabins’. But what’s being done about it?” Black queries. “I think you’re going to see more of our carriers doing targeted outreach, support, mentorship and leadership programmes that go after women, people of colour and indigenous populations.</p>
<p>“A small group in Washington, DC, run by folks from various aviation professional trade groups, takes DC public and charter school kids and exposes them to aviation opportunities,” she reports, from personal involvement. “The airlines involved sometimes donate flights. On one such flight up to New York, we found that kids on the flight had not only never thought, ‘Gee, that could be me up front in the aircraft’, some had never been on a flight. These are children that are coming from STEM schools that are highly technologically driven. They’re the best and the brightest but for their economic circumstances. They’ve never even known that they could imagine doing something like this.</p>
<p>“That exposes a couple of things. One is that you’ve got to reach out to populations that you’re not naturally and organically reaching. You don’t do that through hoping or through platitudes, but through programmes. That’s why I love what LIFT Academy [an initiative set-up by Republic Airways] is doing. They have a van with a simulator and drive around the schools and say, ‘Come check it out’,” Black comments.</p>
<p>“It’s one thing to inspire these youngsters to get engaged into the career path, but then what? Because it’s so incredibly expensive. We’re talking about the total cost for a two- or four-year education pathway plus the pilot training easily being $200,000, sometimes more. Yes, there are other ways to qualify, but that pathway is the most preferred and it’s the degree pathway. The way the US student loan funding apparatus is set up is absolutely not designed to support students becoming pilots. There could be six figures between a guaranteed student loan and what the student and his or her family have to finance on their own.</p>
<p>“We have to change that. The regionals are doing all these new things such as tuition reimbursements, company guarantees and more. But in many cases, a good credit rating is needed to get those loans and a lot don’t have it. There has to be financial support for student pilots. There is a reward on the other side, because the ROI on a training investment is better than that for a doctor or a lawyer, who by the way get a lot more support for their training,” Black emphasises.</p>
<p>Many RAA member airlines and their major partners have collaborations with seats of learning (University of North Dakota and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University being two examples) helping to bring in new candidates. “The airlines are ever-present on those campuses. A lot have partnerships, they collaborate on the curriculum, and do many innovative things to support pilots,” Black confirms. “That’s the other part of the current scenario – long-range support systems beyond compensation to attract people into a career.”</p>
<p>Once a candidate is drawn in, the right training is vital. In 2013, the FAA introduced a rule requiring First Officers to have 1,500 hours total flying time in addition to their ATP licence. The previous requirement was 250 hours. The move, however, has provoked a long “quality vs quantity” debate.</p>
<p>“Let’s take that in a couple of pieces,” Black suggests. “First, if there is one thing that we – the RAA – would like to do, it is to unpack the close association there is between the First Officer qualification rule and the pilot shortage, because they are really two separate topics. They do influence one another, but when we talk about the FO qualification rule, the question is not whether it is causing a pilot shortage, the questions is ‘Are we training pilots the best way we can?’ If the answer is no, then what else should we be doing and why?</p>
<p>“It’s that second part that we’ve focused on lately. As I mentioned, we’re the entry part of the career path so we see the results every day in our training departments of what happens when you rely solely on the number of flight hours to determine a pilot’s true experience. And we know that it doesn’t capture that,” Black states.</p>
<p>“Quality encompasses a lot of different factors. It’s not just important to count the hours, but how the hours have been spent – and we’re not doing that now. That’s what we need to differently.</p>
<p>“Is there an acceptance of it among safety experts? Yes. Is there an acceptance among the general public? Not fully, because if you ask most lay people, ‘Would you like to have a bus driver who has driven for 1,000 hours or one with 5,000 hours, they would probably pick the latter. They just think bigger is better, naturally. It takes a little bit of time to educate on why that may not necessarily be so.</p>
<p>“Right now, that’s not something over which anyone has control,” Black continues. “There’s no way to ensure that the experience is adding value. We hear anecdotal reports of pilots picking up bad habits. Certainly the data bears this out, because we know that the longer the time between a pilot’s graduation from foundational training and being hired, the worse that pilot does once they are hired. They need extra training to get back to where they need to be.</p>
<p>“Sometimes we hear things like, ‘It’s important for them to have seen several cycles of weather’. Or ‘It’s important to have had these emergency experiences’. Those are not the experiences they’re getting when they are building [1,500 hours],” she stresses. “They fly in fair weather where they may not see a cloud or they may not encounter controlled airspace. They certainly wouldn’t be doing crew resource management. A structured programme – where you can monitor it and mentor it, and provide assessments and guidance and constant feedback – is where we need to be heading.</p>
<p>“The question we need to be answering is, ‘Are we training pilots the best way possible and preparing them the best way that we can to enter the workforce?’ Predominantly the answer is, ‘No!’</p>
<p>“Half of our pilot workforce that is going to retire in the next 15 years, but it’s not just a matter of bringing more pilots into the workforce, it’s making sure that we bring in pilots who can perform safely and can succeed on a commercial flight deck,” Black concludes.</p>
<p><a href="https://jobs.flightglobal.com/register/?utm_source=website&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=FJ_register"><img alt="Register with Flight Jobs" src="/getasset/a95f9bbd-4d54-40bd-91fb-e090dc9d5295/" /></a></p>
<p>Within the US, RAA’s 20-plus member airlines carry out 41% of all scheduled passenger flights. Moreover, at 63% of US airports with scheduled passenger service, regional airlines are the carriers providing that service.</p>
<p>While Captains and senior pilots are enticed from one regional to another by bonuses <a href="https://jobs.flightglobal.com/article/commutair-increases-sign-on-bonus-for-captains/">(see Flight Jobs: <em>CommutAir increases sign-on bonus for Captains</em>)</a>, the major challenge for the regionals is to attract more new pilots. The next task is to ensure their training they receive is of the highest quality.</p>
<p>Assessing this scenario, RAA president, Faye Malarkey Black, is pleased to start with something positive. “The good news is that globally the demand is up and there are more people flying to, from and within the United States, whereas before our industry was completely contracting and enplanements were down,” she notes. “Those enplanements are starting to rebound a little, so for the first time in a couple of years we are carrying more passengers.</p>
<p><img alt="Faye Malarkey Black" src="/getasset/629e1c91-60f7-4dbe-bc36-e475adeaf99e/" /></p>
<p>“If you look more closely at the data, departures are down, suggesting that carriers are coping using upgauging. You can upgauge for lots of reason, of course, but one reason is to carry more passengers on one aircraft and therefore you use fewer pilots. That’s one practical way that carriers are responding.</p>
<p>“More broadly though, you can see efforts to renew interest in a career [as a pilot]. These efforts are thoughtful, they’re not just about compensation but about carriers are being more long-range in their thinking. It’s not enough to continue playing musical chairs, we want to make this profession more attractive,” adds Black, before turning her attention to “the other issues out there”.</p>
<p>“First, we’ve got to reach more people and achieve more diversity in our cockpits. Every airline CEO says, ‘We want our flight decks to look more like our cabins’. But what’s being done about it?” Black queries. “I think you’re going to see more of our carriers doing targeted outreach, support, mentorship and leadership programmes that go after women, people of colour and indigenous populations.</p>
<p>“A small group in Washington, DC, run by folks from various aviation professional trade groups, takes DC public and charter school kids and exposes them to aviation opportunities,” she reports, from personal involvement. “The airlines involved sometimes donate flights. On one such flight up to New York, we found that kids on the flight had not only never thought, ‘Gee, that could be me up front in the aircraft’, some had never been on a flight. These are children that are coming from STEM schools that are highly technologically driven. They’re the best and the brightest but for their economic circumstances. They’ve never even known that they could imagine doing something like this.</p>
<p>“That exposes a couple of things. One is that you’ve got to reach out to populations that you’re not naturally and organically reaching. You don’t do that through hoping or through platitudes, but through programmes. That’s why I love what LIFT Academy [an initiative set-up by Republic Airways] is doing. They have a van with a simulator and drive around the schools and say, ‘Come check it out’,” Black comments.</p>
<p>“It’s one thing to inspire these youngsters to get engaged into the career path, but then what? Because it’s so incredibly expensive. We’re talking about the total cost for a two- or four-year education pathway plus the pilot training easily being $200,000, sometimes more. Yes, there are other ways to qualify, but that pathway is the most preferred and it’s the degree pathway. The way the US student loan funding apparatus is set up is absolutely not designed to support students becoming pilots. There could be six figures between a guaranteed student loan and what the student and his or her family have to finance on their own.</p>
<p>“We have to change that. The regionals are doing all these new things such as tuition reimbursements, company guarantees and more. But in many cases, a good credit rating is needed to get those loans and a lot don’t have it. There has to be financial support for student pilots. There is a reward on the other side, because the ROI on a training investment is better than that for a doctor or a lawyer, who by the way get a lot more support for their training,” Black emphasises.</p>
<p>Many RAA member airlines and their major partners have collaborations with seats of learning (University of North Dakota and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University being two examples) helping to bring in new candidates. “The airlines are ever-present on those campuses. A lot have partnerships, they collaborate on the curriculum, and do many innovative things to support pilots,” Black confirms. “That’s the other part of the current scenario – long-range support systems beyond compensation to attract people into a career.”</p>
<p>Once a candidate is drawn in, the right training is vital. In 2013, the FAA introduced a rule requiring First Officers to have 1,500 hours total flying time in addition to their ATP licence. The previous requirement was 250 hours. The move, however, has provoked a long “quality vs quantity” debate.</p>
<p>“Let’s take that in a couple of pieces,” Black suggests. “First, if there is one thing that we – the RAA – would like to do, it is to unpack the close association there is between the First Officer qualification rule and the pilot shortage, because they are really two separate topics. They do influence one another, but when we talk about the FO qualification rule, the question is not whether it is causing a pilot shortage, the questions is ‘Are we training pilots the best way we can?’ If the answer is no, then what else should we be doing and why?</p>
<p>“It’s that second part that we’ve focused on lately. As I mentioned, we’re the entry part of the career path so we see the results every day in our training departments of what happens when you rely solely on the number of flight hours to determine a pilot’s true experience. And we know that it doesn’t capture that,” Black states.</p>
<p>“Quality encompasses a lot of different factors. It’s not just important to count the hours, but how the hours have been spent – and we’re not doing that now. That’s what we need to differently.</p>
<p>“Is there an acceptance of it among safety experts? Yes. Is there an acceptance among the general public? Not fully, because if you ask most lay people, ‘Would you like to have a bus driver who has driven for 1,000 hours or one with 5,000 hours, they would probably pick the latter. They just think bigger is better, naturally. It takes a little bit of time to educate on why that may not necessarily be so.</p>
<p>“Right now, that’s not something over which anyone has control,” Black continues. “There’s no way to ensure that the experience is adding value. We hear anecdotal reports of pilots picking up bad habits. Certainly the data bears this out, because we know that the longer the time between a pilot’s graduation from foundational training and being hired, the worse that pilot does once they are hired. They need extra training to get back to where they need to be.</p>
<p>“Sometimes we hear things like, ‘It’s important for them to have seen several cycles of weather’. Or ‘It’s important to have had these emergency experiences’. Those are not the experiences they’re getting when they are building [1,500 hours],” she stresses. “They fly in fair weather where they may not see a cloud or they may not encounter controlled airspace. They certainly wouldn’t be doing crew resource management. A structured programme – where you can monitor it and mentor it, and provide assessments and guidance and constant feedback – is where we need to be heading.</p>
<p>“The question we need to be answering is, ‘Are we training pilots the best way possible and preparing them the best way that we can to enter the workforce?’ Predominantly the answer is, ‘No!’</p>
<p>“Half of our pilot workforce that is going to retire in the next 15 years, but it’s not just a matter of bringing more pilots into the workforce, it’s making sure that we bring in pilots who can perform safely and can succeed on a commercial flight deck,” Black concludes.</p>
<p><a href="https://jobs.flightglobal.com/register/?utm_source=website&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=FJ_register"><img alt="Register with Flight Jobs" src="/getasset/a95f9bbd-4d54-40bd-91fb-e090dc9d5295/" /></a></p>