Despite the surge of new commercial airline pilots after the COVID-19 pandemic, an industry-wide labor shortage will likely persist — and may even get worse.
The main signal suggesting a slowdown in the pipeline for new pilots is the number of certifications being granted by the Federal Aviation Administration. Over 9,600 pilots received them in 2024, enough to leave the industry “oversupplied” by 0.3%.
A slowdown appears to be building, and analysts at Jeffries (JEF-2.61%) say that the COVID wave of enthusiasm is beginning to taper off. The number of certifications issued in December was 40% higher than 2019 pre-pandemic levels but 10% lower than the same time last year. That 0.3% pilot oversupply may become a 0.3% deficit as soon as this year, and worsen as pilot cohorts continue to shrink.
“Assuming the hiring cadence normalizes after pent-up pandemic certs & early stages of the pipeline become slimmer, the need to backfill retirements (4-5% annually) drives industry undersupply wider through the decade,” Jeffries analysts wrote.
Pilot staffing levels are always a challenge for the airline industry given the amount of specialized training necessary for someone to work the job. And when COVID hit, many carriers responded to a cratering of air travel demand by nudging large numbers of pilots into retirement.
“Approximately 50,000 airline employees opted for early retirement or voluntary separation in 2020, while 100,000 employees took unpaid leaves of absence,” the Government Accountability Office noted in a 2023 report examining the problem.
As people return to the skies — 2025 is expected to be a record year for air travel worldwide — airlines have needed to increase hiring again. Their success in doing so is uneven. United Airlines (UAL+2.20%) CEO Scott Kirby bragged last May on an earnings call that his company was having no trouble filling its new pilot classes, even if it comes at the expense of rivals.
“We never had an issue with staffing and we’re at the top of the food chain,” he said at the time. “It’s remarkable, actually, when I go to where we do our pilot training in Denver every month and talk to the new hire classes, and I ask where they came from, how many came from other big airlines.”
This may sound like good news for the pilots who are able to enter the labor force, this time last year, Southwest Airlines (LUV-2.85%) pilots ratified a new union contract that would win them 50% higher wages over the life of the agreement. But it’s not that simple. Between persistent delivery delays from Boeing (BA+1.01%) reducing the need for people to fly those slow-to-arrive planes and an industry shift to reducing capacity to help make flying more profitable, there will be a period when there might not be enough new jobs to go around.
At an investment conference in September, Frontier Airlines (ULCC+4.38%) CEO Barry Biffle said he’d noticed that attrition was slowing considerably. Instead of needing to hire about 600 pilots a year to keep up with growth, retirements, and raiding by other airlines, Frontier doesn’t have to work nearly as hard on backfills.
“That is screeched to a halt,” he said. “When the big guys aren’t hiring, there’s nowhere to go. And so, now I have a cadet program and these kids are screaming at me that, well, when am I going to get hired?”
What that suggests is that the industry will be able to kick the pilot shortage can down the road a bit. If demand continues to improve and planes start rolling off assembly lines, the heat could be back on.
“We recognize we have too many pilots,” is how Biffle put it on an earnings call the month before. “We have too many flight attendants and everything in the near term, and we’re carrying those costs in the third and a little bit of the fourth quarter until we can kind of grow into it until this reset takes place.”
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