What Pilot Shortage? Spirit Airlines CEO Sides With Pilot Unions That Call It A Myth

Spirit Airlines

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CEO Ted Christie countered conventional aviation industry wisdom on the alleged pilot shortage, saying Thursday that the long-term trend shows a sufficient supply of pilots.

While that contradicts the view of other airlines, Christie seemed to be generally in agreement with the two largest pilot unions, the Air Line Pilots Association and the Allied Pilots Association.

Speaking on Spirit’s first-quarter earnings call, Christie said the pilot pipeline will return to a historical norm of producing the needed 10,000 pilots per year.

The industry’s outlook was summarized last month on United Airlines April 21st earnings call, when CEO Scott Kirby said that airlines need to hire 13,000 pilots this year but training produces just 5,000 to 7,000 pilots annually.

In a tweet posted on April 28, ALPA President Joe DePete referred to an ALPA position paper headed “More Than Enough Pilots to Meet U.S. Airline Demand: Debunking the Pilot Shortage Myth.”

APA spokesman Dennis Tajer said Friday, “We don’t think there are not enough pilots. The crisis we see today is because demand is coming in so quickly and management didn’t plan for it. Management is failing to connect the pilots to the airlines.”

On the Spirit call, Christie said that while pilot training was disrupted by the pandemic, data shows that “post that dip, the lines were all trending up. More people were applying to get pilot licenses, ATP licenses and instructor licenses. The covid pandemic impacted that, mostly because none of us were hiring pilots in 2020.

“We anticipate you could interpret that data to suggest it will probably be closer to what you’ve experienced in the past,” Christie said. “Supply and demand will work itself out over that period of time.

In any case, Christie said, Spirit has sufficient pilots and lower costs. “We are more efficient than they are at the majors because we push more units [with] more seats per aircraft,” he said. “We still maintain a unit cost advantage no matter what.

“This is a good profession,” he noted. Spirit spokespersons did not respond to emails.

On the United call in April, Kirby declared, “The pilot shortage is real, at least for the next five years.

“Most airlines will not be able to realize their capacity plans because there simply aren’t enough pilots, at least not for the next five years,” he said.

Kirby said U.S. pilot training schools produce between 5,000 to 7,000 pilots a year. “This year, the intent is to hire 13,000 pilots, [and] even more next year, [but] I don’t think [availability] gets to 13,000 any time in the next five or six years.”

In general, the pandemic led some pilots to retire or take buyouts as the industry downsized quickly, and now passengers are returning more quickly than anticipated, creating a discrepancy.

Airlines led by Alaska and JetBlue have cut back on planned schedules due to the lack of crews, and regional carriers have cut back on flying. Spirit, also impacted, said last week that starting June 5 it will cease flying Akron-Canton Airport to Orlando, Fla., and will suspend seasonal trips to Myrtle Beach, Tampa and Fort Myers until November, The Akron Beacon-Journal reported.

Tajer said the crisis reflects the slow pace in the pipeline from pilot training to actual flying and the tendency by airlines to schedule pilots to the limits of FAA maximums, which mean that weather disruptions cannot be accommodated.

In the pipeline, “there is a gap from getting a license to getting the flight experience,” Tajer said. As for the FAA maximums, the most common limit pilots to eight or nine hours of actual flight time per day and to 14 hours of duty time per day, which includes airport sitting time. If pilots are already scheduled to the maximum, then their schedules cannot be automatically extended to accommodate weather events.

According to a recent ALPA fact sheet, “Regardless of what the airlines are saying, there is no pilot shortage and there are more than enough certificated pilots to meet demand here in the United States. The aviation industry is currently producing more pilots capable of immediately stepping into the right seat than there are jobs available to them.”

ALPA cited Federal Aviation Administration statistics which show that 15,591 new pilot licenses were issued between 2019 and 2021. During the same time, approximately 9,671 pilots retired, creating a surplus of about 6,000 available pilots, ALPA said.

“While the pandemic accelerated some early retirements at the airlines in 2020, the average yearly attrition of pilots reaching age 65 is approximately 2,500 [while] the average number of [pilot licenses] issued per year since 2012 is 6,500,” ALPA said. “Growth is expected, yet even if that numbers stays the same, that equates to a surplus of 4,000 pilots annually.

“Five of the seven largest passenger air carriers currently have more pilots now than they did in 2019 prior to the pandemic,” ALPA said. “Hiring at the major airlines has also increased at a rate never before seen. Between September 2019 and February 2020, the total number of pilots hired at the majors was 2,812. By comparison, from September 2021 to February 2022, the total number of pilots hired was 5,313—still under the total number of [licenses] issued during this time.”