How COVID-19 Turned The Pilot Shortage Into a Surplus Overnight
As the world went into 2020, it faced a vast and growing pilot shortage. Just three months into the new year, a pilot shortage was no longer a problem. The beginnings of stay-at-home orders and social distancing requirements turned the high demand for air travel into thousands of unemployed pilots. A global pandemic seemed to be an unlikely solution to any shortage, but COVID-19 is likely to be the event that permanently redefines the role of the pilot.
According to pre-2020 airline industry studies and defense think tank reports, the gap between the demand for pilots and new pilots' supply is vast and growing more expansive each year. Drivers of that gap include:
A lack of new pilots.
A training pipeline that can't support the increasing global demand.
A coming wave of pilot retirements in this decade.
The pilot shortage wasn't just a problem for the airline industry. The Air Force sighted a need for 2,000 pilots. Corporate aviation was suffering a large shortage, and the rapid growth of urban taxi development expected to pull another 10,000 pilots from the shrinking pilot supply. A top military officer described the seriousness of the situation as being in a "downward spiral."
I have studied the pilot shortage problem for the past five years, looking for creative solutions to meet this growing demand. My research found that while people still see the benefit of being a pilot, their desire to learn to fly is quickly squashed once they encounter high entry barriers. The barriers of time and money, as well as general aviation's refusal to modernize, continue to turn aspiring new pilots away before they even get started.
The industry's tight grasp on old traditions has caused talented minds to start looking for a better solution. I remember talking to one of SpaceX's top engineers about my concept to modernize flight training. He liked the idea but pointed out that automation will eventually replace all pilots. I argued that switch is likely decades away, and, in light of the growing demand, waiting for technology wasn't an option. That was until COVID-19 became the headline of every news story.
Overnight the pandemic required people to stay at home, and as a result, air travel declined by 90%. Recently phased reopenings have started causing a moderate improvement in demand, but carriers expect July's capacity to be 75% less from the year earlier. Fears of spreading the disease cause people to see the benefits of staying close to home, a realization that will likely slow the return to consistently overbooked flights.
United Airlines has already announced its plans to lay off pilots. By the end of June, the company plans to displace over a third of its pilots. Delta Airlines mentioned in an internal memo that 7,000 pilots would overstaff it by the fall, and American Airlines plans to let go 2,500 of its pilots by next year.
Packed airports will eventually return but, just like after 9/11, life is going to be different. During this shut-down, businesses worldwide have audited their practices and, the good ones have fixed areas that needed improvement. To survive, Disney needed to figure out how to distance its guests socially, and the airlines must solve the problem of flying fewer people while still cutting costs.
The demand for instant creative solutions is loosening the boundaries of what is possible. Disney has realized that it is possible to provide an excellent customer experience with fewer cast members, and the airlines are focusing on automation.
Airlines and manufacturers have said for years that they would save money if they could reduce or even eliminate the number of pilots in the cockpit. This is not just wishful thinking. Several companies are developing fully autonomous aircraft. Some have plans to use this technology for deliveries, like Amazon and UPS, but Boeing and Airbus have set their sights on passenger travel.
Times of crisis serve as life fuel to innovations. Over the time of this pandemic, we've seen large and small companies create solutions to manufacturing and supply chain problems. They have designed unique collaboration techniques and haven't wasted any time waiting for things to go back to the way they were. In 2019 many viewed virtual meetings as ineffective, but today, companies like Facebook and Twitter took their workforce to the work-from-home model.
Finding solutions to this new normal will likely speed up automation technology across a wide range of industries. COVID-19 has strengthened the use case for driverless cars for social distancing proposes and dramatically grew the demand for cheaper shipping costs causing General Motors to explore self-driving to cut costs in half for moving freight. This shift to autonomy is something the aviation industry can no longer afford to keep out of its cockpits.