American Airlines came this weekend to announce that they were cutting flights to Columbus, Georgia; Del Rio, Texas; and Long Beach, California. Chief reason? Well....it wasn't the passenger flow or lack of planes. It was a lack of pilots. There simply aren't enough around.
Back around 2012, I worked in the Arlington, VA region and had a 30 minute chat one day at a pub around the corner of my apartment building with a guy who was a 25-year old pilot.
Around age 19....some relative had passed on and left him around $100,000....to which he used to get a pilot license for a particular type of plane (a 40-pax type).
He found the employment not a big deal....but they weren't going to pay him anything substantial (even in his 3rd year of employment...he was still in the $32,000 level). It marginally paid for his studio apartment, and marginalized lifestyle.
He had some deal with the airline....after five years of work, they'd pay for some upgrade on a bigger frame plane, and increased pay would come. At the pace he was going? He probably wouldn't be making the $80,000 a year rate until he got up around 40 years old.
He wasn't disgruntled but he wasn't thrilled over the limits.
The problem is....all of these smaller airports have a limited number of people who need to out to the 'hubs'. So there's a lot of these 20 to 40 passenger planes out there, and most all of these pilots are making a pretty low wage.
Over the next decade....I suspect more than forty US airports operating today (the small operations) are going to get the message....flights will be curtailed or lessened. What that means for the normal American? Well...if you live in some small town of 40,000....your local airport with ten flights a day to Houston or St. Louis.....probably isn't going to be around. You will add another hour to driving to the next bigger town and flying out from there.
That's the long term landscape to prepare for.
