The actual reason for a pilot shortage is due to fewer military pilots which used to transition to civilian pilots. It has nothing to do with the Department of Transportation.
The 1500 hour rule means before you can fly folks in these commercial settings you have to have a LOT of hours. The way a lot of non-military folks do this is by being a flight instructor for many years - living on pennies. Then they can finally go work for a regional airline and make pennies.
The path for non-military folks to start from private pilot and end up at airline transport pilot is technically there, but unless you’ve got a bunch of money sitting around, it’s very prohibitive. And with pilot salaries being what they are, and not what they used to be, it’s an even harder sell.
The other reason, also related to military, is that a couple of months ago the FAA integrated their records system with the VA. Because of some records disparities, specifically health records, thousands of pilots have had their license suspended. This happened to someone I know and they got all their documentation to the FAA in early April and as of 2 weeks ago they were told to expect 3-5 more months of a wait before it’s reviewed because they’re so bogged down
The actual reason for a pilot shortage is due to fewer military pilots which used to transition to civilian pilots. It has nothing to do with the Department of Transportation.
The 1500 hour rule means before you can fly folks in these commercial settings you have to have a LOT of hours. The way a lot of non-military folks do this is by being a flight instructor for many years - living on pennies. Then they can finally go work for a regional airline and make pennies.
And the fix from congress has been to weaken training standards, while we’ve seen a string of near-crashes this year
The path for non-military folks to start from private pilot and end up at airline transport pilot is technically there, but unless you’ve got a bunch of money sitting around, it’s very prohibitive. And with pilot salaries being what they are, and not what they used to be, it’s an even harder sell.
Any since the reduction of forces since the 90s the number of commercial pilots has fallen.
The other reason, also related to military, is that a couple of months ago the FAA integrated their records system with the VA. Because of some records disparities, specifically health records, thousands of pilots have had their license suspended. This happened to someone I know and they got all their documentation to the FAA in early April and as of 2 weeks ago they were told to expect 3-5 more months of a wait before it’s reviewed because they’re so bogged down