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Washington sets aside $240 million for pilot shortage at start of busy summer travel season
Congress is setting aside $240 million to address the pilot shortage, a problem that has dogged the airline industry in recent years and caused delays for travelers trying to reach their destinations.
The new money was stored inside the recent reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration. It will flow to schools and other groups focused on aviation-related education, allowing them to reduce costs for students and provide more services.
The government expects there to be around 16,800 open pilot positions annually in the coming years.
“This is a long-term issue,” Senator Raphael Warnock noted in a recent interview in his Capitol Hill office. The Georgia Democrat was a leading supporter of the new money.
“We are selecting a very small and very restricted group of candidates,” he added.
Senator Raphael Warnock, center, sits with other members of the Congressional Black Caucus during a meeting with President Joe Biden in the Oval Office in February 2023. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) (Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images)
The assistance comes as another summer travel rush begins, posing new challenges for airlines.
The Transportation Security Administration is projecting that this summer will be busiest summer holiday travel season ever as the sector fully recovers from COVID.
Meanwhile, some short-term pilot shortages may be easing, in part thanks to market forces.
In a recent appearance on Yahoo Finance, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg warned that many problems could lie in wait for travelers this summer, but said the pilot levels could end up being a bright spot.
“From my conversations with the industry, there has been a definite improvement in pilot availability,” he said, citing rising wages as a factor that has brought “real improvements.”
The nation’s largest airline pilots union, the Air Line Pilots Association, has long maintained that there is no shortage of pilots. Instead, he has tried to turn the focus back to airline executives, whose policies he says are the root cause of recent travel problems.
One different area travelers should watch out for this summer, Buttigieg said, is overbooking, when airlines book flights and don’t have the staff to actually service them.
The Secretary of Transport said he hopes a recently finalized Biden administration rule requiring airlines to automatically issue cash refunds “changes the economics” there.
‘The business case’ for dealing with shortages
What Warnock wants is to focus on the future and increase the number of people who can become pilots over time.
“I’m advocating for diversity in business,” Warnock said in this week’s interview. “It is in our enlightened interest to find this talent and create a robust pipeline so they can become pilots,”
The story continues
The senator sits on a Senate aviation safety subcommittee and also represents the giant Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. He advanced successfully an amendment during the recent debate that doubled plans for $120 million in aviation workforce efforts for a final total of $240 million.
He also added provisions – both for pilots and the entire aviation industry – to encourage greater diversity.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg speaks at a news conference at Washington National Airport in April. (Win McNamee/Getty Images) (Win McNamee via Getty Images)
Warnock frequently highlights the economic obstacles that keep people out of the profession. Some estimate it costs prospective pilots $100,000 before they can earn their first paycheck as a commercial pilot.
He points to numbers like Ezekiel Andrews, an aspiring commercial pilot who lives in Atlanta and has logged just over 1,000 of the 1,500 flight hours he needs before he can carry paying passengers.
In an interview, Andrews noted that it has taken him about 17 years of stopping and starting to get to this point, but that he hopes to cross the finish line this year as he works as a flight instructor.
Andrews comes from a modest background and recounted the experience of seeing younger students – those with the financial means to log their flying hours without interruption – “pass me by”.
When asked about the new funds from Congress, he noted that the money probably won’t help him, but it should make things easier for people like him in a similar situation in the future.
“This is incredible,” he added.
A wider debate about what DC can do
New money to develop future pilots comes later a broad debate among legislators about other things the government could do around the issue.
One controversial idea — for now shelved — would change current rules that require a commercial airline pilot to have completed those 1,500 hours in the air.
Another proposal also in the background would increase the retirement age of pilots from 65 to 67 years old.
Senator Warnock has declined to address those efforts for now, saying this week, “I’ve heard a lot of arguments on both sides of this debate and I’ve decided to just focus on the front end of the issue.”
Ezekiel Andrews was more direct. He hopes to work at a regional airline next year and questions the 1,500-hour requirement he must meet before he can enter the higher-paying field of commercial aviation.
He said he learned a lot in his first 500 hours in the sky, but “at this point, it kind of plateaued.”
“You’re just blowing holes in the sky for nothing,” he said.
Ben Werschkul is the Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
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