Demand for Pilots Sparks Instructor Shortage at Colleges’ Flight Programs

Increasing demand for commercial pilots has increased enrollment in many flight programs and schools across the United States, including those at colleges. And while the programs are adding class sections and planes to their fleets to accommodate the influx of students, they’re also losing a key to their business: flight instructors.

The combination of a growing airline industry, a coming wave of retirements of major-airline pilots, and a demand for regional flights has left airlines scrambling to fill their cockpits — and quick to poach flight instructors because of their experience. The shortage is being felt nationwide, said Elizabeth Bjerke, associate dean in the aviation department at the University of North Dakota.

Patrick Smith, a career pilot and founder of the Ask the Pilot blog, said there’s never been a better time to pursue a career in aviation. The only problem is that newly trained pilots typically start their careers at regional carriers. Those airlines have historically offered low wages, demanded long hours, and, as a result, suffered a high turnover rate.

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In an attempt to meet the demand and retain pilots, regional airlines have raised their pay, lathered on bonuses, and extended alliances to flight schools. Plenty of schools have partnerships with major airlines and their regional counterparts, but an unintended consequence of enticing new pilots with job placements, bonuses, and a decent work schedule is the shortage of flight instructors.

The situation is similar a problem plaguing nursing schools for more than a decade: With nurses able to earn more working as nurses than teaching nurses, the schools have suffered a shortage of instructors.

Students commonly work as flight instructors before being hired as pilots. The job, often their first in the industry, helps them achieve enough flying hours to be hired by regional airlines. It provides students with the invaluable experience of teaching others to fly.

The instructor shortage is something the department chair for aeronautical science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Florida campus, Mike Wiggins, believes needs more attention. “If somebody’s goal is to become an airline pilot, no amount of money you pay them to be a regular flight instructor will keep them here any longer because their goal is to go become an airline pilot,” Mr. Wiggins said. “I don’t know that there’s an easy, quick solution. Every time we try to take a look at something, there’s another issue that pops up.”

Flying Incentives

Only a small number of people with flight-instructor certificates work as instructors, he said. Students typically use the flight-instructor job as a steppingstone, but even with increases in enrollment, they aren’t choosing to stay as instructors.

Mr. Wiggins has noted an increase in enrollment at Embry-Riddle, which registered 1,338 students this fall in the aeronautical-science program in Daytona Beach, Fla. The freshman class alone saw an influx of more than 100 students. The school has added four Cessna airplanes to its 70-craft fleet, with about 180 flight instructors.

Manoj Patankar, head of the Aviation and Transportation Technology School at Purdue Polytechnic, in Indiana, has also seen a rise in enrollment and new carriers approaching the school for partnerships and pipeline agreements.

But where students would typically spend a year and a half or two years as instructors, many of them are shortening that time to as little as a year, he said.

It’s not that Mr. Patankar doesn’t want students to become pilots; he just wants them to stay a little longer at school so that they can train new students. The school has developed incentives and retention programs to help those students stay longer, he said.

Over all, a pilot shortage is a good problem to have, North Dakota’s Ms. Bjerke said, because it means graduates are being hired. But it also means flight programs are forever trying to catch up by producing new flight instructors as quickly as they’re taking jobs.

A pay raise could help retain instructors, but those costs would be passed on to students. The more costly the program, the less likely students will be able to foot the bill.

Ms. Bjerke said she had been collaborating with other universities and the aviation industry to devise a model to forecast pilot supply. The model predicts that young people will want to enter the aviation industry when they notice a flood of job opportunities. As flight-school costs climb, the model predicts students will be discouraged from attending.

While major airline carriers usually require pilots to hold a four-year degree, many regional airlines don’t. But the upside to attending a university’s flight program is access to federal student loans, something not typically available at stand-alone flight schools because they are not accredited to receive such financial aid.

To help open the doors for would-be pilots, Bob Rockmaker, president of the Flight School Association of North America, said his group is working to form an accrediting body that would allow federal loans to flow to students at some 50 to 100 freestanding schools. Flight schools not connected to higher-education institutions could then offer their students funding options. The process will take another year or so, he said.