US: Business jets risk US pilot shortage on competition from airlines

Business jet operators, already offering double digit raises to attract pilots, could face a labor shortfall in North America as they compete with US airlines for talent, executives and analysts said. Competition is intensifying from airlines, which generally offer higher salaries and better benefits and are taking delivery of new aircraft at a fast pace, U.S.-based aviation consultant Rolland Vincent said. Boeing and Airbus left the Dubai Air Show this week with around 700 provisional orders for narrowbody commercial jets, potentially adding to already hefty backlogs. It is expected that the world’s rapidly growing commercial aviation industry will need an additional 255,000 pilots by 2027, according to training specialist CAE Inc. US legacy carriers are recruiting employees to fly new aircraft and replace retiring staff, with American Airlines expected to hire 900 mainline pilots in 2018, up from just over 500 in 2017, said Dennis Tajer, a spokesman for the Allied Pilots’ Association (APA), which represents American Airlines pilots. “It’s really a buyers’ market and the buyer is the pilot now,” Tajer said in a telephone interview on Friday. “If you don’t pay pilots the market rate you’re going to lose them.” By contrast, in Europe corporate jet operators did not lose many pilots this year to commercial aviation because carriers had an adequate supply of pilots after Air Berlin and Monarch Airlines ceased operations, said Adam Twidell, CE of PrivateFly, a global private jet charter broker.<br/>