Pilot shortage is the X factor in Boeing’s NMA deliberation

Boeing's market analysis appears to quietly offer relief for a shortage of trained aviators in the form of the New Middle-Market Airplane.

Avatar photoJon Ostrower·
Aircraft DevelopmentAirlinesAnalysis
·

This post is also available in: 简体中文 (Chinese (Simplified))

The second in a series focusing on Boeing’s road to developing its next all-new commercial airplane.

What happens if the world’s airlines can’t get enough pilots?

According to Boeing, 790,000 new aviators are needed over the next 20 years. That’s 108 newly trained pilots each day — one every 14 minutes. It’s an eye-catching figure. A 24% jump over its expectation from a year ago.

Boeing, for the first time, included business aviation and helicopter pilots in its 2018 forecast, the reason for the sharp rise. Commercial pilots accounted for 635,000 of those 790,000 new pilots.

As Boeing moves toward offering its New Middle-Market Airplane in the first quarter of 2019, the company has never tied a shortage of aviators to its case for the new jet. Yet, the fine print on Boeing’s annually-updated forecasts stand as an indirect, but foundational, signal about the assumptions within the business case for the NMA and its expectations about the small twin-aisle jet easing the future need for new pilots, according to an analysis by The Air Current.

Each of its first seven personnel forecasts since 2011 saw demand tick up again and again.11And increasing alarm over a potential shortage of aviators has accompanied each ever-larger aircraft forecast — but how much did 20-year demand grow for commercial pilots this year?

It didn’t. It declined.

Continue Reading...
Tags
Avatar photo
Jon Ostrower
Jon Ostrower is Editor-in-chief of The Air Current, where he leads coverage of the global aerospace and aviation industries. Prior to launching TAC in June 2018, Mr. Ostrower served as Aviation Editor for CNN Worldwide, guiding the network’s global coverage of the business and operations of aviation. Mr. Ostrower joined CNN in 2016 following four and a half years at the Wall Street Journal. Based first in Chicago and then in Washington, D.C., he covered Boeing, aviation safety, and the business of global aerospace. Before that, Mr. Ostrower was editor of FlightBlogger for Flightglobal and Flight International Magazine covering the development of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and other new aircraft programs from 2007 to 2012. He is also an instructor at the University of Southern California in the Viterbi School of Engineering's Aviation Safety and Security program. Mr. Ostrower, a Boston native, graduated from The George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs with a bachelor’s degree in Political Communication. He is based in Seattle.
Related

Zeen is a next generation WordPress theme. It’s powerful, beautifully designed and comes with everything you need to engage your visitors and increase conversions.