It is widely known that there is a pilot shortage in the United States — a view seemingly supported by the figures: by there were only around , pilots in the U. This figure has climbed slightly in recent years though, reaching , in Military pilots are not included, but can apply to the FAA to have their military qualifications recognized.
This has led to fewer recruits, with the number of student pilots falling sharply between and Although student numbers have started increasing again in recent years, there is a question over whether this will be sufficient. In , the number of pilots aged over 45 was around 16,, while the demand for air travel has been growing strongly and consistently over the last decade. In total, it is estimated that around 81, additional pilots will be needed across the Americas between and You need a Single Account for unlimited access.
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You have rudders, ailerons, elevators, trim, and throttle to control. Sometimes you need to tweak the propellor, the mixture, and the active fuel tank. All this while constantly watching your airspeed, altitude, heading, and vertical speed; maintaining awareness of your engine indicators; and keeping an eye out for other airborne traffic. Even takeoffs are harder than they first seem. When you push the throttle forward, four separate physical forces skew the nose of the airplane sharply to the left, so you need to step on the rudder, without stepping on the brake, to keep the nose straight-ish.
Landings are hard full stop. Well, sometimes they feel easy, but consistency is hard. Are self-flying planes on the horizon? But there are two barriers. First, when will safe self-flying be possible? Airplanes have pitch and roll as well as yaw, and move within a highly dynamic medium, and if something goes wrong — like an engine failure, or a bird strike — a quick halt is generally the exact opposite of a desirable outcome.
I can easily envision self-flying AI which handles Second, even if we get there, when will it be practical? While individuals might volunteer to be bleeding-edge adopters, how can you prove its validity to the FAA and other regulatory authorities?
Better autopilots for ordinary conditions are one thing, but removing pilots from flying entirely is quite another. Maybe after we build up a long, deep history of perfect safety with comparable drones or military flights; but not any time soon.
Better technology will however help with navigation. Navigation may seem relatively easy above the San Francisco Bay, a well-known territory full of landmarks. Guess again. That sky may be empty but it is not unoccupied. Instead it is segmented into dozens of complex three-dimensional zones, and woe betide you if you stray into the wrong one.
Bay Area VFR airspaces. Picture a tiered wedding cake, upside-down, with radiuses measured in miles. Then you have the half-dozen smaller regional airports, each jealously guarding their own disc of space, except where squashed by one of those cakes.
Each of those kinds of airspace has its own rules and regulations. Does the heavy use of voice communications over frequently and manually shifted shared channels seem a little … well … twentieth century? A little technologically backward?
Well, yes, and no. Voice over radio is simple, powerful, flexible, and time-tested. There are a lot of old airplanes and old pilots out there. Based on the numbers from above for these two categories, that means that 7. That just goes to show how male-dominated this industry truly is currently! That said, a decade ago in , there were just 41, female pilots in the United States. Hopefully, that trend will continue and more and more females will be interested in becoming pilots and will be able to enjoy the amazing career that being a pilot really is!
If you took a look at the FAA survey mentioned above, keep in mind that those numbers only deal with civilians. That means that military pilots, including the Air Force, are not included in those numbers. If you want to join the military and become a pilot, it makes sense that you would enlist in the Air Force, since the main focus of the Air Force is air superiority.
According to the Air Force Times , the Air Force currently has 19, of the total 43, military pilots. While that might sound like a significant number of military pilots, the government wants the Air Force to have 21, pilots among its ranks. So currently, there is a shortage of roughly 1, pilots. There is a military pilot shortage across the board, not just in the Air Force. The total number of pilots in the USA includes far more than commercial airline pilots, private pilots, and military pilots.
There are also student pilots, transport pilots, recreational pilots, and more. To get the full picture of how many pilots there are, we need to combine the number of civilian pilots from the FAA survey with the number of military pilots from above. According to the FAA, there are , pilots in the country. And as you saw above, there are 43, pilots in the military. So in total, there are , pilots in the USA. But according to Statista , it is estimated that there are around , pilots in the airline industry.
With that number in mind, we can compare it to the number of pilots in the United States and then extrapolate to get an idea of how many pilots there may be in the world. With , commercial airline pilots in the world, that is 3. So if we take that 3. But again, this is likely much higher than the actual number of pilots.
Based on my own knowledge of the industry, I would estimate that there are around 1. After spending years watching every video I could find about flying, I finally scratched the itch and got my pilots license.
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