Great Time to Be A Pilot: Boeing
The 2018 Pilot & Technician Outlook from Boeing is projecting that 635,000 commercial aviation pilots will be needed in the next ten years. The estimate is down slightly from the 637,000 pilots needed that the company projected in last years report.
The 2018 Pilot & Technician Outlook from Boeing is projecting that 635,000 commercial aviation pilots will be needed in the next ten years. The estimate is down slightly from the 637,000 pilots needed that the company projected in last year's report. One of the reasons for the future demand, Boeing says, is the company's estimates that the global fleet will almost double in size from 24,400 to 48,540 aircraft over the next twenty years.
As has been the case for quite some time now, the estimated number of civilian pilots needed over the next decade significantly outstrips the number of new pilots entering the workforce. The same is true for aviation technicians and cabin crew, with Boeing anticipating 754,000 technicians and 890,000 crew members needed worldwide through 2037.
In a press conference at AirVenture 2018, the company emphasized that the much-discussed pilot shortage is and will continue to be affected by a variety of factors, including the difficulty of finding pilots qualified to serve as airliner captains, insufficient training capacity and retirements—over 8,000 pilots in the U.S. alone are scheduled to retire over the next five years.
