“Quite a number of carriers are increasing their orders. So where are the pilots coming from? The shortage is going to manifest itself certainly as we go into next year because there’ll be a lot of planes coming in then, so these guys are going to have a hard time finding the pilots to fly them,’’ said Shukor Yusof, an aviation analyst with Standard & Poor’s.
Last month, Indonesia’s Lion Air ordered 230 Boeing Co. 737s with options for 150 more. Qatar Airways ordered at least 55 jets from Airbus SAS while Emirates ordered 50 Boeing 777s. From 2011 to 2030, Boeing and Airbus both predict Asia will account for about a third of global aircraft deliveries worth a total of more than $1 trillion.
To keep up with growth and replace retiring pilots, the International Civil Aviation Organization forecasts Asia will need 229,676 new pilots over the next two decades — up from 50,344 in 2010. In the most likely scenario, Asia will be short about 9,000 pilots a year because it will need about 14,000 but have capacity to train only about 5,000.
“Never in human history have we seen a time when 2 billion people will enter the middle class and demand air travel. That time is now,’’ said William Voss, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Flight Safety Foundation.
Some airlines are already acting.
Emirates has announced plans to set up a dedicated $109 million flight training center in Dubai that will be able to train up to 400 students at a time. Earlier this year, Canadian flight-training company CAE Inc. said it was expanding its training center in Zhuhai, China that it runs jointly with China Southern Airlines.
But Roei Ganzarski, Boeing’s chief customer officer for flight services, warns that recruiting pilots will be a long-term problem for the aviation industry. “We’ve already heard of a few airlines that have either reduced their operations or even grounded their airplanes because they don’t have enough people to fly them.’’
