CAE Reports No Letup in Business Aviation Pilot Demand

Nick Leontidis said, "there's an unprecedented demand for professional pilots and a new urgency to develop better pilots, faster." Leontidis is CAE Group president for Civil Aviation Training Solutions that issued its first report – Airline and Business Jet Pilot Demand Outlook 10-Year View – on pilot demand in 2018 and this year updated the report to include business aviation pilots.

"According to our analysis," Leontidis said, "by 2028 the active combined airline and business jet pilot population will exceed half a million pilots. Furthermore, 300,000 of those pilots will be new and 215,000 will have been upgraded to captain. In the business sector, the turnover of new jet pilots will reach almost 100%." The report added that signs of improvement are evident in business aviation even though new jet deliveries have remained flat since 2012 at approximately 700 aircraft per year.

For business aviation, the number of needed pilots is expected to increase by four percent, not only due to the delivery of new aircraft, but also to a reduction in the number of previously owned aircraft that were once sitting around idle. The report looked at both pilots that will be hired to fill the shoes of retiring aviators and those hired to handle industry growth.

Increased pilot demand is also motivating fleet operators and training providers like CAE to work more closely together not only in the way they train pilots, but in how they select pilot candidates so as to reduce costly training failures. CAE said, "Smarter pilot creation helps new pilots flourish earlier and improves the likelihood of success throughout a pilot's career."