Abandonment Issues

Private aviation has a pilot shortage. Here's why.

- Michael Verdon

AFTER DELTA, UNITED and American Airlines recently announced that they were hiking salaries, private aviation’s pilot shortage suddenly became even more acute, in no way aided by the fact that some commercial airlines now pay six-figure signing bonuses. According to industry surveys, corporate pilots sometimes earn just 60 per cent of their commercial-airline peers’ salaries during a 30-year career.

“The lure of a much bigger salary can be hard to fight,” says Sheryl Barden, CEO of Aviation Personnel International, who has seen veteran pilots from Fortune 500 flight departments—long viewed as the job to retire from—leave for the airlines. The outflow is also a lasting side effect from the pandemic.

“COVID exacerbated the shortage when the airlines retired so many pilots early,” says Dondi Pangalangan, senior vice president of strategic initiatives at Clay Lacy, a specialist in privateaircraft management, charter and maintenance. “That created a hole. Now it’s a vacuum, sucking every pilot in our industry towards it.”