While Spirit Airlines follows through on its plan to furlough several hundred pilots as part of a cost-cutting campaign, those leaving the company are finding a mixed marketplace for their services.
Some of the bigger airlines have slowed hiring as 2024 comes to a close, according to an industry group that helps pilots take the next steps in their careers. Collectively, airline hiring was more robust in the beginning of the year than in the fourth quarter, according to the Future & Active Pilots Alliance, which held a job fair in Fort Lauderdale last week that drew more than 350 pilots.
The employers that appeared at the Bahia Mar Fort Lauderdale Beach were mainly from the ranks of regional and cargo carriers, corporate aviation firms, emergency air services and the U.S. Government. All were hoping to attract experienced pilots who have either flown for major airlines or who show promise based on other experiences.
“Some of the companies (attended) to keep their applicant pools fresh, because they know the hiring at the major airlines will recover soon and deplete their work force,” said Louis Smith, FAPA president and CEO who flew for the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War and later at Northwest Airlines. The organization conducts job fairs and “future pilot” events nationally each year; a dozen are planned for 2025 with the first one in Orlando,.
“Other companies are actively recruiting,” Smith added, “and some pilots who attended will receive contingent job offers, depending on background checks.”
Industry tensions
Pilot hiring and retention has been a touchy subject around the industry as low-cost airlines such as Dania Beach-based Spirit Airlines, JetBlue Airways, and Frontier Airlines, among others, have struggled to make money after the COVID-19 pandemic all but grounded the industry in 2020.
Earlier this month, an executive for Spirit told a Congressional panel that bigger carriers tried to drive his airline out of business. In November, the debt-heavy carrier filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It intends to exit the process in late January with a reduced debt load and new marketing plan that appeals to more than bargain-hunting travelers.
During a hearing before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which is probing the impact of special fees on air travelers, Matthew Klein, the chief commercial officer at Spirit, complained that larger airlines created a pilot shortage during the pandemic, paid senior pilots to retire, and replaced them with pilots “poached” from carriers including Spirit.
“Some of our legacy carrier competitors basically paid the most senior pilots to retire early,” Klein said, according to news reports of his testimony. “That, in fact, caused a pilot shortage in the industry, and then they turned around and hired a lot of our pilots.”
Smaller carriers have taken umbrage of comments made this summer by United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby, who publicly declared that lower-cost carriers that rely on budget-conscious customers are destined to go out of busimess.
“It’s a fundamentally flawed business model,” Kirby told a podcast interviewer in June. “The customers hate it.”
At the Fort Lauderdale conference, FAPA president Smith asked one furloughed Spirit pilot what he thought of Kirby’s comments. Replied the pilot: “He’s picking on the little guy while he’s down.”
Spirit Airlines and JetBlue Airways, once potential merger partners, have taken steps to reduce pilot rosters as both attempt to fly back to profitability. (Wilfredo Lee/AP file)Keeping pilots on board has been problematic for Spirit.
As part of a sweeping cost-cutting plan, Spirit furloughed 186 on Labor Day and intends to furlough 330 more by Jan. 31 while downgrading 120 captains to first officer. When the moves are complete, the pilot roster is likely to drop from more than 3,400 to slightly below 3,000.
JetBlue, whose $3.8 billion bid to acquire Spirit this year failed in the face an antitrust action by the U.S. Government, is reportedly eliminating a number of captain positions on the West Coast as part of its own efforts to return to profitability. The airline did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Spirit pilots seeking their next job weren’t the only ones at the recent South Florida conference.
Smith said while some pilots at the conference had been laid off, others are “trying to move up” to bigger airlines or gain a foothold in the industry, such as a dentist who sold his practice and decided to go into flying. Applicants’ flight times ranged from 300 hours to 30,000 hours.
“Half of the pilots in the room want to work for the major airlines,” he said. “Older ones are looking at the charter operations.”
Where the openings are
By FAPA’s calculations, much of the industry hiring tailed off in 2024, particularly as the year came to a close. This year, the organization concluded airlines hired more than 4,700 pilots, down from more than 12,000 in 2023. Hirings exceeded 13,000 in 2022.
The airline pilot universe is vast as exhibited by the membership ranks asserted by the Air Line Pilots Association, which says it represents 79,000 pilots at 42 airlines in the U.S. and Canada. The labor union did not immediately respond to a short list of questions about hiring patterns in 2024 and projections for next year.
According to figures compiled by FAPA, Delta and United led the way in 2024 with slightly more than 1,000 and 1,200 hires respectively. American signed up close to 750. Most of the hiring appeared to occur during the front end of the year.
Discounters Frontier and Allegiant hired fewer pilots than the large legacy carriers, as did Southwest. None of the airlines participated in the Fort Lauderdale conference.
Atlas Air, the worldwide cargo carrier which has hired more than 400 pilots this year, appeared at the conference looking for more. Regionals such as Air Wisconsin, Piedmont and Republic also made pitches.
Niche companies such as CSI Aviaton, a global cargo and medevac operation with bases in West Palm Beach, Stuart and the Southwest, is seeking air crews to fly King Air and Beech propeller aircraft on missions around the U.S. and overseas.
Guarding the borders
Traditionally, the U.S. military has been the prime source for pilots in commercial aviation.
And one government law enforcement agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, is happy to see seasoned pilots expressing an interest in a return to public service.
Jeff Maher, deputy director of frontline recruiting at the agency, led a team of uniformed recruiters at the FAPA conference looking to add to the agency’s national roster of 550 “air interdiction agents.” The job: fly helicopters or fixed-wing aircraft overland along the southern U.S. border or on marine-related assignments out of coastal areas such as Florida.
TNSMore than 500 “air interdiction agents” who fly Blackhawk helicopters and fixed wing aircraft support U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents on the ground. (TNS)For the government, this is a good time to be in the market for experienced fliers.
“Your long-term trend is heading in one direction toward a shortage based on the aging pilot work force and not enough new pilots coming into the workplace,” he said. “I don’t see that broader trend changing.”
“Right now, the short-term (trend) is moving in the other direction,” he said.
“Most of the applicants we encounter know nothing about us and are surprised,” he said. “Many of the questions are very fundamental. ‘Who are you guys?’ ‘What do you do?’ ‘Can I commute to this job?’”
“They want to hear about the day in the life,” Maher said. “We don’t have a typical day in the life. We typically have a weekly schedule and that’s only a plan to deviate from.”
But he said many former military pilots with airline service have come home again to fly for Uncle Sam.
“We have plenty of former airline pilots here,” he said. “Always have, even when their airlines didn’t go bankrupt. Often they are ex-military pilots who become airline pilots, and found that they have missed the mission.”
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