Regional Airline Association Statement on Great Lakes Suspension of Operations
The Regional Airline Association (RAA) wishes to acknowledge the suspension of flight operations of long-time member, Great Lakes Aviation. Once serving numerous routes in many states and employing 1,600 individuals, the airline has been highly exposed to a growing pilot shortage that has forced even larger carriers to cancel service and reduce frequency in recent years. Despite a constant search of solutions to protect its employees and customers during this ever-increasing, industry-wide crisis, Great Lakes was forced to cease flight operations on March 26. As a result, several communities and hundreds of passengers have been left without air service. This is the latest example of the pilot shortage and its damaging impact on American businesses and communities.
For more than 36 years, Great Lakes Aviation stood as a committed partner to small communities, often providing a community's only source of scheduled air service. On March 26, Great Lakes supported 220 direct employees and fueled hundreds more indirect jobs in the communities they served. That number is expected to drop precipitously, even as Great Lakes takes every step to maintain some of its operations including its reservations and code share support for smaller carriers.
RAA President Faye Malarkey Black said that the problem of pilot supply is not limited to Great Lakes but is endemic throughout the regional airline industry. "As unprecedented numbers of major airline pilots reach mandatory retirement age, those airlines are hiring regional airline pilots at a rate that outpaces the supply of new pilots entering the pipeline," said Black. At the same time, an element of the 2013 FOQ Rule, which emphasized high flight time for pilot qualification, elongated and narrowed the pilot career path, increased training costs for aspiring pilots and created a new barrier of entry - making it incredibly difficult for new pilots to obtain the training and experience needed to take flight. Pilots may now spend as much as $200,000 for education and training as well as spend two years between graduation and hire by assembling flight time outside of the commercial airline or structured training environments. Because pilots also receive no additional training during this time, the emphasis on flight hours has also translated into reduced proficiency among pilot candidates qualified for hire. Airlines now fail out more pilot candidates than before the rule.
"A pilot's lifetime earnings are now higher than ever, and the ROI on training is excellent - higher than doctors and lawyers. Unfortunately, most Americans lack the access to wealth or private loans needed for this career in the first place," Black said.
Solutions to the pilot shortage are within reach. Pay increases and other market-based solutions have already been undertaken. Training costs, however, are extraordinarily high, and attempts to lower these costs and facilitate airline support for pilot training have been met with political resistance and cynical, false accusations of circumventing safety. "Enough is enough. To resolve the pilot shortage, we must embrace safety-entered solutions that reduce the high barriers of entry to the pilot career, provide for more structured and qualitative training and lower the cost of training for aspiring pilots." Black said.
"We applaud our long-time Board Member Doug Voss and his team at Great Lakes for 36 years of dedication to small community air service. We will support Great Lakes in any way we can while we continue to work with Washington policymakers to ensure this doesn't happen again," Black added.