Pilots needed for cockpits as Asia travel boom creates shortage

Cathay Pacific Airways, Qantas Airways and Emirates Airline are awaiting deliveries of about 400 planes to capitalize on Asia's rising prosperity.

Finding pilots is the next job.

Boeing expects the region's carriers to be the biggest buyers of twin-aisle planes as travel grows in China and India, home to a combined 1.1 billion middle-class people. Asia-Pacific airlines will buy about 8,000 planes worth $1.2 trillion over the next 20 years, Airbus SAS said.

Airlines worldwide need an average of 49,900 pilots a year from 2010 to 2030 as fleets expand, yet current training capacity is only 47,025, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal.

That is sparking bidding wars as Emirates offers tax-free salaries and four-bedroom villas for captains, and AirAsia, the region's biggest budget airline, gives tuition-free training.

"It's a major issue and will be a big challenge to the industry's growth," said Binit Somaia, a Sydney-based analyst for the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation. "Even if you can find the pilots, you have to pay top dollar for them because they are so scarce."

The demand in Asia contrasts with the 4,500 U.S. airline pilots on furlough, according to figures compiled by Kit Darby, a retired United Airlines pilot now running an Atlanta-based consulting firm.

That situation shouldn't last long. The global fleet of cargo and large passenger planes will double to nearly 32,000 by 2028 from 15,750 last year, according to Airbus.

The major U.S. airlines are expected to hire more than 40,000 pilots in the next 12 years, said Louis Smith, president of FltOps.com, which provides career-counseling services and sponsors job fairs.

World passenger traffic is expected to increase an average of 4.7 percent a year between 2009 and 2028, according to Airbus.

"I believe one can expect serious shortages among the foreign carriers who can't afford to pay what it takes to attract qualified pilots," Smith said.

The shortage, and hiring by a new crop of budget carriers, also could push wages higher.

"There is a misconception that low-cost airlines pay lower salaries," said Tony Davis, chief executive officer of budget carrier Tiger Airways Holdings, part-owned by Singapore Air. "We couldn't do that in a competitive market."

Basic pay for Singapore Air captains flying twin-aisle Boeing 777s or the Airbus A330s begins at $6,870 a month, excluding allowances, said P. James, president of the Air Line Pilots Association of Singapore. Emirates offers a starting monthly salary of $9,370 for captains, according to its website. That excludes benefits such as hourly flying and productivity payments.

Its other perks include a tax-free basic salary, profit-sharing, villas for captains and free dry cleaning of uniforms, its website said. Those incentives help attract candidates to an increasingly demanding job, said Barry Jackson, president of the Australian and International Pilots Association, who has been a pilot at Qantas since 1987.

"Young people these days prefer to become doctors or lawyers," he said. "This sort of career path is becoming less desirable."

China finds pilots

faked résumés

SHANGHAI — Chinese officials have found that 200 pilots falsified their flying histories, with more than half of them working for the parent company of an airline involved in China's worst plane crash in several years, a report said Monday, citing the head of the civil-aviation administration.

The results of investigations in 2008-2009 showed that airlines desperate for staff were hiring pilots whose résumés had been faked, the newspaper China Business News cited Li Jiaxiang, head of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), as telling a recent teleconference.

The report comes as the agency investigates safety measures nationwide after an Aug. 24 crash that killed 42 people at a small airport in the northeast, in China's worst commercial-airline disaster in nearly six years. An additional 54 people were injured in the crash of the Brazilian-made Embraer 190 plane belonging to Henan Airlines during a nighttime landing at Yichun in Heilongjiang province.

Calls to CAAC's headquarters in Beijing rang unanswered Monday. A staffer who answered the phone at Shenzhen Airlines, which reportedly had 103 of the pilots with faked work histories on the payroll, said he had no idea about the report.

Shenzhen Airlines is the parent company of Henan Airlines.

China's aviation industry has expanded rapidly in recent years and regulators have struggled to keep up.

The Associated Press