AOPA Pilot Magazine - July 2018 - 80

29,000 Pilots who

will retire from cockpits
at major airlines within
the next 10 years

FORMER STAY-AT-HOME MOM

Sara Karg took a leap of
faith and began flight training two years ago with the
goal of flying professionally.
It took her only 25 months
to reach her dream.

14,000 Estimated

shortage of airline pilots
by 2026, according to
a University of North
Dakota study
80 | AOPA PILOT July 2018

Naysayers immediately
disregard talk of massive hiring waves and pilot shortages,
but the data is undeniable-
airline hiring is occurring at
a pace many experts say has
never happened in their lifetimes, and its impacts are
being felt throughout the
world of aviation.
Boeing estimates that more
than 600,000 new professional
pilots will be needed worldwide
over the next 20 years, including
117,000 in North America. Louis
Smith, president of career and
financial advisory service Future
and Active Pilot Advisors, says
that 29,000 pilots at the 11 major
U.S. airlines will reach age 65 in
the next 10 years-indicating
that the major airlines will need
nearly 3,000 pilots a year even if
the industry doesn't grow, and
not accounting for natural attrition. Of course, the industry is
expected to grow, and there is
attrition, so the actual number
required will be much higher.
Add in the regional airlines,
corporate flight departments,
fractionals, and charter operators, and it's clear that the help
wanted sign will be hanging for
years to come. But with fewer
than 6,000 new airline transport
pilots certificated on average
each year, there's clearly a supply problem. Who will fill the
cockpits?
A DREAM TO FLY

Sara Karg's longtime dream of
flying isn't that unusual, but in

the world of professional flying, her background is. Karg
met her husband in college,
had a career as a security analyst, and then decided to stay
home and raise their three
children. Although at 39 she
was not exactly looking for a
career outside the home or to
make a change, that dream of
flight popped up unexpectedly as her kids started to
become teenagers. She met a
new friend who said he trained
people to fly. Researching the
hobby she realized it was probably too expensive to be viable,
so she looked at flying as a
career instead. With no prior
training, and without a clear
plan as to what type of flying
she wanted to do, she launched
into the unknown and started
training at ATP Flight School
in Arizona. A year later she was
an instrument flight instructor, and 13 months after that
she became a first officer at
SkyWest Airlines.
"It was really intense," Karg
said. "It took a lot of sacrifices."
She faced a revolving series of
checkrides, and then 13 months
of nonstop instructing, some
days starting at 3 a.m. to avoid
the Arizona heat. Today she's
in training at SkyWest's facility
in Salt Lake City, her first taste
of life away from home as an
airline pilot.
"As a mom and a female
I have a lot of guilt about not
being around my kids," she
said. "But I'm also showing
AOPA Pilot Magazine - July 2018

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