Civil aviation is facing a major labor shortage problem, even more glaring on the pilot side, which the pandemic has amplified.
The problem was mentioned on January 12, during the examination, by the Standing Committee on Transport of the House of Commons, of the causes having caused sometimes major inconvenience to travelers during the holiday season.
Mehran Ebrahimi, professor and director of the International Observatory of Aeronautics and Civil Aviation at ESG-UQAM, also put it well in an email exchange. The shortage of pilots is a worldwide reality, and in Canada this problem is accentuated in the general context of a shortage of manpower. “Furthermore, since the airline industry has received little support during the pandemic, some of our pilots have been hired by foreign companies. We estimate that currently there is a shortfall of approximately 1,500 pilots in the country. Given the cost of training and the lack of public training centers, these positions cannot be easily filled”, we have already written.
The shortage was already looming at the dawn of 2020, in particular due to demographic factors. But the abrupt halt in hiring and recruiting as well as early departure plans have fueled the pandemic. “Airlines have laid off many employees, prompting many pilots to retire, leave the industry or move to other countries, where aviation has more support than in Canada” said last year Tim Perry, president of the Canadian branch of the Air Line Pilots Association.
According to data provided by Transport Canada, which incorporates the most recent estimates from industry partners and government research, the overall trend points to a labor shortage in Canada’s transportation sector. 2025, especially in the field of aviation. The Canadian Council for Aviation and Aerospace is quoted as calculating that Canada will need to hire 55,000 workers by 2025, including 7,300 pilots and 5,300 aircraft maintainers.
Expensive training
“Compared to other essential workers in aviation, pilots take years to train and require significant funds to complete the required training. And Transport Canada added in its email: “The shortage will be significant later this spring for small regional and aerial work operations, as these operators will not be able to meet demand due to difficulty in finding pilots. »
A text from The Canadian Press published this week notes that this problem has been exacerbated by the arrival of discount airlines on the Canadian scene in recent years: Flair Airlines, in Edmonton, Lynx, in Calgary, Swoop, a subsidiary from WestJet, or even Porter. “If I have a new airline starting with 10 planes, theoretically I need about 200 pilots,” Mike Doiron, president of Doiron Aviation Consulting, told the news agency. “And training new pilots does not happen overnight, even though the demand for pilots has exploded. It is said that becoming an airline pilot can cost upwards of $100,000.
On the projections of the Canadian Council for Aviation and Aerospace, “there are only maybe 15,000 to 20,000 pilots in the whole system right now, so that’s a lot quite significant,” said Mr. Doiron. “The shortage of qualified and experienced personnel is really going to put the whole industry upside down for a while,” it read.