Kenny Keller examines whether the pilot shortage in aviation is real, drawing on interviews with industry professionals and his experience in the helicopter sector. He shares what he's learned from people actually hiring pilots.
Pilot shortage, Is it real? People love to argue this one and I'm going to give you my take on it here in just a minute. I am Kenny Keller, creator of Helicopter Online Ground School. We've been online now over 10 years, approaching 11 years. We have memberships for private commercial CFI instrument. We have a summer sale going on right now, ends the last day of summer, September 22nd at midnight. You can use the code SUMMER33 for a discount. Down below. Helicopterground.com Pilot Shortage Is it real? From what I'm seeing in the industry, yes, it is real. And people can jump down the comments below and argue back and forth and say what you want to say, but from my perspective, what I see, it is real. I just did a interview last week with Todd Smith, Director of Aviation Programs down at Madisonville College. I'll put that link down below. It's a great video. And we talked about this and he said, yes, Kenny, there is a pilot shortage. We're seeing it from the helicopter side and the fixed wing side. One reason is in the recent past, due to the airline shortage, they've been converting helicopter pilots over to take jobs in the fixed wing side because the helicopter pilots can take their resume and with some additional time and instruction and some time under their belt in the airplane, they can switch over to to an airline pilot job. So a lot of the helicopter pilots are jumping ship and going to the airlines. The last 10 years or so, the Vietnam pilots have been retiring out of the industry. From what we see on a daily basis, there is a shortage. We have companies emailing us all the time looking for instructors. And I can go down a big long list of the opportunities that we hear about. Lot of the negativity we hear people go, oh well, you know, I got my CFO and I could never get a job. Well, in those instances, how did you really, how hard did you apply yourself? I'll give you an example of we've had these MD 500s here for the last couple months. One of the pilots flying these wonderful aircraft is named is Lorenzo. He's one of our longtime ground school members. I helped him back eight years ago, helping him get his private rating. I was helping prep him online over a zoom session and he explained to me how he got his first MD500 job, right? He got his training, he flew R22 for a little while around 500 hours. He got hired flying MD5 hundreds on a tuna boat and that helped jumpstart his career to get that turbine time. And he told me how he got the job. And I wish he was here to tell you the story because it's absolutely hilarious. And he put his eye on the job that he wanted and he called the guy every day and sometimes he called the guy twice a day. And this went on for a while. And I know this sounds extreme. Eventually he got hired. And when he went down to meet the guy who was going to basically offer him the job, he hires him and he goes, you know why I brought you down here and hired you? He said, because I wanted to see the face of this guy that wouldn't stop calling me. And there were some choice words used in that, in that statement, but it's a really funny story when you hear it. How did Lorenzo did it? He went out and he fought for it. And that's the way a lot of times you have to do in any profession that you're going out and going to go after. I did the same thing. I was a new CFI when September 11 happened. The flight school that I was at had nothing to do. Everything shut down. And even when things started, things opened back up, people could fly again. Everywhere was dead. Flight schools were all dead. I got on, just started emailing every flight school I could find in three to four states, anywhere I could drive to reasonably. I just started emailing every single one of them and I just put in there, hey, you know, this is where I'm at in my career. I'm ready for the next start. Put a little my background in there, what I was going after, what I was willing to do, and a company called me and hired me and I went to a super busy flight school and almost nobody else in the country was hiring or even flying. And I got hired because I just went after it and sold myself. That's what you have to do. So is the pilot shortage real from our end? What we see and what we hear being in aviation, specifically helicopter, and we're daily talking to students, instructors, companies, it's real. There's a shortage of pilots. So argue down down below ARGU to argue it out in the comments. Hey, did I mention we have a summer sale going on to the last day of summer, September 22nd. 33% off any Hogs membership during checkout@helopterground.com below. You can go down, check our site, look at the different memberships we have. We have, we have numerous options and if you have a question, you can text or call Heather, our Hogs member concierge at 574-767-1797. People enjoy talking to Heather She's a lot friendlier and a lot more fun to talk to than me. And she just by nature, is very sweet person. And she can, she knows the helicopter lingo. She's been with us four and a half years. She can carry on an intelligent conversation with you. And you're welcome to text her. Call her again at 457-4767, 1797. So we'll see you in the next video. Peace out.
