Indiana State's aviation department typical has about 400 students enrolled at any given time.
(Devan Ridgway - WFIU/WTIU)
Schools around the state with aviation programs are always flush with students trying to get into the air.
“We're not a giant program,” said Chris Colbert, director of safety and lead flight instructor with Indiana State University’s aviation program. “We're not certainly small by any means, but we will have about 400 applicants in any given year, and we will select less than 50 to be student pilots here.”
At ISU, students can choose between three different aviation majors: professional flight, aviation management, and unmanned systems. Across the department, 400 students are usually enrolled, with 100 practicing flying at any given time.
Christoper Colbert, Sr. Flight Instructor at ISU. (Devan Ridgway/WTIU News)
As Colbert said, it’s not a large program, but many students graduating from the ISU aviation department go on to work at most of the major airlines and cargo companies throughout the country.
“We have a lot of students go to Republic, and then Republic has flight contracts with, I think, all of the major airlines,” he said. “So, we see our students with all of the major airlines at this point, as well as a lot of the cargo companies, UPS, FedEx, Atlas, we have people everywhere.”
Part of that success is due to aviation being a smaller industry than most; according to the FAA, just under 500,000 people in the U.S. currently hold a license to fly.
Compare that to another heavily trained industry such as the 1.3 million legal professionals currently working.
But Colbert said this small industry often follows a cyclical pattern of hiring and firing.
“There is nothing happening now in aviation that hasn't happened before,” he said. “There's giant hiring, and then there's a scare, and then there's furloughs, and then people wait around, and then there's giant hiring, and then there's some scares, and then there's some furloughs, and then people wait around. I don't think that's going to stop.”
But something big is on the horizon; the Regional Airline Association say nearly half of today’s qualified pilot workforce face a federally-mandated age 65 retirement in the next 15 years. Even sooner, 13.5 percent of the pilot workforce must retire by 2029.
This ‘Silver Tsunami,’ as it has been dubbed, not only affects pilots but other jobs in the aviation industry.
“We oversee and manage the Indianapolis International Airport, as well as central Indiana's largest airport system, and about 25% of our season workforce is eligible at retirement age by 2026,” said Megan Carrico, the senior director of public affairs with the Indianapolis Airport Authority.
That includes jobs such as engineers, construction workers, on-site police and fire officers, front line staff and more.
The upcoming shortage effects all levels of aviation, from regional to international airports. (Clayton Baumgarth/WTIU News)
The Indianapolis airport authority has been marketing summer internship programs as well as apprenticeship opportunities for several years to attract younger people into the workforce. They have also added opportunities for employees to grow and train within the airport in an effort to attract a younger workforce.
“Everything that we're doing goes back to what our executive director calls public value” she said. “You've heard the adage sometimes about, ‘oh, if you train them, they'll leave’ or ‘if you develop them, they'll leave.’ And he doesn't stick to that model.”
Not only is the “silver tsunami” coming, but general pilot shortages have also challenged the industry at large, causing flight limitations and increased costs.
Much of the shortage has been brought on by the remnants of COVID, when the industry shrunk and then exploded in popularity shortly afterward. There’s also the cyclical shrink/growth pattern taking place simultaneously.
Mike Suckow, a professor of practice at the Purdue School of Aviation and Transportation Technology, said we may be coming close to the end of the shrinking cycle.
“The students that are getting in are going to be in pretty good shape,” he said. “The students coming through in 20 years are going to be sitting right seat for a while.”
Purdue's aviation program includes advanced simulation tech like the unit pictured here, which simulates the movement of a plane via hydraulics. (Clayton Baumgarth/WTIU News)
Programs like Indiana State’s and Purdue’s are trying to get as many students as they can through, but only so many students can be educated at a given time.
One cause is the time requirement needed to become licensed; in 2010, a new law raised the logged flight time necessary to become eligible from 250 to 1500 hours.
Some have argued that number should be reduced, but Suckow said he’d prefer the conversation be on the quality of those hours versus the quantity.
“What's the quality of the training that we are trying to accomplish versus the quantity of the flight time, because theoretically, you could have 500 hours of hot air balloon time, and that counts towards the 1500. So, what's the quality of that time?” he said.
Then, there are other programs, such as the LIFT Academy that focus on getting those flight hours as quickly as possible.
LIFT was founded in 2018 in Indianapolis by Republic Airways as a way to get more pilots in their cockpit seats, faster.
“We couldn't really rely on the existing supply, the existing programs to generate the volume of pilots and the pilots with the kind of training we needed at the time,” said Ed Bagden, director of operations at LIFT Academy. “So, it was incumbent upon us taking on ourselves and really vertically integrating that supply of pilots.”
Colbert said that a hiring boom in February or March next year would be a huge help to the industry workforce, but the silver tsunami will require many more new pilots to fill in the gaps.
“There's a ton of factors involved in that, but we believe that we just need to keep the pace that we have always had, to produce the pilots that are needed at a really high level.”
