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AS AIRLINES EXPAND, DEMAND FOR PILOTS SOARS
BY LOUIS WASSER
Despite big headline layoffs in the United States and concerns over skyrocketing fuel prices, the aviation industry is undergoing overall expansion on a global level – and major Middle Eastern carriers are among the fastest-growing fleets. Of course, planes don’t fly themselves, so more planes flying more routes means a need for more pilots.
“Starting three or four years ago, and for the next four or five years, [the industry has been and will be] expanding like it never expanded before,” argues Ahmed Adil, deputy general manager of flight training for EgyptAir. He points out that the number of pilots required worldwide will grow substantially over the next several years. “The number of pilots that’s going to be needed in the next five years, according to the [scheduled] delivery [of ordered aircraft] all over the world, is going to be around 17,000 [additional pilots].”
While US airlines are going through tumultuous times, and laying off pilots by the hundred, the Middle East’s aviation sector is growing at more than 15 percent a year, according to one estimate. Adil projects that the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region will need approximately 3,000 to 3,500 more pilots during the next four years to meet the increasing demand for fliers.
One of the fastest-growing fleets is Dubai-based Emirates Airline, which employs about 2,100 pilots and is expanding its fleet by about 18 percent a year. Because some of the routes being added by Emirates Airline are long hauls, they often require double crews – in other words, twice as many pilots. “The number of pilots required goes [beyond] the number of aircraft we get,” explains Alan Stealey, divisional senior vice president of flight operations at Emirates Airline. “So we’re talking about [approximately] a 20-percent expansion.” This translates into a need for approximately 400 to 450 pilots a year, a demand Stealey says Emirates is having no trouble filling.
While Egyptian airlines are not expanding on the same scale, their modest expansion plans must take into account the impact of the high competition for pilots. “These days it is very difficult to find experienced pilots,” argues Sherif El Messiri, operations director at Lotus Air, a small Egyptian charter airline employing around 100 pilots. “The aviation market is expanding very, very fast and it’s very hard to recruit people. This [recruitment] is the main objective [for Lotus Air].” The airline will need pilots for the one aircraft it hopes to add to its four-plane fleet next year.
Industry insiders point out that the shortage is not so much with more inexperienced fresh academy graduates, but rather with those who have accumulated substantial experience and training. “When you say shortage of pilots you are talking about pilots to fly specific types [of aircraft] that are being ordered from the factories,” explains Adil. Many of the aircraft on order require years of experience to become a first officer, much less a captain. If one is training fresh graduates to eventually fly these aircraft, it will take years for them to be ready.
According to Adil, EgyptAir requires a minimum of 4,000 hours of experience to upgrade a first officer to captain status. Airlines must then either think ahead – or poach pilots – if they want to continue to expand.
Making matters more complicated is a requirement in Egypt that a certain percentage of the crew be Egyptian. “According to the law here in Egypt, at least 90 percent of the crew should be Egyptian,” says El Messiri. Some argue that this requirement has made staffing Egyptian aircraft more difficult.
Airlines such as Emirates have the luxury of being able to recruit all of their pilots from anywhere in the world. “[When] we hire it’s mainly from outside the Middle East,” says Stealey. “That’s where the pilot pool is at the moment. And the reason we don’t have any issues at the moment is that the reduction in the industry – in the US in particular, but also South Africa and Europe – means that there is a ready pool of these experienced pilots for us.”
With pilots in high demand, airlines go to great lengths to woo them. “It’s a worldwide problem: each airline tries to hire the other companies’ pilots,” says Magdy Sallam, operations director at AMC Airlines, a small Egyptian airline employing about 45 pilots with plans to add two or three new aircraft to its four-plane fleet.
Sallam argues that to do so, airlines offer higher salaries and additional privileges. While the cost of living and levels of taxation vary from one location to another, many packages include perks such as medical coverage and educational allowances for pilots with children in school.
Experienced pilots can often pick and choose where to go. “The pilots just go to whatever [airline offers the] best environment, best salaries or best privileges,” argues Sallam.
Egyptian airlines, which lack the deep pockets of aggressively expanding Gulf carriers such as Emirates and Qatar Airways, have found it increasingly difficult to retain their experienced pilots. Several Lotus Air pilots left to go to work in the Gulf, El Messiri reports. “They leave mainly for the money.”
Stealey denies that Emirates, for example, is headhunting pilots. He says the airline’s competitive package attracts 120 qualified applicants per week. “We don’t go deliberately out to poach pilots from any airlines,” he argues. “We don’t look too closely at the other airlines’ packages, but we do make sure that we are competitive and attractive.”
While many private Egyptian carriers have reported trouble with pilots leaving in search of more lucrative opportunities abroad, Adil argues that this is not a large issue for EgyptAir. “The number of people who left [for other airlines] is a very small percentage,” he insists. Moreover, he says that EgyptAir has rehired a few pilots who left for other airlines, bringing them back on a contractual basis.
The national carrier is itself in the midst of a large expansion, with a plan to double the size of its fleet by 2012. And that will require more pilots. “We’re going to need to recruit an average of 80 to 90 pilots a year for the next five years to cover this doubling of our fleet,” Adil says.
EgyptAir currently employs about 580 pilots. Its strategy to acquire the number of pilots needed for its expansion plan is not to focus on hiring experienced pilots, but rather to seek out fresh flight academy graduates and work with them to upgrade their training and experience to become captains. The carrier’s recruiters may even offer long-term contracts to promising young pilot trainees before they complete their flight school training.
Lotus Air is using a similar approach. El Messiri argues that it is easier to hire fresh recruits and contractually bind them to the company than it is to bring in experienced pilots – who may be unwilling to accept similarly restrictive arrangements.
This strategy of binding fresh graduates to an airline early in their careers might be a wise one considering the mobility of and demand for experienced pilots. For Egyptian airlines it may prove even more important, given the requirement to hire largely from the local market. “We have a very, very sharp shortage [in the local market],” says Sallam. This shortage is exacerbated by the 90-percent Egyptian requirement. “I think [an elimination of this requirement] would solve the problem.”
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