Clint Henderson, managing editor at The Points Guy, joins Cheddar News to discuss the current pilot shortage and how it's impacting consumers.

Between Bells

What's Causing the Pilot Shortage and How It Impacts Summer Travel

welcome back everyone between bells and baker machado and new york. A pilot shortage in the U. S. Is now forcing airlines to cut flights just when the busy travel season is beginning to tank off. Over 100 and 50 flights had to be grounded this year. That is industry experts scramble to replace the growing number of pilots that are leaving this profession to extend aviators time in the skies. Many now considering legislation to raise the federally mandated retirement age from 65 to 67 or even higher airlines are proposing a reduction in flight our requirements before joining a us carrier. While other carriers are rethinking training programs all to lower the barrier of entry. Travel experts believe that the pilot shortage will get worse also. And they also warned the issue could take years to solve. So joining us now to discuss is Clinton Henderson managing editor over at the points guy clint, Great to have you here. So what's really sort of the root of the pilot shortage here? So remember when demand collapsed during Covid, the airlines had to stop burning cash. And one of the things they did was offer buyout two pilots and the age of pilots was already pretty advanced in many cases. And so what happened is you had a lot of veteran pilots leave the business as airlines have tried to ramp back up all of a sudden those pilots, they let go. They can't replace. So that's sort of what's driving it right now. Okay, so let's talk about this retirement age because at least one lawmaker is floating the idea of raising the retirement age from 65 to 67, clearly 65, not just some random number that they drew out of a hat that was obviously chosen for a reason, but what would be the significance and the difference of adding two more years here? So you would have the life of most pilots careers extended by two years. So essentially you would stop losing so many pilots every year to retirement. And in general, the age of pilots is pretty advanced. And so if you can extend that time timeline a little bit, uh, the idea is that you wouldn't have to hire so many new pilots or you could continue to operate flights that are already flying. Okay. One of the other things that's been proposed as well, Delta Airlines looking at potentially dropping four year degrees for pilot hiring requirements? Other big carriers are talking about that as well. Would that be a significant difference here as well here? So I don't think the four year degree role is going to make that big a difference. But several, several airlines have now now made it easier to get a pilot's license, They're helping pay your way through school, they're reimbursing you for loans in some cases, some airlines are going as far as to create their own pilot academies and if, if there associated with a pilot academy, sometimes they don't have to have as many hours under their belt to fly. So there's all kinds of ways they're trying to get more pilots into the pipeline? The problem is, you know, it's a job that requires a lot of skill and you don't want someone, just anyone hired for that job. So it's, it's pretty hard to become a pilot. But if you're interested in finding a new career, you can make a lot of money as a pilot and the airlines are willing to help you along the process right now. Yeah, very good point. Let's talk about the consumer gear. How does the consumer sort of navigate this? Because we have the busy summer travel season right upon us here. So what sort of advice now do you have for consumers when it comes to booking their flights because of this pilot shortage? Well, just make sure you're checking your reservation because some of these smaller airlines, the regionals that fly for the big carriers like Republic Airways, for example, they're actually cutting some cities from their schedules entirely because they don't have the pilots. But so check your reservations but also realize that you're going to have to pay more and inflation is touching everything. But it also touches this issue because the airlines haven't been able to add as many flights as they want because they don't have enough pilots. And so that's meaning that there's more people competing for for less seats and that's driving prices up higher as well. Okay, so clinton having said all that, if they're expecting this pilot shortage to happen for years, what sort of your advice for the rest of us navigating this for years? What's your advice on what we do? Well, I think, you know, most likely it's not going to impact you too much except in the wallet. So you are going to be paying more for flights. That's true in general right now because demand is so high. But hopefully the airlines with all these incentives and if they change some of these rules, they will be able to get more pilots into the pipeline and hopefully alleviate this problem to some degree. United Airlines has been very vocal about this problem, but other airlines are saying, no, this is just a weird thing because of covid where they weren't hiring for a while and so there's, there's some pent up demand there now, but it will straighten itself out within the next couple of years. So definitely something to watch though. Is there a realistic solution here? I mean, I know we've talked about the retirement age, I know we've talked about dropping the four year college requirements, but if there's some sort of option here that we haven't even discussed here, Well, one of the big things that could help is if they reduce the number of hours you need to become certified as a pilot. So right now it's 1500 hours that's much more extensive than most other countries and that's in response to a fatal crash more than a decade now, they said all pilots would have to have 15 hours of training In order to fly the plane. They're talking about reducing that to 750 hours. In some cases, that would substantially increase the amount of new pilots in the air. Great insight, Clint, Henderson, managing editor over at the points guy, clint. Thanks so much for joining us.