How to get the young excited about aviation?

[derg]

It appears that the industry is starting with targeting organizations.

There was a lot of "internet rage" about United's program, however those groups were established repositories of younger people with active mentorship pathways. If you put out an open casting call for flight attendants, like the airlines do, you'll have 100,000 applicants for 1,000 jobs because there's no specific skillset required to apply, whereas pilots require a different level of drive, commitment has prerequisites.

The military is having the same issue so there's some conversations occurring there as well.

Who knows what's going to happen this year, but if the industry continues its robust recovery after COVID, it's going to be quite interesting, to say the least.

 

[NovemberEcho]

How many of y’all grew up near GA airports and saw little planes flying overhead all the time and those airports don’t exist anymore?

 

[Kingairer]

I think the answer is a Bob Hoover Jr coming to air shows and absolutely wearing out a J31 every week.

 

[CFI A&P]

That isn’t your problem. It’s your benefit. Scarcity of pilots is good for you. Let the airline industry solve their problem.

Scarcity of aviation interests is all of our problems, unless you’re a real estate developer. Less people at the local airport -> less jobs -> lower utilization -> airport closes and is redeveloped.

 

[WacoFan]

Was talking with some people this evening who do medium and long(er)-range forecasting in terms of staffing and it seems interest in aviation is at a generational low.

From the flying perspective, I still get kids in the cockpit, but I'd say at least half of them are pushed into the cockpit by their parents and just want a photo, whereas the other half have some interest in aviation.

Each organization I've spoken with has more or less echoed the same sentiment that people are generally less jazzed about aviation.

What do we do?

I mean, I know what we DID to make it an unattractive career field for many, but how do we turn the boat around?

Overall there's less mystique and enthusiasm about many things mechanical - be it airplanes, cars, etc among the youths. When I was a kid getting a drivers license was the most important thing EVAR! (I was sick of riding my bike to the airport). Today, tons of kids are waiting to start driving, content to let mom do it. When I was a kid you could walk into grocery stores, drug stores, and the like - not even hobby stores - and on the "toy aisle" you'd find model cars and most of the time some model airplanes to build. Haven't seen that in years. The fascination is now with computers. Why drive to see friends when you can text (because all they'd do if together is look at their phones, just in a group). Video games are exciting and you don't have to venture outside where it's not climate controlled. Why go on a date when Pornhub is available for free? I mean, the kids are sick. That's why AI is desperately needed and I welcome our ruling overlord technology.

PS = if you want to attract the kiddos - flying has to be glamorous again. Don't just show all the book learnin' they'll need, or the potential hazards - show the upside of sleeping on a bed of money while having to fight off the chicks.

 

[derg]

How many of y’all grew up near GA airports and saw little planes flying overhead all the time and those airports don’t exist anymore?

At my hometown field in California, there were two flight schools and always someone in the pattern. Last time I was out there, it was completely dead.

I live near Scottsdale Air Park and I haven't heard a prop plane for days. I know there's still a GA operation there but it certainly isn't what it used to be.

 

[CFI A&P]

I’m going to have to disagree with this take. I’m only basing it on my own experience.
1. my parents are self employed (wouldn’t wish that on anyone) great even amazing money, but absolutely insane amount of work. It’s like constantly taking care of a toddler.
2. older brother: he’s in finance… gets done with work, dinner with his family off to his home office, back to some more work and calls.
3. younger brother: finance/ sales department at car dealership.. takes a special kind of person to work in this industry..pretty much one day off a week…
4. my wife: PA, works all day, laptop on the kitchen table, and taking post surgery calls from patients at home.
5. Cousin: orthopedic surgeon, finally started making good money now that he’s approaching 40s. With hospital call, and clinic, pretty much putting in 60ish + hours a week.
5. Me: 15-18 days off a month. Sometimes bid rsv and get 20ish days off a month. I’ll call it what it is, a part time job, and that’s pushing it. Making somewhere between 250/300 because I’m always avoiding work, and could absolutely make more if I’d like. Even thou everyone I mentioned above makes a lot more than I do(except for my wife).. I honestly wouldn’t trade with them any day. Yes the regional days sucked, and I definitely put in my “dues”, I still think this job is the best kept secret.

You’re making that money and have that schedule now, but how many years did it take of “paying your dues” to get to that point?

Similar I have a friend at AA that’s been there over 25 years and he’s living the good life now. None of his three children followed in his foot steps because they lived through the mergers, furloughs, dad missing baseball games, ballet performances, etc.

 

[zmiller4]

It appears that the industry is starting with targeting organizations.

There was a lot of "internet rage" about United's program, however those groups were established repositories of younger people with active mentorship pathways. If you put out an open casting call for flight attendants, like the airlines do, you'll have 100,000 applicants for 1,000 jobs because there's no specific skillset required, whereas pilots require a different level of drive and commitment.

Uh oh, now you’ve stepped in it!

How many of y’all grew up near GA airports and saw little planes flying overhead all the time and those airports don’t exist anymore?

I started my private and solo’ed out of Cornelia Fort Airpark in Nashville, which was one of the coolest little GA strips around. It’s been closed for 12yrs, ostensibly because it’s in a floodplain but really because a 3500x50’ strip with a 600’ pattern a few miles from BNA wasn’t feasible. But it had an awesome history with a lot of interesting stories.

 

[scooter2525]

I think more public and charter schools should offer aviation career programs for kids, especially those just starting middle school. Why not have an afterschool aviation club which would eventually lead to them getting their PPL. The airlines could even sponsor some of the programs and partner with a local flight school or flying club.

Such a thing does exist.

Youth Aviation | Flight Club 502 | Louisville – Flight Club 502

www.flightclub502.org

 

[JordanD]

How many of y’all grew up near GA airports and saw little planes flying overhead all the time and those airports don’t exist anymore?

I remember when I started flying in '05 on the weekends there'd routinely be a lineup for the runway at my local GA field. I'd say pretty drastically over the next 4-5 years to now it dwindled and the place has been a ghost town for some time. Still fairly regular flight school traffic and corporate/medical stuff, but it seems like it's nowhere near the level of leisure flying that it used to be. I wonder how much of it is economic and people just don't have the level of disposable income, or how much is just generational, seeing as how many of the regular airplane owners were old back then and have probably either medicaled out of just passed away since. Every now and then I think it'd be fun to get back into GA and reignite some of the spark, but then even for me the negatives outweigh the pros for me. Do I WANT to spend hundreds or thousands a month of any spare income I have on flying on my days off? If I go out and do something stupid like bust airspace flying and get violated flying VFR, am I putting my livelihood at risk because I wanted to putt around in a Cessna? Or worse, get into some kind of accident operating in an environment that doesn't have the same level of safety as the one I'm in at work? I can just think of so many negatives.

 

[JordanD]

Such a thing does exist.

Youth Aviation | Flight Club 502 | Louisville – Flight Club 502

www.flightclub502.org

I'm glad to see this, I know Shawnee HS for the longest time had some kind of aviation program that seemed really popular, but this was 15-20 years ago and I don't know if that's still a thing.

Related to the thread, I can't help but feel like there's at least some level of basic interest in more young people than a lot of pilots think. I'm still (relatively) young looking, for now, and I'll get a lot of people asking how I became a pilot and how long it takes/how much it costs. I almost hate getting the question mostly because A, I'm so far disconnected from when I went through and did it, and B, it's so expensive I don't know how to not put someone off from the amount of money it takes.

 

[BEEF SUPREME]

To be faiiiirrrr your experience is not exactly typical even of your generation….

I know at least one other member here who’s exact opposite, his son doesn’t have a great passion for aviation but has seen how dad has been able to make good $$$, lots of time off, trips to Hawaii etc so he’s going for the airlines despite not really caring about the difference between a Cessna and a Piper.

I've never met @ZapBrannigan but I'd like to. My career path seems identical. Or even worse. There are so many of us out there but a lot of us don't even talk about our experiences. We have been told "if you don't like it do something else" or "maybe this isn't the right career for you" so many times when bringing up extremely bad, unfair and unsafe working conditions we don't even really talk about it. I was blackballed at XOJET because I stood up for myself when I had to deal with an anti semitic line check airman on my OE then I got mocked about it when I spoke about what happened on JC.

Personally I think there are a minority of pilots who have had incredible luck in their careers and they just don't understand how someone like myself wouldn't recommend being a pilot as a career. To put it simply, we are dealing with a group of people already have a very low emotional quotient and are mostly devoid of empathy. Mix that in with incredible luck and viola! We have someone who tells you maybe you should do something else when you point out that for example JR FOs at Alaska are just left to rot at the freight shed at the end of the 7005 run. They have never been left to rot. So they don't understand how it could be happening.

 

[Kingairer]

I’ve had an OK career trajectory. I’m not 26, 6month 767 CA, but it’s been Ok. I haven’t missed any major events and only on occasion do I miss a kids sporting event, few jobs would allow you to see everything. My tepidness towards the career for some kid starting out is the continued dumbing down of what was once somewhat of a challenge. In 20 years I can see us having airplanes where the default is to always autoland, maybe even auto takeoffs with only rare intervention (you know, the dog in the cockpit story). Maybe that just the way everything will be in 20 years and that will be normal or maybe I’m way off I don’t know.
Lots of industry and even pastimes are having heartburn over how to attract the next generation. Golf, NASCAR, baseball etc are all worried if they are appealing to the next gen.
These kids will have to do something though, I don’t think they can all be social media influencers and maybe even pushing a green “land” button will be more exciting than selling Robot insurance through colonial penn.

 

[derg]

These kids will have to do something though, I don’t think they can all be social media influencers and maybe even pushing a green “land” button will be more exciting than selling Robot insurance through colonial penn.

Jonathan, from Colonial Penn be like:

"Shaaaaaaaade, bruh!"

 

[Wardogg]

My 18 yr old son, who works for the company I do as a hangar tech, doesn't want to be a pilot. Even though he sees my current QOL which is pretty good. And sees our financial lifestyle which isn't half bad. The biggest reason I get from him is cost of entry from start to really employable. So I don't push it. Baffling to me is his current career interest seems to be real estate. So that's what he's currently pursuing and I'm encouraging even though I don't understand the draw at all.

 

[killbilly]

I think more public and charter schools should offer aviation career programs for kids, especially those just starting middle school. Why not have an afterschool aviation club which would eventually lead to them getting their PPL. The airlines could even sponsor some of the programs and partner with a local flight school or flying club.

My high school - in the early 90's - had an after-school aviation club that was sponsored by one of the coaches. I wasn't in it, but I had a friend who was. One day my friend came out of there shaking his head (I was in the newspaper/journalism room until 5-6pm most days) and said, "I'm out of this thing." Turned out the coach who sponsored it had been going on continuous conspiracy rants about how the Russians were watching us through our television sets.

In 1991.

<shrug> Point being - sponsorship with oversight. Lots of oversight.

PS = if you want to attract the kiddos - flying has to be glamorous again. Don't just show all the book learnin' they'll need, or the potential hazards - show the upside of sleeping on a bed of money while having to fight off the chicks.

You might actually be on to something here. And the organization that has the resources and, honestly, a vested interest in this might be ALPA.

Heads may explode over this, but I could see ALPA doing some outreach on this *if for no other reasons* than prospective pilots will actually learn what ALPA can do for them. There's a generation of kids coming into the airlines who have no idea what a labor union really is and why it's necessary. Why not advocate for aviation in general and package the message nicely with it?

 

[Soku39]

I've had an incredible career arc, could not have started at a better time and have been blessed many times over.

That said, other than the fact that being a pilot might not even be a thing in 20 years; I could never recommend this career to a young person.

- You miss so much life, so many enriching things that my peers experience, I'm in a hotel in the DR on a Saturday night for.

- Flight training and general aviation is absurdly expensive. I have no idea why it costs $200/hr to rent a glorified Ford Fiesta. How a new Cessna 172 is worth 500k is beyond insanity. I'll never fly GA again for this reason, thus no one in my life will ever get to experience it with me.

- Inability to take care of your health and mental health lest you lose your medical.

-Exhausted all the time, the red eyes, the commuting, I can count on two hands the amount of times I've flown an airplane well rested. 6 am off the gate means a 4:15 wake up and it never gets easier or sucks less. I mean like really "the school house is backed up, so we're going to be doing 3 am sims now". Like how many times have you heard this crap and just had to accept it?

- No control over your career, How many America West guys thought they'd end up working somewhere where you literally can't trade a trip. You're just handcuffed to the seniority list, can't go to grad school and try something else and come back to a relatively similar quality of life, have to start over again and always be worried about recency.

- As mentioned before aviation likes to pretend its the 70s, no tattoos etc, way too many conservative right wing racist pricks in the cockpit, its not a pleasant work environment.

- Treated like garbage, the way management views employees is appalling, this is obviously not just an aviation thing.

If I could go back I would tell my 17 year old self to do anything else. The only good thing about this is the money, which grants security in this world, other than that I'd leave in a heartbeat.

Edit;

And everyone is gonna mention how you can make 200k sitting short call in base flying 2 days a month, or make 250k flying the triple twice a month to Asia, this is all true, but what it takes to get here is unfathomable, like really. Regionals opening and closing bases at the drop of a hat even now. starting salaries at 16k, working 20 days a month. I literally would not have survived the first 5 years of my career without my Lieutenant pay in the guard, I have no idea how pure civilian guys made it happen at the regionals previous to 2018, still blows my mind to this day. I know its 1000% better now, and I am so glad this has changed, but the schedules still suck and I still wouldn't recommend this lifestyle to anyone.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I've never met @ZapBrannigan but I'd like to. My career path seems identical. Or even worse.

Dinner and drinks are on me when it happens.

 

[turbojet28]

This issue isn't limited to aviation, but, as someone noted earlier, seems to be affecting most/all "mechanical" fields. My father-in-law is a technician for a major John Deere service facility. Its such a cool job. The technology involved in these major farming machines is fascinating. He is close to retirement, but the stories he tells are eye-opening. They literally don't know what to do to attract young people to their field. The problem is that most trades operate under traditional paradigms wherein working hard (ie - early mornings, on-call periods, working "optional" overtime) is rewarded. Most of these places still operate under the understanding that workers enjoy working hard, especially if they are paid well. It seems apparent that the wiring of younger generations is simply not the same, and its going to take some serious money and/or creativity in QOL matters in order to make it attractive.

The problem still remains, however, that fewer and fewer younger people seem intrinsically attracted to machines, etc. The world seems like its in a state of flux with developing AI and other new technologies, but still reliant on old technologies with their associated labor demands. It feels like a lot of the labor market in aviation and other industries is just in a weird era of growing pains. It seems obvious that not all will be willing or able to adjust to new ways of doing things.

 

[Roger Roger]

Maaaan y’all really trying to make me rethink the apply 121 strategy I got going.