How to get the young excited about aviation?

The airlines should really realize that partnering with the military who is also desperate to spark interest is a good long term solution to both our manpower issues on maintaining a pool of professional aviators. The coast guard literally uses that as it’s model for training. Go start somewhere else, 6-8 years later come to the coast guard. It’s called the DCA program and it’s literally 3/4 of their aviator pool.


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If only our leaders could think that far outside the box, or I should say, outside their immediate rice bowl. Adjust maximum ages for aviation service entry. Adjust the ability to flow in and out of the active component. The airlines already have the groundwork configured via USERRA. I've known guys who left regional 121 life to come fly grey jets, and of course many more who went from grey jets to major 121. But if there were a way to just embrace the full continuum, and keep more qualified guys available for crunch time in the AC, albeit being incentivized with what we already dump as free money into guys who aren't really the folks who will or should always stick around. They need a lot more hiring and rehiring flexibility, especially when you get to the field grade ranks where certain quals are sometimes hard to keep in the service. Specifically, I mean let a guy/gal go without hassle at 10 YOS. But be willing to throw that whole $300-400k bonus (whatever the stat limit is currently) that they didn't take back at them if they want to come back for a hard sell tour that is undermanned. Don't put them on the hook for anything past that need. Need a department head for workups and deployment? Here's $250k, on top of normal salary/benefits to come do it. It is the only way we could ever be competitive with the draw from the airlines. But of course, all our admiralty and generalty are simply biding their time, waiting for an economic disaster that will stem the outflow. That is a lot of mumbo jumbo nonsense sentences, but maybe you can pick up what I'm laying down.
 
Many airlines are throwing money at the problem, which on one hand is better than nothing. However, I believe it is the QOL issues that keep many away from the career. If you’re making 100k but still commuting to NYC with maybe 8 days at home a month, then staring at a seniority reset every time you make a forward move causing you to again lose massive amounts of QOL. How do we change that? I don’t know, I understand businesses need to make money and have efficient labor but I’d like to see something other than just financial rewards for career progression at some point. Essentially, I’m complaining about something that will never be fixed lol

Example : I just had to call my landlord and tell her that I’m potentially taking a 45k pay cut to further my career as a pilot, and not sure if I’ll be able to afford my place moving forward. Luckily, she understood and said a family friend is a FedEx pilot and it blew her mind when he was telling her about the short term pay cut and complete reset in QOL he had tot take after flying for his other company for 8 years.

Edit**. Are there any other careers at which point one can be a decade in and in order to make a progression needs to take a serious QOL and financial hit?
 
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?

I could teach a monkey to "fly" around the patch.

Pro Flying is about the stess and enervation of "making" (you don't really get to decide) "good" (you don't really get to call) decisions based on multi-variate inputs, (people, organizations, Wx, airspace, machines, loads, levels, etc, etc, etc.) and appreciating when and how to say, "NO!"

Give the kids an up-to-date computer with an AWESOME vid card, MSFS installed, a power quad, and a yoke.

Leave them sitting at their desks playing their video games.

A/Ps already fly better than humans; The humans who are supposed to monitor and fix... though many of those humans DON'T, and/or CAN'T.

We've got triplicate-redundancy these days. And that's a VERY good thing. Even with that level of checks and recovery mechanisms, we are often and repeatedly coming very, very close to smoking holes.

Just wait... and try to stay out of the way.

All your hope is belong to us...
 
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The Civil Air Patrol and EAA are great for supporting interest in aviation (and helping others).
 
I admittedly am an old guy now and don’t understand kids today. But I do have a teenager and I see what he looks at online. I think the way to attract young people to the profession, as much as I hate to admit it, is through influencers. Online personalities like Big Ern, Almost Captain Morgan, Christy Wong, and even Derg in some respects make flying look fun and glamorous. Give their zillions of followers free Wi-Fi in cruise and long tropical overnights and they’ll be sold.

Then have airlines subsidize training costs.
 
The Civil Air Patrol and EAA are great for supporting interest in aviation (and helping others).

EAA is pretty consistent with this. CAP is hit-or-miss depending on the specific squadron and leadership of said squadron.

One of the things I like about EAA is that - through the EAB community and the hands-on approach - they teach a lot of kids the WHY and HOW of aviation - the engineering side and all the stuff that goes with it. A kid involved in EAA may or may not get interested in aviation, but there's good odds that they may get interested in sheet metal work, electronics, other engineering disciplines....these are all good things, in my estimation.
 
Here's an idea. Could easily be modified for other categories of aircraft besides hot air balloons.

 
There's an Atlas guy here who opened a 737 flight sim experience center. Hosted his first school field trip group today with a bunch of home schooled kids. I volunteered to lead some basic flight planning stations. The kids were genuinely interested in each part of it and were very grateful. Really bright too - were able to self-direct their learning.

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There are quite a few youtube channels that do live spotting at the airports. A lot of those youtubers engage really well with the viewers, a lot of them young people.

There's this channel LAFlights, who spends nearly 11hs live streaming LAX approaches and departures three time per week, with 3.5k people watching at all times. Some pilots started noticing them and began to make shoutouts to them on freq and/or flashing lighs or even waving hands towards them, and that gets all the people going. A German B748 Captain paid them a visit, a Delta guy mentioned them on freq, and several other instances like that, and people are loving it. And they aren't even the only 3.5k viewer channel in the airport.

I bet that a good percentage of the viewers would consider a career in aviation if they are encouraged, because sometimes that doesn't cross their minds. Acknowledging thes live spotters like them I think makes the industry a very inviting proposition.

There's this other guy, a brit who stremas usually at LHR, and he os constantly talking about the pilot shortage across the world, and the people are asking questions about getting into aviation. He even went to DXB to stram foe a few hiurs and then went to EK's training facilities to show where thwy train the cadets, and people watched that by the thousands.
 
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?

Well, the mayor of my town is hellbent on closing our airport. So, one less field that will be producing new pilots.

The reality is that other than instruction, most of the traditional time building jobs don't exist in the same numbers as in the past. And the military has way fewer jets than generations past had.

I think revisiting 1500 hours will happen, and probably the best way to do that is substituting dual instruction with a higher time/experience requirement for the instructors. Just my opinion though.
 
EAA is pretty consistent with this. CAP is hit-or-miss depending on the specific squadron and leadership of said squadron.

One of the things I like about EAA is that - through the EAB community and the hands-on approach - they teach a lot of kids the WHY and HOW of aviation - the engineering side and all the stuff that goes with it. A kid involved in EAA may or may not get interested in aviation, but there's good odds that they may get interested in sheet metal work, electronics, other engineering disciplines....these are all good things, in my estimation.

Coming from an engineering background, I've had a lot of fun so far with airplane building. Whether the project gets finished or not, I've also learned a ton already.
 
Well, the mayor of my town is hellbent on closing our airport. So, one less field that will be producing new pilots.

The reality is that other than instruction, most of the traditional time building jobs don't exist in the same numbers as in the past. And the military has way fewer jets than generations past had.

I think revisiting 1500 hours will happen, and probably the best way to do that is substituting dual instruction with a higher time/experience requirement for the instructors. Just my opinion though.

In some ICAO countries like mine, minimum hours requirement for CFI is 500 PIC plus at least the CPL.

Idk about the FAA, but is it 250 and a CPL? Or am I wrong?
 
Specifically, I mean let a guy/gal go without hassle at 10 YOS. But be willing to throw that whole $300-400k bonus (whatever the stat limit is currently) that they didn't take back at them if they want to come back for a hard sell tour that is undermanned. Don't put them on the hook for anything past that need. Need a department head for workups and deployment? Here's $250k, on top of normal salary/benefits to come do it. It is the only way we could ever be competitive with the draw from the airlines.

Sounds great, but I would be afraid that whenever large amounts of money are available, they will quickly be directed more by politics than actual necessity.
 
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