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- The pilot shortage is estimated at 18,000 commercial aviation pilots in 2023, and 17,000 in 2030.
- Commercial drone deliveries have gone from 6,000 to 1.4 million in only 4 years.
- An autonomous urban mobility flight is estimated to cost half of a piloted urban mobility flight.
There are 18,000 fewer commercial airline pilots than the industry needs, according to a new report by UP.Partners, and the gap is helping drive resources into the development of autonomous flight technology.
The pilot shortage, which has been talked about since at least 2017, is due to a combination of factors, including baby boomers reaching the mandatory retirement age at 65 and a "shrinking pool of potential candidates," according to the study. The Covid-19 pandemic, of course, didn't improve the situation, as many pilots were encouraged to go into early retirement.
Airlines have been working to solve the problem.
Last year, two of American Airlines' regional carriers, for example, essentially doubled first-year captains' pay, increasing it from $78 an hour to $146 an hour. Missouri-based regional airline GoJet Airlines started offering $20,000 bonuses to first officers and $40,000 to captains, while Delta Air Lines stopped requiring a four-year college degree for prospective pilots.
According to new data, their efforts seem to be successful. Previous estimates had put the shortage closer to 65,000 — before updates put the number at around 17,000 earlier this year.
Still, a 17,000-pilot shortage isn't good news.
According to the report, the total cost per passenger-seat-kilometer of an autonomous urban mobility flight is half the cost of a piloted urban mobility flight, making a case for developing pilot-less technologies.
We're not quite there yet, but the industry is getting its debut with unmanned cargo drones, transporting things such as light material within factories and warehouses, small packages, and medical supplies.
The number of commercial drone deliveries skyrocketed from merely 6,000 in 2018 to nearly a million and a half in 2022, while the most popular autonomous flight startups raised nearly $2 billion in funding, with Zipline being the most prominent one.
Overall, the urban air mobility market could be worth more than $1 trillion by 2040, according to Morgan Stanley, and commercial airlines are starting to put some money into it. Last year, the Boeing Company and Delta put money in self-flying air-taxis developers, with the first investing $450 million in Wisk Aero, and the latter $60 million in Joby Aviation, for example.