The aviation industry is calling for Government intervention after new research found New Zealand is facing a dire pilot shortage.
Research from the Aviation Industry Association and the Ringa Hora Services Workforce Development Council found that, on average, New Zealand needed 100 new pilots per year to meet demand. It also found the gap was anticipated to grow should tertiary policy not be changed.
Speaking to Breakfast this morning, Auckland Pilot Training Group South chief executive Irene King said New Zealand’s pilot education policy needed an overhaul.
She believed the problem dated back to 2013 when the Government capped the amount trainees could borrow at $35,000.
“So, you can imagine putting a 2013 environment in a 2024 context post-Covid, post-retirement of a lot of experience, and a global demand for pilots,” King said.
“We’re in a serious, serious situation.”
Aviation Industry Association chief executive Simon Wallace said training costs had increased to as much as $120,000, keeping many aspiring pilots out of the cockpit because it was too expensive.
“Only those with financial support from families can afford to train,” he said.
Turbulence began before Covid
King said the industry had been “bubbling along” until 2017 — the peak of inbound tourism to New Zealand — when it started to suffer a loss of experience at flight schools.
“That’s always the leading indicator of how serious the shortage is,” she said.
King said Covid-19 caused many experienced pilots to leave the industry after most commercial flights were grounded as countries worldwide went into lockdown.
“A lot of them just said, ‘I’ve had enough, I quite like the lifestyle of running my secondary job, I’ll make that my primary life’.
“And they just never came back”.
Wallace said there was huge international demand for pilots overseas, which could pull many away from working in New Zealand.
“This international demand could double the rate of our trained pilots leaving the New Zealand workforce to move overseas in the next 10 years. That will drastically accelerate the situation we already face,” he said.
King said her school was graduating around 18 students per year. To meet demand, they needed to graduate 25 to 30.
“You put that across New Zealand, and you put a very aggressive international marketplace on top of that, and we are in serious problems here.
“This is the worst I have ever seen it.”
She called on the Government to “come up to the party” and change its pilot education policy. “It’s not just education policy settings, we’re running to a syllabus that was developed in 1950m” she said.
“We’ve got a 21st-century flight deck and training on a 1950s syllabus.”
Wallace wanted to see immigration policy settings changed so that international students who had been awarded commercial pilot’s licences could stay in New Zealand for a period and work as flight instructors.
Impact on fares
King said the cost of the shortage would be passed to passengers through higher airfares if things didn’t change.
“If you didn’t think they were eye-watering now — and some of them are — give us another 18 months to two years when you find that not just here in New Zealand, but globally, we can’t crew aircraft.”
1News has approached Minister for Tertiary Education and Skills Penny Simmonds for comment.