THE ANNUAL OTORCRAFT PRO U.S. PILOT SALARY & BENEFITS SURVEY 2021—2022


Foreword: Pilot shortages are real for several reasons


Before we dig into the salary and benefits survey numbers, we wanted to paint a picture, even if only anecdotal, of what we believe are the forces currently impacting the supply of working helicopter pilots.


It was around 2005 when articles and online communities began raising alarms about our aging Vietnam-era pilot population and a looming shortage. Helicopter pilots in that era were considered the “baby boomers” of helicopter pilots because they represented nearly 50% of the working pilot force and most were in their late 50s and early 60s at the time. It was well-known that the lion’s share of that population would retire somewhere between 2010 and 2020. Questions began to arise about whether or not the traditional training institutions (civil schools and military) could produce enough pilots in time to replace the baby boomers as they retired. Now that most of those pilots have left the cockpit, and hindsight being 20/20, we now know the answer to that question is no. But it wasn’t only retiring pilots who contributed to the problem.


Civilian flight training tumult


On the civil side of the equation, plagued by scandal, unfavorable economic conditions, and a global pandemic, civilian helicopter schools have been shrinking in numbers, thus contributing to the shrinking civilian-produced pilot pool.


On Super Bowl Sunday in 2008 one of the largest helicopter schools in the country, Silver State Helicopters, unexpectedly closed its doors, leaving over 2,500 helicopter students and instructors out of work and in massive student loan debt. Virtually all forms of student financing that were developed during the Silver State years dried up overnight and just like that, the entire civil helicopter training industry took several steps backwards.


After 9/11, a new funding source rose to the surface and began breathing new life into a sputtering civilian flight training sector. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, as part of the post-9/11 GI Bill program, allowed U.S. military veterans leaving service to become helicopter pilots on the government’s dime as long as they attended a school that was associated with a college or university. Being a resourceful lot, many civil helicopter schools ran to their nearest colleges and developed curriculum and degree programs that included helicopter flight training.


The post-9/11 GI Bill programs were a boon to the civil helicopter industry, but it still was not creating enough pilots to fill demand. The civilian pilot-making machine was back at work churning out new pilots. However, just as quickly as the Silver State collapse had occurred in 2008, in March of 2015 a story broke in the Los Angeles Times with the headline “U.S. taxpayers stuck with tab as helicopter flight schools exploit GI Bill loophole.”


46 Mar/Apr 2022


Several U.S. helicopter schools were caught with their hands in the cookie jar when they were caught billing the government $250K-$500K for helicopter flight training programs that traditionally cost only $100,000. As is common with big government, rather than punish the offending schools, they punished the entire industry. As a consequence, that source of funding dried up for most schools; it was made so difficult to obtain that few schools remained in the program.


Then of course, the global pandemic impacted helicopter flight schools in 2020 and 2021. With razor-thin profit margins, not many helicopter schools can withstand long periods of rotors not turning; as a consequence, many flight schools either downsized or went out of business.


A quick look at FAA civil airmen statistics backs up this thesis with respect to the number of helicopter pilots being produced (private helicopter), as well as the pilots eligible to work (commercial helicopter). It’s clear that since 2016, both pilot pools have been shrinking.


YEAR


2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021


PRIVATE


HELICOPTER 3,719


3,420 3,307


2,912 2,807 2,697


COMMERCIAL HELICOPTER


9,935


10,066 9,900


9,510 9,025 8,730


As you can see, the number of private helicopter pilots being produced, which is traditionally the first step to becoming a working helicopter pilot, has dropped 27% since 2016, while the number of commercial helicopter pilots has decreased 12% from the peak in 2017.


U.S. Army retires light helicopter fleet


The U.S. Military is the other half of the pie when looking at sources for helicopter pilots. In the spring of 2017 the U.S. Army retired an entire fleet of 650 Bell 206/407 derivative helicopters comprising the venerable Kiowa Warrior and TH-67 Creek trainer. This forced the Army aviators flying those aircraft to either transition to other aircraft or jobs within the Army, or retire and exit the Army. The net result of that effort was that the military would be training far fewer pilots for civilian employers to draw on for the foreseeable future.


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