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US airlines are once again grappling with the pilot shortage as travel demand skyrockets.
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Regional carrier Republic Airways is considering reducing training requirements from 1,500 to 750 hours.
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Senator Lindsay Graham may propose a bill that would increase the mandatory pilot retirement age from 65 to 67.
As the pilot shortage continues to grapple the airline industry, carriers are struggling to fulfill their flight schedules, and some are even trying to reduce required training hours to get more pilots in the air.
On May 13, Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci apologized in a YouTube video for continued flight cancellations that have been plaguing the carrier. Minicucci blamed the pilot shortage, saying “we had 63 fewer pilots than what we planned for when we built our scheduled,” which caused a “ripple effect.”
“By the time we caught this error, April and May schedules were bid on by our pilots and flight attendants, making it impossible to sufficiently adjust schedules to avoid cancellations,” he continued.
The Seattle-based carrier is just one example of airlines struggling to find enough pilots to handle the busy post-pandemic travel surge. According to Bloomberg, Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, and United Airlines have all cut regional flying in recent months due to the shortage, with United grounding 100 regional planes over the issue.
“The pilot shortage for the industry is real, and most airlines are simply not going to be able to realize their capacity plans because there simply aren’t enough pilots, at least not for the next five-plus years,” United CEO Scott Kirby said in a quarterly earnings call in April, per CNBC.
Because of the lack of pilots, carriers are considering changing long-standing requirements to get more pilots flying sooner, like nixing degree requirements, dropping the mandatory number of flight hours needed to be hired, and…