The American Dream: Why are Aussie pilots leaving?

In June 2022, nearly 40 per cent of all domestic flights in Australia departed late, while nearly 6 per cent of flights were cancelled entirely — nearly three times the average cancellation rate. It was the epitome of troubles that began back in April 2022, when it first became glaringly obvious that Australia’s aviation sector was struggling as thousands of Aussies returned to the skies. At the time, Sydney Airport chief executive Geoff Culbert chalked up the chaotic scenes to the “perfect storm” of pent-up travel demand, COVID-19 isolation absences, and an underlying shortage of aviation staff.

And yet, at the exact moment that Australians around the country were voicing feelings of stress, anger, and frustration as their long-awaited travel plans faced endless disruption, pilots around the country were, as it turns out, fleeing the country in droves for the United States of America.

At the time of writing, over a dozen airlines in the US were actively hiring Australian pilots, including regional feeder carriers for American Airlines and United, budget carriers such as Spirit Airlines and Breeze, and freight operators like Kalitta Air and Atlas. While it’s difficult to determine exactly how many Australian-trained pilots have taken these opportunities, the number is already in the triple digits — at least — with no sign of slowing down.

Cameron* is one of the many Australian-born-and-trained pilots that has packed their bags and jetted off to the US despite being offered a very similar job here in Australia. Despite holding a job offer from a regional airline in Australia with progression options into a mainline, Cameron chose instead to take up a very similar job offer in the States. And he’s far from alone.

“Throughout the country, the number would easily be in the hundreds by now,” he reveals. “In my six months here, I’ve personally met dozens of Australian pilots in the same boat as me, and heard of many, many more.” And it appears that this trend will only keep on going up, after major US carriers, including Spirit Airlines and Atlas just wrapped up recruitment roadshows on Australian soil.

At a loss

While certainly disruptive, the chaos seen within Australia’s aviation sector this year was minute compared to what has been experienced overseas. In fact, while Australia was still in the midst of its second lockdown in Sydney and Melbourne, US airlines were already being forced to cancel hundreds of flights per day and slash flight schedules in what should have been a booming market due to staff shortages. “The shortage that we’re seeing is really down to a case of imbalanced supply and demand,” says Aasiya Shaikh, managing director of global aviation recruitment agency Flight Crew International. “The supply of workers has decreased since 2019, and demand for travel has rapidly returned to 2019 levels, causing chaos for airlines and passengers.”

It’s generally understood that at the height of the pandemic’s first wave in 2020, airlines were in a crunch. Demand for air travel dried up overnight as governments around the globe imposed mandatory stay-at-home orders and limited all movement to essential travel only. Being notoriously expensive operations, passenger airlines began to instantly bleed money and responded by standing down or letting go vast quantities of their workforce — not all of whom would return when the tides finally changed.

US airlines collectively let go tens of thousands of workers. Between March 2020 and July 2021, SkyWest reduced its employee base by 27.3 per cent, while United and Delta slimmed down their workforces by 24.9 and 24.1 per cent respectively. Hawaiian Airlines cut its workforce by over 20 per cent, while American Airlines — the largest airline in the world — lost over 10 per cent of its staff.

And yet, demand for air travel in the US had possibly the strongest recovery trajectory in the world. “We service clients all over the world and can say with certainty that while many markets globally have improved, the States’ recovery has seen the strongest rebound,” Shaikh says. US passenger figures dropped to under 100,000 per day in April 2020 at the height of the first wave of the pandemic, according to TSA figures. However, the number of daily passengers has consistently sat at over 2 million per day since mid-2021.

“The US didn’t close domestic borders like Australia, so its regional and domestic networks didn’t shut down the way other markets did, making for a faster, smoother recovery,” Shaikh says. “Demand for air travel had been on the rise each year globally before 2020, and in the US we’re already largely back to that trend.”

The pilot shortage

The US pilot cohort was particularly impacted by this overall reduction in the aviation workforce, due to an underlying shortage of qualified pilots. The allusive ‘pilot shortage’ is a term that has been thrown around aviation circles for decades. Boeing has long suggested that an additional 600,000 pilots will be required globally over the next two decades when accounting for retirements and air travel market growth. Today’s industry is known as ‘top-heavy’, with over 3,000 pilots reaching the mandatory retirement age of 65 each year in the US alone. American Airlines has said that one-third of its 15,000 pilots will reach retirement age before the end of this decade.

While some pilots both here and abroad take issue with the term itself, it appears that a shortage has nevertheless reared its head. “I’ve been recruiting pilots for 15 years and I’ve never seen the pilot market as strong as it is today in the US,” Shaikh says. “This time last year, we attended a pilot recruitment event in Dallas where maybe four or five airlines were actively looking for crew. This year, at the same event, the number of airlines seeking pilots had tripled. There’s definitely a shortage of qualified talent,” she explains.

Like other aviation skill shortages, the pilot shortage was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, in part because airlines offered thousands of pilots early retirement packages that saw a wealth of knowledge exit the industry prematurely.

“There were plenty of incentives throughout 2020 for pilots to retire early, or take voluntary redundancy, which has left an unexpected hole as conditions improve. Additionally, for a decent number of pilots, this was the second, or even third, massive downturn that they had seen in their career, so plenty of people left the industry voluntarily, for good. The result is, we have fewer experienced pilots than we used to.”

Fuelling the fire of the pilot shortage in the US is also the extremely high barrier for entry into the industry in the country, which has of course been an issue since long before COVID-19.

Becoming a pilot in the States is a notoriously expensive endeavour, with estimates suggesting a commercial license today costs about US$100,000. Additionally, since 2009, the US regulator has enforced a federally mandated 1500 minimum flight hour requirement in order to complete an air transport pilot license in the country — a necessary requirement in order to apply for a job as an airline pilot — adding further difficulty for local pilots attempting to break into the commercial aviation market.

A logical solution: the E-3 visa

And so, quietly during 2021 while Australia’s market remained largely in hibernation, US airlines began to target Australians to supplement their depleted pilot population with the E-3 visa scheme.

The E-3 is a dedicated non-immigrant visa that is only offered to Australian professionals with appropriate qualifications in “specialty occupations” — not just pilots. In fact, every year, up to 10,500 E-3 visas can be awarded to Australian professionals from many in-demand industries, though the number rarely tips over 5,000 per year.

According to Shaikh, the E-3 is a “very unique visa”, distinct from the traditional non-immigrant H-1B specialty occupation working visa. Unlike the H-1B, the E-3 visa is only two years in length as opposed to three, however it is capable of being renewed “indefinitely”, giving Australian professionals far more time and opportunity to progress their careers in the US.

According to US Citizenship and Immigration Services, E-3 Visa holders must have “theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialised knowledge”, and often the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree or higher in order to enter the US under this visa. However, for pilots, all that’s needed to qualify for the visa is a commercial pilot license and 1500 hours flight experience — a feat that is far simpler in Australia due to HECS/HELP loans and the country’s bustling training, charter and rural RPT markets.

The FCI managing director notes that while some US airlines, particularly regional carriers, were utilising the E-3 visa to supplement their pilot cohorts even before the pandemic, she says it was occurring at “nowhere near the scale at which it is happening today”. “Airlines right now are explicitly targeting Australian pilots and travelling to Australia to perform recruitment roadshows. It’s definitely on a new level,” Shaikh says.

A tale of two cities

This abundance of opportunity for Australian pilots overseas has certainly picked up steam at an interesting time. While Australia entered the pandemic with two major airline groups — Qantas and Virgin Australia — it has emerged with double thanks to the diversification of former regional airline Regional Express (now Rex) into domestic operations plus the impending introduction of ultra-low-cost domestic carrier Bonza.

Australian airlines began to ramp up their own pilot recruitment initiatives throughout 2022, led by regional and charter airlines in the earlier months of the year, according to local aviation recruitment expert Kirsty Ferguson of Pinstripe Solutions. By mid-2022, Bonza and Virgin had opened up roles for 737 MAX pilots, while Qantas opened its elusive doors for second officers on its widebody fleet.

“Today, pilot recruitment in Australia is solid and ongoing, with regional and major carriers recruiting both internally and externally,” Ferguson says. This is creating more room for movement, particularly at the entry-level end of the airline market, she adds.

And yet, this is the cohort that is most often jumping at the opportunity to fly jets in the States. “Anyone who can meet the 1500-hour requirement is free to apply to these US-based positions,” Ferguson says, meaning that general aviation pilots and flight instructors are primed to go. “We’ve had over 400 pilots approach us at Pinstripe for information on taking US jet jobs. It’s a very attractive option for pilots with fewer family commitments, and who are earlier on in their careers as they are up for the adventure. However, it’s also an intriguing option to those who are older and saw their careers stall during the pandemic.”

According to Ferguson, jumping ship to the US could be a career-making move for younger Aussie pilots, given the sea of opportunities that are presented. “It’s not just that there are good roles on offer, there is a diverse offering of roles too. Regional, cargo, domestic and even international pilot positions are now on offer in the US. These jobs will not only see Australian pilots jump into jet-engine jobs sooner than they likely would back home, the rate of growth in America means they will advance in seniority quicker, but also progress through the ranks to captain sooner” — both of which are a notoriously slow venture in Australia’s airlines.

“It’s a really secure pathway for early-career pilots” who may have spent the last few years as flight instructors or bush pilots, she explains. “Plus, it’s a vastly different terrain and operating environment to Australia, which is exciting for any pilot.”

The land of opportunity

Cameron, the young Aussie pilot mentioned earlier, made the decision to uproot his life in regional Queensland in lieu of a fresh start and new opportunity on the East Coast of the US. At the start of 2022, Cameron was working in a low-capacity regular public transport (RPT) in rural Queensland and had progressed up to a captain position at just 25 years old. “I was lucky enough to be able to keep flying during COVID-19, but I knew once conditions improved that I wanted to progress into something bigger,” he says.

Then, come February, Cameron had two eerily similar job offers in his hand. Both were first officer positions at regional offshoots of major domestic carriers — though one was in the USA, while the other was in Australia. Ultimately, Cameron opted for the States. “Obviously the adventure of living overseas is part of the appeal, and the staff travel benefits and roster flexibility on offer in America are really good. Australia’s market is quite small, so the opportunities are huge overseas in comparison,” he explains. “Right now, I’m getting paid twice as much, if not more, in America for doing largely the same job as I would have had in Australia. And there is scope to earn more as I progress here.”

If you don’t happen to have an ear to the US airline wage market, you might have missed the fact that regional airline pilots in the States have seen their hourly rates double in the last 12 months. Yes, the imbalance of supply and demand for pilots in the US has forced what was initially the bottom of the airline market to dramatically increase wages and introduce generous sign-on bonuses in order to remain an attractive option for employees as opportunities higher up the food chain — such as major domestic or international carriers — become available.

CommutAir is one of the regional airlines that has been actively recruiting Australian flight crew under the E-3 visa program and is the only remaining Embraer ERJ-145 operator contracted to United Airlines operating under the United Express brand.

Traditionally, regional pilots were among the lowest-paid pilots in the United States, with wages improving gradually as pilots worked their way up the seniority list. Regional airlines were largely seen as an entry-level stepping stone for trained aviators before they moved on to bigger aircraft with larger operators. However, in September 2022, CommutAir’s pilots saw a handsome pay increase that put their wages on par with major mainline carriers. First-year first officers saw their rates increase from around $40 an hour to $72, plus a $25,000 sign-on bonus, while direct entry first-year captains began to take home $100 per hour and a $50,000 bonus.

Speaking with a spokesperson from CommutAir, it’s clear that employee recruitment and retention are top of mind in 2022.

“Our talent acquisition team has been hard at work throughout the entire year,” they said. “At the regional level, we know to expect some turnover in our pilot, flight attendant and maintenance technician cohorts as they all build their hours and move on to mainline. However, what we are experiencing in the post-COVID environment is something much more extreme and has had an impact on the aviation industry at all levels.” CommutAir said that just increasing wages and sign-on bonuses “is no longer sufficient” in such a swiftly upward-moving market “because competition is so tight”.

“We’re having to become more creative in the ways that we create pipelines for future employees.” There are many tactics that US regionals have employed to ease the burden of high staff turnover, including fast progression timelines for pilots, flexible work schedules, and flow-through programs to mainline operators. Oh, and of course, bringing on E-3 visa-holders.

Notably, Cameron says the rate of progression on offer in the United States was another major factor in his decision to exit Australia and travel across the Pacific. “I think in America, the flight training academies and the regional airlines know and understand that they are generally a stepping stone for early-career pilots who will ultimately want to move on to bigger aircraft. So they don’t shy away from allowing pilots to progress through the ranks and use fast progression as a tactic to encourage new staff to join their company over the next. I’ll progress from a junior first officer to a captain, easily within 2–3 years,” he says.

Cameron reveals that this is “very different” to how Australian carriers work. To put it in perspective, he says if he were to have taken the job at the regional Australian carrier, “it would take me probably seven years to make captain, and then another five before I have a shot at making it into the mainline domestic carrier.” Once onboard, he said he’d become the bottom of a slow-moving seniority list that would mean he possibly wouldn’t see a captain position on a mainline carrier until his 40s “if I’m lucky”.

Despite training bottlenecks in the US causing elongated onboarding wait times, Cameron says he and his Aussie mates still feel extremely welcomed by their new employers. “There was a six-month training, licence conversion, and onboarding process, with multiple weeks-long intermissions due to training resource shortages. But I was paid my full salary the entire time and was granted my staff travel privileges. To me, that shows how committed the airline was to make me a part of the team. Meanwhile, the job offer I turned down in Australia included a lot of unpaid travel, training, and events before I was even offered the job, so I was actually out of pocket. It’s just a very different experience.”

Trouble in paradise?

While Australians are clearly loving the attention of US airlines, not everyone feels the same. The trend of airlines’ hiring Australian pilots under the E-3 visa scheme has become so prevalent that US aircrew unions have taken notice. In June 2022, the US Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) penned a letter to the Department of Homeland Security, expressing concern over airlines “misusing” the E-3 visa program to “avoid market pressures and artificially maintain pilot pay rates and work rules insufficient to attract qualified U.S. pilots”.

“There is a growing trend of scapegoating pilots for an airline’s inability to attract and retain staff,” said captain Joe DePete, president of the ALPA and captain Ryan Muller, chair of ALPA’s Spirit Airlines pilot group, in the joint letter. “According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Aviation Administration, there are 1.5 pilots available for every airline pilot job, yet every day we see airlines pointing to a fictional pilot shortage to justify increasing the labor pool, weakening safety regulations, and reducing costs. We are committed to partnering with you to stop this race to the bottom globally.”

I’ll note here that while wages have increased in recent months at regional US airlines, the hardest hit by the staffing shortage, other carriers actively pursuing Australians, such as Spirit Airlines, have not increased wages.

Despite union pushback, airlines say that in reality, the US market is growing so rapidly that bringing in foreign pilots appears to be the only way forward. According to United Airlines, the US as a whole is capable of training up about 7,000 pilots domestically per year — pilots that would then need to go on and find 1,500 hours flight time before jumping in a United cockpit. However, even with this, US airlines are collectively looking to onboard over 13,000 pilots in the next 12 months, in order to meet demand and ease disruption. Meanwhile, the US Air Force has revealed that even it is seeing a shortfall of around 1,650 pilots.

Meanwhile, Ferguson says that while the union uproar is “understandable” given that “Australians are coming from a pretty protected aviation hiring market, but the reality is, a few hundred Aussies heading over is not going to make much of a dent in the vastness of the US airlines industry.”

For context, the US domestic aviation market is 12 times the size of Australia’s and growing at a much faster rate than back home. Meanwhile, CommutAir told Australian Aviation that its ability to hire Australians is in line with Federal Government regulations, and highlighted that foreign pilots are not favoured over US pilots. “Our Australian applicants follow the same application and vetting process as our domestic pilots,” the spokesperson added. “With applicable flight hours and screening processes, we interview them just like everyone else.”

Long-term thinking

It’s clear that America’s airlines have us beat when it comes to offering pilots higher pay, better perks, and career progression. But what does all this mean for Australia in the context of its own need for pilots, and an underlying skills shortage? Are we at risk of permanently losing swathes of our homegrown talent?

Cameron reveals that Australia has already lost a wealth of knowledge in the last six months alone. He says he personally knows many highly qualified Australian pilots that made the jump across the Pacific. “A lot of people that have taken the leap were earlier in their career, like flight instructors, GA and charter pilots. Others had really solid local experience and had made their way to chief pilot in charter, or even FO or captain on a domestic mainline.

“A lot of people were just fed up too and wanted the change, but anyone who is looking to progress onto something bigger and better has definitely considered it, especially now,” he says. “It sounds like the Atlas and Spirit roadshows were pretty successful too so Australia could soon feel the pinch of a lack of pilots if they haven’t already.”

Pinstripe Solutions’ Kirsty Ferguson says that Australian carriers should rightfully be “somewhat concerned” by the trend of highly skilled Australian pilots searching the world for better opportunities.

“It’s true that the E-3 visa is only two years in length, so we could see pilots return to the local market with great and diverse experience under their belts right as Australia’s market begins to grow. However, the visa is renewable, so not every pilot will return so soon. The US market allows them to progress to command, or captain, more quickly than Australian carriers, and even progress into major domestic and international airlines like American Airlines and United,” she notes.

“Plus, the US market has more competition, which has driven up remuneration packages, particularly in today’s environment. Today’s bonuses, training and transition support structures from airlines are better than ever, and higher wages make for an attractive long-term option too.”

While it’s true that the E-3 program has no path to permanent residency in America, that is not to say that Australian pilots have to think short-term. The E-3 visa allows the visa-holder, along with their spouse and children, to live and work in the US, and is only dependent on them remaining employed. There are no limits on renewals or on new E-3 applications, and given the ongoing status of the pilot shortage, many could easily remain on their E-3 non-immigrant visa. “The company you are with would certainly keep renewing the visa for you, if you wanted to stay put,” Cameron says.

“There are rumours that airlines could investigate Green Card solutions in the future for Australian pilots, but that’s not definite. Regardless though, with so many companies offering E-3 visas I think you could easily advance up the ranks with new visas at different companies, just like you would anywhere else.”

On the other hand, some of these Australian expats are worried that their overseas experience could be disregarded entirely in Australia, making a return to the country even more unlikely. Cameron says there are whispers that some airlines back home haven’t historically taken kindly to pilots who progressed overseas. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the case,” he says. “Some more traditional management will see the US route as ‘cheating’”.

However, Cameron says he’s not too worried. “I think that some Australian airlines will definitely take us back, so it depends on what job you’re after back home. Once you have significant jet time, it’s hard to justify how every airline could ignore you, especially if the shortage hits Australia” he says. “Even so, there are plenty of opportunities elsewhere for Aussies. For me, I haven’t decided what’s next. I’ll probably stay put for a few years, but I could easily go to Europe or the Middle East in the future.”

*Name changed for privacy purposes.