The pilot shortage is now an instructor shortage

Carriers across Asia and the Gulf have committed to fleet growth that requires roughly ten thousand additional pilots and a comparable number of licensed engineers by 2030. The financing for training capacity has largely been found. The instructors have not.

A full-flight simulator costs between twelve and eighteen million dollars and can be ordered. A type-rating instructor requires several thousand hours, an examiner authorisation and years of line experience, and cannot. The result is simulators sitting below the 3,500 annual hours that make their economics work.

The squeeze falls hardest on new academies in Africa and Central Asia, which compete for the same instructor pool against Gulf carriers paying considerably more.

Our read: watch instructor recruitment announcements rather than simulator orders. They are the honest measure of whether a training expansion is real.