Free Republic

Flying in the United States is set to become unaffordable for normal Americans with a combination of severe pilot shortages and increasingly-demanding pilot unions causing ticket prices to soar. It is estimated that airlines across North America will suffer shortages of around 30,000 pilots over the next decades, as the U.S. is failing to train enough, with others opting to retire early. “The supply of new pilots will grow, but not enough to offset a continuing wave of retirements,” states the management consulting firm, Oliver Wyman.

OSHKOSH - While an estimated 8,000 planes flew in to the Experimental Aircraft Association's annual AirVenture convention this week in Oshkosh, across the nation it appears that the only infallible way to fly somewhere is to be your own pilot. In 2020, 20% of U.S. pilots were unemployed due to the crash in air travel during the pandemic, according to The 2021 Pilot Survey. Airlines operated 4.7 million domestic passenger flights in the full year 2020, a 41% drop from flights in 2019, according to the Bureau of Transportation. As a result, airlines weren't making enough money to cover their...

Noticed that your flights are frequently canceled or delayed? You can thank government mandates and Obama-era training policies.More than 1,400 U.S. flights were canceled and over 17,000 were delayed over the July 4th holiday weekend, according to the flight-tracking website FlightAware. And in recent years, airlines including American, Delta, and United have ended or cut back service to large numbers of small and midsize cities across the country. We are facing a massive pilot shortage and air travel is only going to get worse and it’s thanks to these three coalescing events: regulatory changes by Obama when he was president,...

TRAVERSE CITY — Passengers are lining up to fly to Traverse City, but airlines are having trouble lining up enough crews to pilot their planes. The result will be fewer commercial flights landing at Cherry Capital Airport this summer. “We’re not going to see as many flights as we had before,” Cherry Capital Airport Northwest Regional Airport Authority CEO Kevin Klein said this week. “The number of flights and the number of aircraft that are available to fly is all going to be dependent on the amount of crews and pilots and flight attendants that the airlines have.” Bad weather...

The United States Air Force could recall as many as 1,000 retired military pilots to active-duty service to address an acute shortage in its ranks. President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday allowing the Air Force to call back to service up to 1,000 retired aviation officers who wish to return, the White House and the Pentagon announced.