Courtesy of MarcusObal/Wikimedia Commons

With unemployment for young people at Canada at record highs, there’s at least one field that is in dire need of new entrants: aviation.

With baby boomers retiring en masse and increased demand from the developing world, over 97,000 pilots will be needed in Canada and the United States alone over the next two decades.

Despite the need, Marion Harris, the student services coordinator at Coastal Pacific Aviation, which works with the University of the Fraser Valley (UFV) to offer a Bachelor’s of Business Administration (BBA) in aviation, said that the number of students training to hit the skies is actually dropping.

UFV’s BBA in aviation is one of a handful of programs in Canada that allow students to gain a commercial pilot’s licence concurrently with a bachelor’s degree.

“We’re certainly not running at capacity by any stretch,” she said, adding that they currently have 55 students enrolled in the program. “We could take on again as many students as we have right now…But again, there [are] big things holding students back.”

The biggest of which is money; UFV’s four-year aviation degree costs approximately $95,000.

“It’s such a big financial commitment and we are in the firm belief that it has become more difficult for people. There’s probably a lot of people out there who would really be good at something like this…but sometimes the financial end of things is just too big,” she said.

“Yet you’ve got companies like Air Canada retiring a large group of people. You’ve got countries like China and India that have huge demand to the tune of 2500 pilots a year. You’ve got to create those people from somewhere.”

Harris said that student loans in BC cover less than half of the costs for the program.

“The government isn’t keeping up as far as we’re concerned with what student loans would be required to do a program like this,” she said. “There isn’t enough money for them to do this.”

Despite the glut of available jobs, once students do get their pilot licences, they still have to pay their dues.

Most go on to either fly small planes in Northern Canada or work as instructors at flight schools.

Dave Field, a recent graduate of the program, said that the situation can be tough for young pilots.

“You have these huge costs [for] getting the licences and once you do get [them] you typically don’t make very much money as an instructor or even as a pilot for a small carrier.”

Field, who paid for his education through a combination of familial support, summer jobs and loans, said that the goal of most new pilots is to build up flight hours.

“As a pilot right out of flight school working your way up to that bigger and better job, hours are really the currency. A lot of airlines have hour-minimum requirements to get a job,” he said.

And, according to Field, some companies are willing to take advantage of that fact.

“A lot of skydiving operations don’t pay their pilots anything. [They] fly for free because they want a position where they can be building time, which, for me, I don’t agree with.”

Despite the difficulties, Harris said that aviation continues to be a lucrative career.

“There’s a lot of first officers out there making $100,000 to $120,000. And there’s a lot of captains out there making the high $100,000s to $200,000. But that’s not coming when you’re 20 or 30 years old—that’s coming when you’re in your 40s or early 50s when you’re making that kind of money.”

She maintains, however, that people shouldn’t choose aviation for the money.

“There has to be a passion. It’s not something that you found last week, I don’t believe,” she said. “I think it’s something that someone had in them probably since childhood.”

And Field, who said that he has wanted to be a pilot for as long as he can remember, agrees.

“You have to be passionate about flying and aviation to do this, because it’s a huge sacrifice.”

(+4 rating, 2 votes)

 Loading ...