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Urban Air Mobility industry could need 60,000 pilots by 2028, study says

A study by con­sul­tan­cy firm McK­in­sey & Com­pa­ny has pre­dict­ed that 60,000 pilots — rough­ly 17 per cent of the total num­ber of com­mer­cial pilots in 2018 — could be required by 2028 to cater for the grow­ing Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) mar­ket.

Com­piled by Uri Pel­li and Robin Riedel, the report iden­ti­fies the chal­lenges need­ed to be over­come, such as tech­nol­o­gy and reg­u­la­tion — to pub­lic accep­tance and air traf­fic man­age­ment, to phys­i­cal infra­struc­ture.

It added that before the Covid-19 out­break, small­er air­craft oper­a­tors were strug­gling try­ing to find qual­i­fied pilots, with cur­rent com­mer­cial oper­a­tors expect­ed to require 320,000 new­ly trained avi­a­tors over the next 10 years.

The pair explain: “The Covid-19 cri­sis will defer the need for these pilots by a few years and poten­tial­ly even low­er the num­ber required if com­mer­cial avi­a­tion does not return to its orig­i­nal tra­jec­to­ry. That said, there will still be a need for most of those new pilots toward the end of the decade. Pilots for UAM would come on top of that.

“Before the pan­dem­ic, sev­er­al promis­ing and well-fund­ed play­ers announced that they were aim­ing to start UAM oper­a­tion by 2023. Of course, the Covid-19 cri­sis might slow a few play­ers down and shift the start dates by a year or two.”

Pel­li and Riedel added that the spi­ralling costs of train­ing to train 60,000 pilots — between $4 bil­lion and $6 bil­lion — would need the help of finan­cial insti­tu­tions to ‘over­come the tight sup­ply of financ­ing.’

The report says: “These vehi­cles will even­tu­al­ly fly autonomous­ly, but that could take a decade or more because of tech­nol­o­gy issues, reg­u­la­to­ry con­cerns, and the need to gain pub­lic accep­tance.

“Until autonomous flight of hun­dreds or thou­sands of vehi­cles above cities across the globe becomes a real­i­ty, the indus­try must recruit, train, and deploy thou­sands of pilots — an impor­tant but much less vis­i­ble chal­lenge than oth­er issues asso­ci­at­ed with urban air mobil­i­ty.”

It con­cludes: “While UAM’s long-term future will be autonomous, the indus­try must ini­tial­ly recruit, train, cer­ti­fy and man­age tens of thou­sands of pilots.

“Stake­hold­ers across the spec­trum — man­u­fac­tur­ers, oper­a­tors, flight schools, reg­u­la­tors, and employ­ment agen­cies — must col­lab­o­rate to tack­le the sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges the pilot­ed ramp-up peri­od is cer­tain to pose. They do not have a lot of time to pre­vent the sup­ply of pilots from becom­ing the bot­tle­neck that stalls this new industry’s devel­op­ment.”

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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