Australian Job Market – Pilots, Engineers and Instructors.

The Australian Aviation game is a funny old business…  The vastness of the country-continents’ geography, the way it is demographically laid out with 95% of the population distributed around the coastal edges and the massive desert in the middle, has created an air-travel monster since the '50s. 

The pinnacle of the air-travel business in Australia was 2020, where every aircraft seat on every flight was occupied, regardless of destination.  With the two major carriers and their respective partnerships/codeshares (Qantas – Emirates & Virgin – Etihad/Singapore/Air NZ), both national and international travel was bursting at the seams.

Then came Covid-19 and the rest is history.  The airlines were decimated. Airline staff were being laid-off altogether, stood-down or given 6 months unpaid leave - the situation was horrendous.  And to add to these grim figures the situation got worse as airlines shelved all Training “until further notice” as nobody knew how long this whole covid thing would last.

I was recently at the APATS conference in Singapore, where staggering figures were mentioned pertaining to the Pilot, Engineer and Instructor shortages.  Qantas Engineering Training made a presentation about the new Apprentice program they are re-starting, with 300 new spots per annum over the next five years, that is 1,500 NEW engineers just to cover the fallback from the gap of the last four years.  This will not cover natural attrition like retirements and job/department changes.

This is just one example of many. Yes, Qantas has a significant share of the engineer-market, however the same problem exists with all the other Australian airlines, the MROs, the back-shop and support staff and let us not forget the GA sector as well, where we have farms the size of Belgium that have to be surveyed by helicopter or light aircraft.

To add to the plight of the industry, there has been a steady decline (even pre-covid) of people being interested in taking up the profession especially for engineers and instructors, and here are a few reasons why:

A commercial pilot is a very much a “customer facing” profession, Flight Crews are seen at airports Worldwide, looking very official and professional, with freshly pressed uniforms and imposing stripes on their jacket cuffs or epaulettes.  This is the job youngsters want to do after school when asked, because it is what they see with their own eyes so they can relate to it.  The flying at the front, making the announcements of "this is your Captain speaking”, being looked after and waited on hand and foot, are very real, everyday things that travellers see every time they travel. 

What they don’t see, is the engineer under the wing while they are boarding, who has the Landing Gear Leg up on a Jack and is busily pumping up the 70 tonne aircraft by hand, trying to get a Wheel changed while the air conditioning Pack system is blowing 80 degree hot air in his face.  What they don’t see is the Instructor in a classroom, in a hangar diligently training these engineers hour after hour, week after week, so that they can eventually do what they do.  So the thing is, if nobody physically sees these people in their everyday jobs like they see the pilots, how are youngsters supposed to know that such jobs even exist? 

I remember some years ago when I worked in Switzerland, there was this thing where one day a year, each employee could take a child to work with you in a simple but effective way of “opening those closed doors”, enlightening the kids about what mum or dad really do when they go to work. I remember the Engineer’s kids being sat in the left seat in the Flight Deck of an A330 and looking at all the lights and Instruments, it was exactly that one thing that was missing in terms of making mum or dad’s job sexy again.  The kids would then do a show-and-tell at school the week after and I can guarantee you, those kids who had sat in those left hand seats had the best show and tell stories ever, as colleague engineers, pilots and cabin crew fussed over these youngsters and they saw for themselves “what a brilliant job my mum, or my dad has got”.  With that having been said, I don’t know if this is still the case and if those invitations to kids of aviators still go out.  The industry has become a very secure, sterile, 1000-times risk assessed business, where absolutely nothing is left to chance-not for safety reasons, but more for security and liability reasons.

In Australia, we too have cloaked the industry in secrecy, making it very hard for anyone to get in.  Careers officers at secondary schools rarely know that the pathways in the aviation industry exist, so how can they influence the near-school leavers and give them tips on this new, exciting job prospect?  

All of these are resounding factors to the state we are in today and major contributors to the gap increase that is occurring by the hour.

Fortunately, the major decision makers in Australia have finally seen and realised how dire the situation is and very slowly, the industry is being awoken again, getting the recognition, investment and support that is required to bring it around.  What is not so fortunate, is the fact that this “fix” is not instant and will take 10 years before it can fix itself - that is the average time it takes for a local school leaver to get to the position to sign a CRS on an aircraft.

So if you ask me, “How is the job market in Australian aviation today?”, I would say, it’s pretty bleak from the view of the employers and the airlines, but it’s GREAT from the perspective of the pilots, engineers and instructors.  Government incentives are kicking in again to cope with the shortages and some companies are paying up to $20,000 sign on fees. Residency Visas are being issued with a lot less red-tape to negotiate through or options to convert from one Visa class to another whilst in the job.

Obviously there are other hurdles to overcome, like License conversions, moving the whole family on a whim, new systems to learn etc, but this is part of the excitement of a new beginning, right?  All parties, the government, the employers, aircraft operators and HR bosses, are all working towards accommodating higher numbers from abroad to keep the industry afloat.

So if you are interested in working in Australia and need some advice on EASA-to-CASA conversions download our free guide here. 

If you have a son or daughter that may be interested in joining this wonderful profession you can find out more information here.

We are also available to chat via email: [email protected]