Don't listen to anyone that discourages you from flying for the airlines. It's not only a very, very exciting industry -- and career -- it's also growing very steadily and very rapidly. This means it's a great place to be for someone just starting out on a new career.
Listen to what's going on in just one segment of the industry -- the low-fare airlines: An analysis of flight schedules from 1,000 network and low-fare airlines worldwide recently showed that there are an additional 46,000 flights and 7.5 million seats available just this year on low-fare carriers. How many more, new pilots do you think they need for those 46,000 more flights?
This represents a 17% year-on-year growth in frequency and a 19% increase in capacity over last year.
Looking at a worldwide seven-year trend, there are 46.5 million more seats available now and 318,000 more flights than in 2001. This represents massive increases from 2001, when there was 130,000 flights and 17.2 million seats available.
And here's another astonishing statistic: Low-fare airlines accounted for only 6% of all flights worldwide.
Europe and the Asia-Pacific had exceptional growth. The number of low-fare airline flights within Europe has increased from 13,891 in 2001 to a staggering 89,574 in 2007. The eastern European market showed a strong growth just from last year -- growth was 34% February 2006-February 2007. In the Asia-Pacific region, flights on low-fare airlines have increased to 50,851 from 2,840 in 2001.
What are you waiting for? Start your flight training now.