A friend is also a Delta pilot, and the shortage basically got his foot in the door. He made it to captain pretty quickly after that.
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I saw something that addressed the pilot shortage, saying that after some accidents/close calls or something there was a push to increase the number of hours needed to qualify to be an airline pilot which just put a bigger hurdle to entry and there were fewer military pilots coming out which exacerbated things. And some studies showed that the increased number of hours requirement didnât have the expected increase in skills. It just lowered the number of pilots entering the field.
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Need to get some of those old pilots back, maybe part-time. Maybe put them on the vacation destinations where they can stay for a few days before flying back home, as an incentive.
This article says that the US has a mandatory retirement age of 65 for 2 pilot commercial situations and 56 for ATCs.
Did not know that⌠that seems needlessly low.
and then the FAA wonders why there is a shortage of atcsâŚ
In American Capitalism the only reasons there is a shortage of workers long term is the job vacancies are not advertised well enough and the workers are not compensated enough. The third reason is the in group in a profession creates artificial limits on how many more new members can enter the profession.
If the job demands a limiting factor on the available population such as a tight age range. Pay them more to make the job more appealing to the limited population.
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I feel like this sounds familiar to actuariesâŚ
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Yes, like the AMA limiting medical school capacity.
Barriers <> limits. Exams are a barrier to becoming an actuary, but thereâs no set limit on the number of passers. To the extent the material is relevant, the barriers are arguably not entirely âartificialâ. Maybe artificially early, since candidates have to prove themselves before getting hired rather than after.
When I was in HS/early College I looked at airline pilot and air traffic controller and the former basically would have been easiest to go the military route at the time, but the latter seemed to have so many red flags with high divorce rates, high suicide rates and high medical problems which caused high burnout that I opted not to even consider it. And because of certain health issues military was not an option for the former.
Well the fact that they used to set the pass mark looking at both % of passers and % of competency I would argue the point with you about a limit on number of passers.
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You can take the test multiple times. Still not a hard limit on the number of actuaries. Though Iâm sure youâll get lots of love from people who have had difficulty on the exams.
If the percentage passing is the same, thatâs not going to change the total number getting through the exams - unless someone decided to sit for an exam theyâd already passed. If you pass when itâs not your first attempt you are just pushing out someone else sitting for the first time.
there is not a hard limit, although a soft limit can exist since the powers that be can set it to whatever they want. Do I believe the exam committee is explicitly trying to limit the amount of actuaries? No.
However, I believe that if candidates started scoring higher they would raise the pass mark and eventually raise the difficulty as well. I did not serve on an exam committee so I do not know for certain but it sure seems this way.
If you (or someone who has) sat on an exam committee then I will dismount from my soap box
Well it seems like there is circular logic going on. The exam is easier because candidates did well, so they raise the pass mark.
Itâs like, the existence of better study guides and exam prep seminars couldnât possibly mean that candidates are just better prepared than their predecessors⌠nnnooooooo⌠thatâs not possible.
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My sister did ATC in the Air Force and chose to not pursue it as a civilian. Not sure why, maybe itâs a boring job?
According to the SOAâs own statements (some time ago, donât remember the source), the pass mark is based on the perceived difficulty of the exam, not on a target number of passers. In other words, one candidate passing does not cause another at the same sitting to fail. How well does the SOA abide by its own guidelines? I donât know. But I do know a number of graders and question writers, and theyâre sophisticated enough to know when (say) an exam question turns out to be harder than the writer anticipated (say, because lots of candidates make an unexpected mistake), or when one cohort is genuinely well-prepared. They donât simply look at aggregate scores. joejam is likely correct that, longer-term, the SOA would probably change the syllabus if the material was deemed too easy or too hard, possibly shifting material to/from another course/module/etc. Anyway, none of this serves to set a limit on the number of potential actuaries.