Beleaguered airlines are finally starting to recover from a crunched labor force caused by COVID-stunted travel, but they’re not in the clear yet, David Neeleman, JetBlue founder and founder-CEO of Breeze Airways warned.
There are plenty of pilots eager for work—but not many want the labor-intensive title of “captain,” opting instead to retain the position as the less-stressful first officer.
“First officer pay has gone up so much that a lot of these people don’t want to upgrade to captain because it affects their quality of life,” Neeleman said during Fortune’s #BrainstormTech conference.
There are plenty of pilots eager for work—but not many want the labor-intensive title of “captain,” opting instead to retain the position as the less-stressful first officer.
“First officer pay has gone up so much that a lot of these people don’t want to upgrade to captain because it affects their quality of life,” Neeleman said during Fortune’s #BrainstormTech conference.
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00a pilot issue has been resolved. We can hire anyone we want to. We have over 800 applications
00:07for pilots right now. Is the pilot issue totally resolved now? It is mainly. There's still a kind
00:13of a captain issue. You have to fly a thousand hours to become a captain. So captains are a
00:18little sparse. You know, it's interesting that the bigger lines, the first officer pay has gone up so
00:23much that a lot of these people don't want to upgrade to captain because it affects their
00:27quality of life. So you may have a, sitting in Miami, have a great line and then they say,
00:34you want to be captain? You can be on reserve in Newark if you want. And they're like, no thanks
00:38because I'm making 200 grand sitting here in Miami and I can make 350 in New York, but
00:45it's not worth it for me. So it's kind of the marginal utility of money,
00:49you know, has forced a lot of people not to want to upgrade to captain.