Gage Geist graduated from Central Washington earlier this year. The 22-year-old is now giving flight lessons to undergraduates in the program, which helps him accumulate the flight hours he needs to qualify for an airline job.
A first officer, or copilot, slot awaits him at his chosen Horizon Air as soon as he logs 1,000 hours at the controls.
“By the time I graduated, I had three conditional job offers,” he said. He estimates his starting pay would be in the $30,000-$35,000 range.
Geist says that’s a big change from just a few years ago. “When I first started off, it was once in a blue moon we would have a recruiter come by, maybe once every other month. Now, it’s almost every other week.”
Aviation economist Dan Akins of the consulting firm Flightpath Economics described the regional airline sector as “the tip of the spear” for fueling the pilot shortage.
“There aren’t enough pilots being supplied to the industry to sustain it,” Akins said in an interview. He contended that smaller cities risk losing air service unless the current trajectory changes. “I think we are in the very early stages of a really hard landing for the industry.”
