One Flight School Is Losing All Its CFIs To The Airlines

According to reports lately from regional U.S. carriers, the pilot crunch is getting real. Last week Republic blamed its demise on a lack of pilots to fly its planes. There might be more to it than that, but still, the degree to which the demand is starting to manifest itself is startling. What's happening at CTS Aviation in Hamilton, New Zealand, to its CFIs is off the charts. Over the past six months the small flight school says that it has lost 14 of its instructors to the airlines, putting unprecedented pressure on the school to fill those slots. So CTS is doing the only reasonable thing: holding a nationwide job recruitment day. Try to keep it quiet, but it also hopes the event will attract those seeking to be CFIs to its newly formed flight instructor training program. There's a lag time between enrolling in the instructor program and, well, actually instructing, but CTS hopes to make up for that by recruiting people who already have their instructor's ticket . . . and who haven't already been snapped up by the airlines.