General contractor Paul Boehmler runs Ocean View Builders in Dennis Township, New Jersey, surviving in a tough economy by working mainly in the island communities of Avalon and Stone Harbor, he said.
Now the 35-year-old father of two young children is investing in a potential second career as a pilot, taking flying lessons with Aerial Skyventures at Woodbine Municipal Airport. He plans to spend about $10,000 to get his private pilot license, and eventually up to $60,000 to get his commercial license, he said.
He’s bucking a national trend, in which fewer people are becoming pilots, or staying active as pilots. That’s expected to lead to a commercial pilot shortage in the next 20 years, as global growth will require about 500,000 new pilots by 2032 — especially to service the fast-growing Asia Pacific Region — according to the recently released 2013 Boeing Pilot & Technician Outlook report.
But the recession isn’t to blame; the trend goes back at least 30 years.
In 1980, there were 827,000 active, certificated pilots, and by 2011, that number had dropped to 617,000, according to the national Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.
Estimated student certificates fell from about 65,000 issued in 2002 to 55,000 in 2011, according to the FAA. One of the few bright spots is that the number of women getting pilot licenses has increased slightly, from about 38,000 in 2002 to 41,000 in 2011.
“We can definitely tell you that airport operations are down from five years ago,” said Jeff Doran, of Woodbine, a pilot who is vice chairman of the Woodbine Port Authority, which oversees the municipal airport.
Doran is a retired police officer who now works for Mutualink of Wallingford, Conn., which provides emergency communications services throughout the Northeast. It is working for the Super Bowl at the Met Life Stadium in East Rutherford next year. He often flies himself to work meetings, and hasn’t seen a big difference in corporate use of small planes.
“Companies are going to do what they have got to do,” he said. “That hasn’t changed a whole lot.”
But he sees pilots cut back on recreational flying, and he’s concerned for safety.
“A pilot needs to fly or lose proficiency,” Doran said. “With the high cost of fuel, I believe more pilots are becoming rusty.”
Dave Dempsey runs Aerial Skyventures, now the only flight school in Cape May County. It has graduated one private pilot so far, and that is Ryan Krill, the co-owner of Cape May Brewing Company at the Cape May County Airport. About a year after starting the brewery, he started training to be a pilot, he said.
Krill had always been interested in flying, but spending so much time at the airport around pilots finally got him to take action.
“My long-time girlfriend got me a couple of introductory flying lessons” with Big Sky Aviation when it was still based at Cape May, Krill said. Now it has moved to Millville. “It got me started, and I kept with it. A year later I got my flight ticket.”
Dempsey also runs the High Exposure banner plane advertising company, and Red Baron Air Tours, and does aerial photography from the Carolinas to New England, he said.
His banner plane business didn’t suffer during the recession and its aftermath, but the air tours have, he said. In fact, he started the flight school, which has about a dozen students, about two years ago to diversify in a tough economy. He also recognized the need for more pilots.
He said the industry raised the retirement age of pilots from 60 to 65 to forestall a pilot shortage, but it also increased the minimum flight time commercial pilots must have in order to be commuter airline pilots to 1,500 hours, to improve safety.
Boehmler, the contractor, is one of about four serious students now at Aerial Skyventures, Dempsey said, coming regularly for lessons. The other eight or so are much more casual about it. Nationally about 80 percent of students drop out before getting a pilot license, according to the AOPA.
Boehmler said his wife, Kelly, saw how stressed out he was by financial pressures. (She left her job to begin having children just before the recession hit, and the building trades were particularly affected.) She felt flying lessons would help him relax. They do.
“She’s very supportive. She knows how important it is for me to feel there’s something else out there for me,” he said of the career aspect of the training. “I wouldn’t be able to justify it if it was just something I’d do for a hobby.”
Doran, the emergency communications firm worker, is part of a Sunday morning group of Woodbine pilots who fly their small aircraft to places like Cambridge, Md., for breakfast.
“That’s the fun part of flying,” he said.
He also travels all through the Northeast for work, and it saves time and money for him to fly to meetings rather than drive, he said. For a meeting at Met Life Stadium, it would be three hours each way in a car, compared to 40 minutes each way in his plane to a nearby airport.
Travel to a place like Hartford, Conn., would require a commercial plane trip from Philadelphia that could easily cost $600 to $800 for a round-trip, he said. He can do the two hour round-trip for about $200 in his plane, Doran said.
Source: http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com
No comments:
Post a Comment