May 2022 v. May 2019

The Past 2 Weeks Have Produced Significant News

• First, the natural sequence would be to compare April 2022 against April 2019.  Given the frequent announcements of small community air service actions, we made an executive decision to jump to May 2022 as compared to May 2019.

  • This is our 6thupdate.  All the historical work can be found at Research Lab —Swelbar-Zhong Consultancy (swelbar-zhongair.com).

• Aerology’s Tim Donahue provides another incisive estimate of the regional carrier pilot population.  When you marry the list of the 29 Essential Air Service (EAS) cities where SkyWest filed its intent to terminate on March 10, 2022, with Aerology’s estimate of pilot availability then you would reach the same conclusion the carriers did.  There is simply not available pilot time to fly all the block hours most of the regional carriers have been contracted to fly whether EAS or Fee for Departure (FFD) flying contracted with the network carriers.

  • Aerology estimates regional carriers short 3,000 pilots in May. 

In a zero sum air service environment dictated by shortages and simple economics something must/will give.