The COVID-19 pandemic is causing short-term instability, which significantly affects several industries, but the long-term commercial aviation outlook remains strong.

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic’s effect on the current civil aviation market, CAE forecasts global demand for 260,000 new pilots over the next decade. The international training specialist said its analysis shows that the active pilot population is expected to return to 2019 levels in 2022.

Airlines and operators are pursuing recovery and taking short-term measures to offset the impacts of the pandemic. This has resulted in to decrease in the number of active pilots this year. This however is temporary as active fleets return to service through 2021 and 2022 as expected by the industry. In addition, a significant number of age-based retirements and attrition will continue to reduce the available pilot pool. As air travel recovers, it will create an acute demand with a short-term need for some 27,000 new pilots as of late 2021.

The 2020-2029 CAE Pilot Demand Outlook is available at https://www.cae.com/cae-pilot-demand-outlook-2020.