What’s Really Behind the Pilot Shortage in Canada?

ALPA Canada president Capt. Tim Perry said some employers are not creating competitive jobs to attract and retain pilots.

“To characterize whatever is going on in Canada as a pilot shortage would be, at best, a gross oversimplification of a fairly complicated issue,” Perry said. “What’s going on is either an unwillingness or a failure to recognize an evolving market for pilots.”

Steven Tufts, a labour geographer at York University in Toronto, said that while Canadian airlines are facing legitimate staffing challenges, it’s fair to characterize the problem as a recruitment and retention issue.

He called the disagreement a classic example of how unions and employers contest the narrative on labour issues.

“When any sector cries about labour shortages, it’s labour shortages at the price of what they think should be the price of labour in their sector,” Tufts said.

In 2025, industry spokespeople sounded the alarm over a pilot shortage.

CAE, a Montreal-based company that builds flight simulators, predicted in the 2025 edition of its biennial airline “talent forecast” report that the number of commercial aircraft in service is expected to grow by 35 per cent to 44,000 from 33,000 in the next decade.

It estimates there are about 382,000 active pilots today, 253,000 of whom will still be working in 2034. The technology company estimates that airlines worldwide will need 267,000 more pilots to meet the next decade’s demand.

WorkBC estimates there are more than 2,700 pilots working here in British Columbia, with 1,410 job openings forecasted by 2035.

But airlines report having trouble finding people to fill that gap here in Canada.

In November, Kamloops city Coun. Bill Sarai said he’d heard Canadian airlines were reporting a countrywide shortage of aviation staff. Sarai, who is also president of the Kamloops Airport Authority Society, called on the B.C. government to fund financial aid for students in flight programs.

He renewed that call this month as Kamloops Airport reported a slight downturn in the number of passengers in 2025.

Meanwhile, publicly available data from Employment and Social Development Canada suggests some airlines are looking outside the country to find pilots.

To hire a temporary foreign worker, airlines need a government document that shows an employer tried to hire locally but could not find a qualified Canadian worker for the job. It’s called a labour market impact assessment, or LMIA.

The latest data available from last year shows that between January 2025 and September 2025, 42 airlines got LMIAs approved for 136 pilot positions in Canada.

Over the same time period in 2024, 40 Canadian airlines got LMIAs approved for 114 pilot positions.

Last year, WestJet told CBC News it applied for foreign workers in an effort to address a shortage of pilots — but later decided not to hire pilots through the program.

WestJet did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Gerry Egan, associate dean of the British Columbia Institute of Technology’s aerospace technology school, agreed the industry was seeing a shortage of all aviation staff.

He said COVID-19 cratered demand for flights, causing some aviation staff like air traffic controllers, maintenance engineers and pilots to leave the industry.

But while demand for flights and work for pilots has recovered, he said, he’s still hearing from airlines and charter operators that recruiting new pilots has been a challenge.

He said he believes the shortage in aviation staff is partly because young people have shown less interest in trades, such as being a pilot, in recent decades — but that’s starting to change.

“The interest is there now, but in the past couple decades, the interest has not been terribly strong,” he said.

He said a bigger reason for the shortage is because early-career pilots have hit cost barriers. According to Egan, getting the required 250 hours of flight time for a commercial pilot’s licence can cost up to $120,000.

“The upfront cost can be a barrier for many students,” Egan said. “They’re not going to get a return on their investment for quite some time into their career.”

WorkBC data shows pilots make anywhere from $29 to $100 per hour, with the average annual income for pilots in B.C. around $120,000.

But Egan estimates it often takes pilots about five years after getting a commercial pilot licence before they have enough experience to get a well-paying job.

“The privilege to sit in that right seat takes many years, and when they get into that seat, they’ve not been earning great money,” Egan said. “But once they’re on that trajectory, then the pay and salary and benefits and all that definitely come.”

According to Perry, ALPA represents more than 13,500 pilots in Canada across 21 airlines. That’s 95 per cent of the pilots in this country.

Perry said the supply and demand of pilots naturally fluctuate over time — but it’s inaccurate to call the mismatch between flight demand and pilots a labour shortage.

Instead, he said some airline operators are failing to create jobs that pay enough to attract or retain pilots. He said he would not name specific airlines experiencing a shortage.

“We don’t find a pilot shortage with airlines who do pay evolving market rates and negotiate fair terms in collective agreements,” Perry said. “What’s happening is they’re moving from certain jobs to preferable jobs.”

“It’s not like we don’t have people,” said Tufts of York University. “It’s that we don’t have people willing to work for what employers want to pay.”

Tufts added that smaller, regional airlines often have trouble offering salary increases and bonuses that match what bigger airlines, such as Air Transat, are paying.

Earlier this month, pilots at that airline bargained for raises of more than 50 per cent over five years.

How industry players talk about the labour shortage affects how, if at all, the government responds, Tufts said — whether that’s by boosting immigration streams for pilots or offering funding for aviation schools.

“It really is a discursive battle, because it has real political implications.”

by Isaac Phan Nay, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Tyee

What’s Really Behind the Pilot Shortage in Canada?

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