VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Interviewer: So over the past few years…
Interviewee: uh huh
Interviewer: Because you said you’ve been a CFI since 2008, right. So, let’s say from 2020, just after Covid, how has, you know, your role as a CFI changed between 2020 and 2025 now? Has, have you seen maybe […0.9s] increased workload or has there been a decrease?
Interviewee: Um yeah, so from an aviation perspective, flight schools have been a bit of a um, a differing trend because into 2020 when the whole world kind of came to a stop, aviation was definitely the most affected.
Interviewer: Right.
Interviewee: But somehow flight schools kind of buck the trend. They stayed busy. There was, you know, lots of, um, little things that was done to keep things going, like masks and, and, you know, various different things, like, and a lot of airports came with, like vaccine mandates and stuff like that, which also affected schools as well. Um, but I think a big part of it was that a lot of, uh, people were looking for, […0.6s] um like, especially after Covid, people getting stuck indoors. I think a lot of people started to explore carriers beyond just a desk in an office, right? And I think, uh, flying definitely intrigued a lot of people.
Interviewer: Okay.
Interviewee: And, um, a lot of the pilots that have been flying for the last many decades are people who graduated from, um you know, the Air Force or something from the Second World War, and also during the whole Cold War period. And a lot of them have been kind of in the retirement phase of their life. So there definitely has been a shortage of pilots. And, um, the US saw it before we did here in Canada, which kind of was a normal, um, almost a thing. Yeah, so, and and in Canada, we really started to see that, I would say, around 2015. And it’s, it’s, you know except for the period when there was a slowdown for about a year and a half during covid, hiring has been pretty strong throughout the industry. Um, and I think that also helps, like a lot of the people are seeing that the, the shortage is now finally through. Because I’ve been hearing the shortage story since 2007 when I first got into a flight school.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Interviewee: But I never really saw it. And then around I’d say 2015 and later I really started to see yesterday and, um, it’s definitely not kind of slowed down too much.
Interviewer: Okay, so it’s actually on the rise since 20… say 2020?
Interviewee: Yeah, for sure, like 20… I would say 2020 and 2021 were slow years for hiring because between the airlines shutting down and then when they started opening up, they were just retraining their guys that were already there. And then by the time they really started hiring it was almost 2022.
Interviewer: Okay.
Interviewee: Right, and then it’s… and it has slow down now a little bit again because, um, there’s a little bit of cross border tension here just between Canada and the US.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Interviewee: Which means that there are definitely a lot lesser flights down south, but a lot of the airlines are adapting a little bit going to other destinations. But I don’t think it’s really like slowed down to like freeze and hiring.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Interviewee: It’s definitely slowed down a little bit. We’re not you know it’s not like the pans on fire situation we were last year. Okay, but it’s definitely going quite okay. But, yeah.