You may have heard of the “canary in the coalmine” which was a method used by miners deep inside a mine, carrying a canary, to determine if there was toxic gas in the air. If the air was too toxic, the canary would be the first to go followed by the miners if they didn’t get out.
What’s the canary in the airline?
The canary in the airline is cutting capacity because of a broken ecosystem and at the core is a substantial labor shortage problem that is now metastasizing into a cancer across the industry.
United Airlines recently furloughed pilots. The reason? From The Telegraph:
Delays to deliveries of new Boeing planes have forced one of the world’s biggest airlines to put staff on voluntary leave…
Source: The Telegraph
Southwest Airlines isn’t doing much better. From FoxBusiness.com:
Southwest Airlines is cutting capacity, re-optimizing flight schedules and pausing hiring in 2024 as a result of Boeing’s “continued challenges.”
Source: FoxBusiness.com
We have written about the shortage of aviation mechanics here and wrote about the airline ecosystem here. While the current problems are blamed on Boeing there has been little discussion about the root cause. Yes, Boeing isn’t delivering and there are quality control issues at Boeing but why?
The obvious answer to that question is finding the right labor to do the job that needs to be done. With millions of baby boomers retiring each year and have been since 2011, it’s not surprising that there is a huge and growing gap of skills within all industries.
Like any cancer, detecting and addressing the problem early is the key to survival but we don’t see a whole lot happening in the airline ecosystem to make us think that the patient even thinks they have a problem. The “nagging cough” is being ignored and treated with over the counter medicines when the patient should be headed to a deep diagnostic examination of the whole body.
The obvious current outcome of cutting capacity and furloughing pilots will be higher costs for consumers and loss of more skilled resources. How many furloughed pilots will simply decide to retire early and never come back?
We’ll keep a watch on the situation so stay tuned, stay profitable and stay solvent…