The Regina Flying Club is doing what it can to help battle the province’s pilot shortages and airline cancellations by bringing more students through the program to commercial licensing.
“When you see that there is a shortage of pilots at the airline level, it’s exponential through the entire industry,” said Regina Flying Club general manager James Topinka.
The Regina Flying Club offers flight hours and instruction for students training to be pilots.
The non-profit organization is constantly trying to secure more aircraft for students, fleet standardizations and more instructors.
“Those are the main limiting factors for sure,” explained Topinka. “The financial piece of it … there are certainly things that could be done to accelerate that capacity to train more pilots.”
Training to become a pilot can be an expensive endeavour.
“The financing is one of the most challenging things about aviation,” said Om Majithia, a student with the Regina Flying Club.
To become a commercial pilot with the correct instrument and multi-engine ratings, a person will be faced with a total training cost of approximately $60,000 to $70,000.
Majithia’s goal is to eventually become an airline pilot, but he must first complete the required number of flight hours, which he plans to do through pipeline surveillance flying.
“As a long-term goal, I would stay in Canada and work as an airline pilot at one of the Canadian airlines like WestJet or Air Canada.”
Topinka said COVID-19 resulted in fewer pilots interested in flying commercially after being properly licensed.
“There were some people that might not have been able to travel or fly elsewhere so they were wanting to learn to fly,” said Topinka. “But these people were more recreationally minded, so they weren’t training for commercial licensing and feeding into the industry.”
The Regina Flying Club trains approximately 10 commercial pilots per year, with the rest training for private licensing.
He said the numbers of commercial students at the Regina Flying Club are back up to normal levels, however, the several years that were impacted by COVID-19 were enough to have an impact on the industry.
Transport Canada numbers show that the number of commercial pilot licences awarded each year was relatively consistent for much of the past decade, averaging 1,116 licences annually between 2012 and 2019.
The number of commercial pilot licences issued in Canada has declined by more than 80 per cent since 2019, even as aviation experts warn of an ever-growing labour shortage that threatens to disrupt Canada’s airline industry.
“We are trying to increase capacity because doing the regular isn’t enough right now,” Topinka said.
The club has a long-term goal of doubling or tripling the number of graduating commercial pilots per year.
Topinka said that partners like the provincial government and Regina airport authorities will be some of the key components in the future to bring more students successfully through the training program.
“There’s not many people that haven’t dreamed about flying a plane or flying in general, but people aren’t aware of the opportunity that is here in Regina for them.”
— with files from Global News’ Amanda Stephenson