Brent Pin­heiro

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

Glob­al air trav­el de­mand con­tin­ues to out­pace eco­nom­ic growth, and US aero­space com­pa­ny Boe­ing fore­casts the com­mer­cial avi­a­tion sec­tor will need 2,370,000 qual­i­fied per­son­nel to meet that de­mand over the next 20 years.

Ac­cord­ing to the Boe­ing’s Pi­lot and Tech­ni­cian Out­look (PTO) 2025-2044 re­port, the sec­tor will need 660,000 new pi­lots, 710,000 new main­te­nance tech­ni­cians, and 1,000,000 new cab­in crew mem­bers to main­tain the glob­al com­mer­cial avi­a­tion fleet over the next 20 years. The PTO re­port says two-thirds of new hires will re­place work­ers leav­ing the in­dus­try ei­ther through res­ig­na­tions or re­tire­ments, while one-third of new hires will sup­port grow­ing com­mer­cial fleets.

Boe­ing cites emerg­ing mar­kets and chang­ing fleet mix­es as key fac­tors dri­ving growth. In 2024, Boe­ing 737 air­craft (all vari­ants) flew 10 mil­lion flights and Air­bus A320 air­craft flew 7.9 mil­lion flights, ac­cord­ing to the 2024 World Air Trans­port Sta­tis­tics Re­port, re­cent­ly re­leased by in­dus­try trade group IA­TA (In­ter­na­tion­al Air Trans­port As­so­ci­a­tion).

With air­line op­er­a­tors in­creas­ing­ly lean­ing to­wards in­cor­po­rat­ing new­er, sin­gle-aisle aero­planes such as the Boe­ing 737 MAX 8 and the Air­bus 321XLR with in­creased range in­to their fleets, Boe­ing ex­pects these de­ci­sions to con­tin­ue to fu­el job de­mand.

This glob­al de­mand is cre­at­ing sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly in emerg­ing mar­kets like the Caribbean. Lo­cal stake­hold­ers have long recog­nised the im­por­tant role avi­a­tion plays in re­gion­al economies. A 2023 ‘Avi­a­tion Ben­e­fits Be­yond Bor­ders’ Ox­ford Eco­nom­ics re­port found that air trans­port sup­port­ed 8.3 mil­lion jobs and con­tributed US$240 bil­lion to GDP in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

Avi­a­tion strat­e­gy and in­no­va­tion ad­vi­sor at Aero­man Avi­a­tion Con­sul­tants, Cap­tain Ali­cia Hack­shaw-Pa­tience be­lieves in­vest­ment in the sec­tor is what is need­ed now more than ever. In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, she said, “If we in­vest now, we’ll have con­nect­ed skies, home­grown tal­ent, and even niche man­u­fac­tur­ing. Be­yond pi­lots, we’ll need drone op­er­a­tors, aero­space cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts, da­ta an­a­lysts and more. The sec­tor’s fu­ture is di­verse and dig­i­tal.”

There are 46.5 mil­lion peo­ple liv­ing in the Caribbean, which means this large labour/tal­ent pool can fill some of the roles that Hack­shaw-Pa­tience iden­ti­fied. The Asia-Pa­cif­ic re­gion is pro­ject­ed to have the high­est de­mand for new per­son­nel, fol­lowed by Eura­sia and North Amer­i­ca. The Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean re­gion is not too far be­hind, with a fore­cast of 134,000 new hires need­ed over the next 20 years. This is not a sur­prise con­sid­er­ing Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean record­ed the high­est growth among all glob­al re­gions in IA­TA’s Air Pas­sen­ger Mar­ket Analy­sis, June edi­tion.

How­ev­er, Hack­shaw-Pa­tience is call­ing for im­me­di­ate ac­tion to de­vel­op a skilled work­force to meet the sec­tor’s long-term needs. “We need to de­mys­ti­fy the in­dus­try and in­vest in lo­cal train­ing in­fra­struc­ture. We have the tal­ent, we just need ear­ly ex­po­sure, men­tor­ship, and lo­cal path­ways in­to avi­a­tion,” she said.

Some of her sug­ges­tions may not be the first jobs that come to mind, but Hack­shaw-Pa­tience is used to buck­ing the trend. As a woman in a male-dom­i­nat­ed in­dus­try, and the first fe­male he­li­copter pi­lot in T&T, she urges women across the re­gion to ex­plore oth­er ca­reer op­tions be­sides cab­in crew roles.

She said, “Women need to see what’s pos­si­ble, and they need to see peo­ple like them do­ing it. Avi­a­tion isn’t just for men in cap­tain’s hats. It’s for every woman who dares to dream with both feet off the ground”.

Avi­a­tion is for every­one, and ear­ly ex­po­sure to job op­por­tu­ni­ties in avi­a­tion is one way to fill the gaps high­light­ed in the PTO re­port. As one of the largest em­ploy­ers of avi­a­tion work­ers in the re­gion, ma­jor­i­ty state-owned Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) has host­ed ca­reer fairs for stu­dents in T&T, Guyana, St Vin­cent & the Grenadines, and St Lu­cia. CAL’s Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Ex­ec­u­tive Man­ag­er Dionne Ligoure told Guardian Me­dia that the in­ter­est has been over­whelm­ing.

These ca­reer fairs are a cru­cial first step, but for in­ter­est­ed stu­dents to pur­sue a ca­reer, lo­cal ed­u­ca­tion­al path­ways are es­sen­tial. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad & To­ba­go (UTT) is one of a hand­ful of re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tions that of­fer spe­cialised avi­a­tion de­grees and cer­tifi­cates, in­clud­ing a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Aero­nau­ti­cal and Air­wor­thi­ness En­gi­neer­ing and a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Air­craft Main­te­nance and Man­age­ment. Over 120 stu­dents have grad­u­at­ed with avi­a­tion de­grees/cer­tifi­cates since UTT’s pro­grammes be­gan in 2017; many have gone to work ei­ther abroad, at Na­tion­al He­li­copters or at Caribbean Air­lines.

Ac­cord­ing to UTT’s Avi­a­tion In­sti­tute di­rec­tor, Paris­s­ram Jag­ger­nath, T&T and the wider Caribbean are well-po­si­tioned to meet the de­mand for 710,000 new main­te­nance tech­ni­cians. He told Guardian Me­dia, “His­tor­i­cal­ly, BWIA and CAL, what they have done well is main­tain air­craft. What we have done well in this coun­try is pro­duce good tech­ni­cians from John Don­ald­son Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute and so on, and now at UTT, we have sol­id tech­ni­cal com­pe­tence.”

CAL has hired sev­er­al UTT avi­a­tion grad­u­ates dur­ing re­cruit­ment dri­ves for its main­te­nance and en­gi­neer­ing di­vi­sion. But even as CAL seeks to hire lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly, glob­al de­mand con­tin­ues for high­ly skilled labour. Com­pa­nies like Emi­rates Air­lines have been of­fer­ing at­trac­tive perks to at­tract tal­ent. While ac­knowl­edg­ing the glob­al de­mand for high­ly skilled labour, which rais­es the ques­tion of brain drain, Jag­ger­nath sees no is­sues with grad­u­ates head­ing out in­to the world to work.

“I am one who ad­vo­cates that when we ed­u­cate peo­ple, we should ed­u­cate for the world. You shouldn’t be my­opic to the ex­tent of, lis­ten, I want my peo­ple to stay here. My train­ing and de­vel­op­ment should po­si­tion you for a glob­al work­place. We have enough brains, let’s pro­duce it, let’s de­vel­op it, let it spread. Let it spread, and it will re­turn with even greater ex­po­sure. That’s the fu­ture.”