Efforts by Southern Airways Express to deal with the national pilot shortage have taken off.
“So, the big issue in the nation is pilots,” R. Keith Sisson, chief marketing officer for the airline, told the Clearfield-Jefferson Counties Regional Airport Authority at its last meeting. “The pilot shortage is real. The Regional Airline Association’s annual conference was in Palm Beach just two or three weeks ago, where basically the only thing those guys talked about was the national pilot shortage.”
Sisson said there are multiple reasons for the pilot shortage, but the main cause is the rule changes for qualifications needed to operate aircraft that were put in place after the Colgan air crash in New York in 2009.