EDITORIAL

Meeting the skill gaps

After two years of the pandemic, the Farnborough Airshow returns giving the chance for the industry to meet, do business, network and, perhaps most importantly of all, inspire after two lost years of unprecedented turmoil. This is not to say that the aerospace industry is yet out of danger – and it currently faces two major workforce challenges.

The first is short-term, in recruiting the thousands of workers it shed during the height of the pandemic. The current airline and airport cancellations have shown the folly of the ‘race to the bottom’ in outsourcing critical functions and are pushing the aviation sector to breaking point. This is, of course, not all self-inflicted and, in the UK, has been compounded by the government’s own wild policy swings and messaging.

With demand returning and Covid worries receding in many places, this should be a happy time for airlines, but is rapidly turning into another summer of misery. The second challenge is longer and some of it, like the immense cost of pilot training, pre-dated Covid, but the pandemic has exposed the industry’s weaknesses even more and sent a message that job security for even the highly trained is non-existent.

Elsewhere, the lack of air shows, and the switch to virtual education in colleges and universities over the past two years, threatens to create a ‘lost generation’ of young people who have never been exposed to an air display or got hands-on with a wind tunnel. This, combined with the headline air travel horror stories of the past two years, may dissuade many from even considering a career in aerospace.

With Farnborough’s return, it is critically important that the industry redoubles its efforts to attract not only those that have left but also to inspire and welcome future generations to this amazing global industry that connects and shapes the world. Post-Covid aviation needs to take a good hard look in the mirror and ask itself what a socially sustainable industry looks like.

Tim Robinson 
FRAeS, Editor-in-Chief
tim.robinson@aerosociety.com
@RAeSTimR

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