SALT LAKE CITY — David Neeleman sat in the captain’s seat of a flight simulator near Salt Lake City International Airport.“We have a 31 aircraft fleet today, and we have about 400 pilots,” Neeleman, Breeze’s CEO, explained. “But by the end of next year, we're going to be closer to 50 airplanes. And so we'll have to hire a couple of hundred pilots between now and then.”
Another Utah-based airline, SkyWest, is so short on pilots it is asking the federal government to make some destinations into charter flights. That would allow lesser-trained pilots into the flight deck. Neelman supports proposals in Congress to raise the pilot retirement age to 67 from 65 and to allow more flight time before a pilot is hired to be in a simulator.
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