NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — As more people take to the skies with loosened COVID-19 restrictions, some airlines are beginning to struggle when it comes to handling that load.
Pilots like Harry Barrett know that struggle all too well – he's been a pilot for more than 40 years.
"Teaching people to fly, and I used to do charter. I don't do that anymore, but we've done a lot of flying," Barrett said. "Lots of students come through here and eventually get on with an airline."
His flight training school, Barrett Aviation, is where a lot of commercial pilots start on small, single-engine planes.
Once pilots train on those, they move up to the bigger planes like the ones you'd see at major airports.
The only issue now is that those major airlines don't have enough pilots to go around.
"You know, there is a pilot shortage," Barrett said. "We don't see much of it here, we've got a few people who are training with that goal in mind."
So, why are we seeing this?
"People got their vaccinations so they can travel outside the country. It's going to be busy now I think," Rudy Hiller, a mechanic and pilot at Barrett Aviation, said.
It's an issue that major airlines were preparing for months ago. Allegiant Air flies out of Little Rock and recalled nearly 100 furloughed pilots back in February.
In May, they announced they'd be hiring 184 new pilots. With a current pilot roster of almost 1,000, that's a 19% increase.
"It got too restrictive to travel and they didn't want people in the airlines together, so I'm convinced that's what caused the airlines to cut way back," Barrett said.
To add to that – it's not easy to become a pilot.
"You can expect two and a half to three years from start to ready for the airline," he said.
It's not easy to fix and it's another issue to the ever-growing list of shortages.
"I think it's just going to take a little bit of time. People are going to be getting educated and getting their licenses and certificates," Hiller said. "I figure within the year, this next year, it'll be pretty well back to normal."