Air traffic growth will force airlines worldwide to appoint more than 600,000 pilots by 2036. However, this emerges as a challenge in terms of aging of the population, the International Civil Aviation Organization (IAEA) said. The number of passenger flights and passengers doubles every 15 years, but the workforce in the sector is shrinking, said Secretary-General of the organization, Fan Liu, speaking to the International Relations Council in Montreal, Canada.

She highlighted the inevitable aging of the population, the decline in birth rates and other factors such as the fact that future talents are attracted by high-tech sectors. All this means that civil aviation needs to make more efforts to attract and retain the skilled workers they need in the coming decades, Mrs. Liu warned. The IAEA, a UN agency, believes that by 2036 at least 620,000 pilots will be needed to fly airplanes with or with more than 100 seats worldwide.

"And 80 percent of these future aviators will be new pilots that are not flying yet," said Fan Liu.

The same applies to the airline and maintenance personnel of the aircraft and other technical staff in the industry, the Secretary-General of the IAEA said. Air travel growth is explained by the rise in tourism but also by online trade, with 90 percent deliveries being made by air at just 16 percent in 2010. More than 4.1 billion people travel by plane each year and one third of the goods exchanged in the world are also transported by air. In addition to the challenges of the workforce, civil aviation must also deal with busy airports soon. At least 24 international airports in Africa will be overwhelmed and unable to cope with the rise in air traffic after just two years, warns Fan Liu.

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