Interesting statistic?
 

So some pilots were sitting around drinking beers last night. What else are we going to do on Furlough Fridays?

We were discussing pilot numbers. And some idiot (that would be me) suggested that far less than the total number of pilots holding ATPs "make it". "Make it" was defined, amongst our little drunken motley crew, as legacy and FedEx and UPS pilots. Most of us were still regional pilots and hoped to not spend our careers in a CRJ or the like. So we hadn't considered a regional captain having "Made it".

So pilots being pilots we all dug in on our phones like college kids on Tinder.

Here's what we came up with. 165K total ATPs 2019 according to the FAA data statistics.

According to APC's airline profiles.

Delta 14600 pilots

United 13300 pilots

American 15176 pilots

Alaska 2888 pilots

Hawaiian 868 pilots

For a Legacy pilot (according to APC) total = 46832



Regional pilots

Endeavor 1905
Horizon 850
Mesa 1400
PSA 2041
Skywest 5333
Air Wis 547
Envoy 2500
Republic 2461
Total regional pilots = 17037



Cargo

FedEx 5037
UPS 2927
Total Cargo (big time) = 7964

Total = 42%
No regional = 33%
So depending on how you look at this either half or a third of pilots holding an ATP have "Made It"? What in our drunken attempt at math did we miss here? Because those numbers look pretty bleak for someone starting out in this industry.

1. How do you account for mil pilots? They all have ATP's if they're in the airlines but they don't factor into the success rates for civilians.

2. Many private and corporate pilots get ATP's for insurance, many of those never pursued the airlines.

3. Some foriegn pilots earn ATP's here and then go home.

That said, 30% success rate to legacies for civilian career-oriented training starts seems accurate based on people I know. Historically. I thought it would be better for a while but COVID put the damper on that.

Definitely plenty of foreign pilots who hold ATP’s. Particularly in Canada where it used to only require a 50 question test.
Lots of expat pilots hold an FAA also.
It’d be interesting to know how many holders are eligible to work in the US and can hold a medical.

1. Didn't
2. Didn't
3. Didn't

I just took what the FAA said were active ATPs. Calculated the numbers at legacies. I am doing a swag here not going for accuracy. So I am probably off by a significant factor but still don't think its greater than 50% from what I see.

In all three cases I didn't think the numbers would move the needle all that much. Maybe we see a 10% increase? How may active military pilots are there? I did some googlefu and came up with this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...itary_aircraft Removing UAS from the equation I get a total of 12,268 aircraft. (Scary what you can find on the Internet). Assuming 3 pilots per aircraft I get around 30K? Given your background you probably have access to better data than I so I would be interested to hear if the number is that far off.

Like you I have always assumed it was about 30% that made it but I had never sat down to do the math till today. I actually think it's even lower than that. I think if we look at it from student pilot starts the number that make it to ATP at a legacy is probably less than 10%. I've heard, but can't prove, around 10% finish most college programs. But I am not sure how to put together the data to support this. Besides its a nice day outside and I still have beer in the fridge......

You can add another 20k if you include the LCCs. Total amount of ATPs issued is not really accurate for the reasons listed already. Better estimate would be the odds of a civilian entering the 121 world ending up at a career destination. No idea how to accurately calculate that though.

Ok so still less than 50%.

Of every ATP issued, yes. That is not an accurate portrayal of the amount of people competing for the jobs. However, excluding 2015-2019 the US job market has traditionally been quite bad.

i had 24 US ATPs working for me plus I knew of about double that number working in Canada holding US ATPs. Four were airline furloughees, none of which went back to UA or AA. I’ve certainly met several hundred US ATP holders actively flying bizjets and having an ATP is (was) practically mandatory. There’are 13,000-ish Bizjets around, call it 18,000 ATPs there to be conservative.

There’s also a bunch of retired ATP’s still out there. Contrary to some pilots thinking, just because you retire doesn’t mean you die. And the atp is yours till you’re gone.

Only if you have a current medical, but a Class 3 counts, I think.