Airline Hiring Boom Squeezes the Pilot Pool Flight Departments Draw From

Hiring of ATP Flight School graduates by major and regional airlines rose nearly 40 percent over the past year, with more than 1,170 graduates placed in the past 12 months. For owners staffing flight departments under Part 91K, or contracting Part 135 operators, ATP is one of the primary pipelines supplying newly rated pilots. Every graduate absorbed by a major or regional carrier is one fewer candidate available to a flight department or charter operator building out a crew. The pace of that hiring is now a useful gauge of how tight the entry-level market has become.

With reporting from AVweb.