Airline Pilot
Also known as: Pilot, Airline Captain, Aviator
Fly passenger and cargo aircraft, navigating complex systems and ensuring safe travel worldwide.
Salary Range
The highest-paid specialization or seniority level for airline pilots.
About 1 in 20 reaches this level
About 105K airline pilots (BLS Employment Projections, SOC 53-2011, 2025); senior wide-body captains at major airlines now earn $500K+ total comp (base + profit sharing) after 2023-2025 contracts. Chief Pilots and VP of Operations earn more but are management, not flying roles. ~5% (~5,000) are senior captains at the majors.
Salary data based on 2025 BLS, Glassdoor, and industry reports. Actual compensation varies by location, experience, and employer.
How to Become One
Earn an FAA Private Pilot License, then build toward an Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) certificate with 1,500+ flight hours.
For more information: Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) ↗
A degree isn't required, but these programs can strengthen your career prospects:
Cost to Qualify
Zero flight experience to an airline-ready ATP certificate. ATP Flight School, the largest US airline-pilot academy, publishes a fixed price for exactly this: $123,995 from zero time, plus about $12,000 in FAA examiner and knowledge-test fees it does not cover - roughly $136,000 all in. Pilot Institute, which sells training rather than a fixed-price programme, estimates the same career path lower: $75,000-$100,000 for the commercial licence plus about $5,000 each for the flight-instructor rating and the ATP-CTP course, so $85,000-$110,000. Either way this is nothing like carpentry or welding, even though our data currently files pilot under the same 'Trade/Vocational Certificate' label. Most pilots claw back a real share of the cost by instructing ($30,000-$50,000 a year) while building hours, which takes another 18-24 months.
Not paid during initial training (private through commercial + CFI), but most trainees then work as a paid flight instructor to log the remaining hours toward the FAA's 1,500-hour ATP minimum. CFIs at busy flight schools typically earn $30,000-$50,000 a year, and the hour-building phase typically takes 18 to 24 months full-time, which offsets a real chunk of the total cost.
Sticker price, not what most people pay — scholarships, aid and in-state status all move it. Room and board is shown separately on each college's page.
AI Risk Assessment
As cockpit technology improves, Europe's aviation safety agency (EASA) studied whether airliners could safely fly with fewer pilots on board. Its answer, from a study that ran from 2022 to 2025, was not yet: with today's cockpit design, a reduced-crew operation cannot be shown to be as safe as the current two-pilot setup, and new cockpit technology and more research are needed first. Any move to fewer pilots per plane would first need new cockpit technology proven in normal two-pilot operations.
Demand for pilots is solid. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects airline pilot jobs to grow 8% from 2025 to 2035, and airline and commercial pilots together 7%, much faster than the 3% average, with about 16,400 openings a year as air travel and cargo grow. AeroTime reported in January 2026 that US airline hiring picked up again in late 2025 after a slowdown in 2024 and early 2025 that left many junior pilots struggling to find airline jobs. An airline trade group (the National Air Carrier Association) expects more than 16,000 US airline pilots to retire over the next five years. Whether this adds up to a 'pilot shortage' is debated in the industry, but Boeing forecasts the world will need about 660,000 new pilots over 20 years.
On the rubric this is a 2: automation already assists heavily, but the core job of commanding the aircraft stays with two licensed pilots, and demand absorbs the gains. Note that entry-level hiring swings with the airline cycle, as the 2024 slowdown showed, but that risk is not AI.
What would change the score: a regulator (EASA or the FAA) approving reduced-crew operations on some flights would move this to 3.
Sources
Ratings reflect a 10-year outlook based on 2025-2026 research, weighted toward entry-level impact. Individual outcomes will vary.
Related Careers
Is Airline Pilot right for you?
Take our free 20-minute assessment to find out if airline pilot matches your personality, interests, and strengths.
Take the Free Assessment