Career Prospects Age 30-35

[Astrojoe]

After all the hiring that transpired between 2017-2020, can a pilot hired aged 30-35 expect to see a comfortable widebody position with decent a seniority during their career? What about narrowbody?

Is it reasonable to anticipate significant fleet growth over the next 30 years — enough to render this question irrelevant? How many pilots do you expect AC will have in 10, 20, and 30 years?

[TheAlcalde]

Short answer: yes

Long answer……blah blah seniority doesn’t happen overnight

[flying4dollars]

After all the hiring that transpired between 2017-2020, can a pilot hired aged 30-35 expect to see a comfortable widebody position with decent a seniority during their career? What about narrowbody?

Is it reasonable to anticipate significant fleet growth over the next 30 years — enough to render this question irrelevant? How many pilots do you expect AC will have in 10, 20, and 30 years?

impossible to guess accurately. Right now the requirements between summer and next was around 800-1100. It will be about 350-400 a year to account for retirees and then projected growth (I believe). I could be wrong and it could be 350-400 retirements a year PLUS projected growth.

With the way things are going, if AC is on your radar, the best thing you can do is get in NOW. Remember, aviation is cyclical. The next major global event will cripple it again. Getting in now will likely prevent you from a layoff. It will also pad the seniority number. You could probably hold NB captain within a year or so at the rate things are going.

[Curiousflyer]

After all the hiring that transpired between 2017-2020, can a pilot hired aged 30-35 expect to see a comfortable widebody position with decent a seniority during their career? What about narrowbody?

Is it reasonable to anticipate significant fleet growth over the next 30 years — enough to render this question irrelevant? How many pilots do you expect AC will have in 10, 20, and 30 years?

Widebody Captain will depend entirely on growth. Without growth, if you’re coming in now at 35, I doubt you’ll retire with enough seniority to take a widebody captain position at all. Educated guess is 1250-1750 pilots on seniority list now under 35. That’ll land you roughly 15%-30% narrowbody captain for your last 5 years, which will be just enough to hold Christmas off.

Now the thing about AC is that you can attain pay or schedule quite quickly, but not both. In 3-4 years you could either be a junior narrow body captain making $200k+ or a senior narrow body FO making $125k+ but having a great work schedule.

AC growth will depend mostly on how much the federal government and other stakeholders continues to bleed the industry. AIFs, airport leases, Nav Can fees have all sky rocketed. With an incoming recession who knows how sustainable the growth will be going forward. AC also has not released any growth plans, there are new aircraft on order, but those will likely just replace the ageing 320 fleet.

[tbayav8er]

After all the hiring that transpired between 2017-2020, can a pilot hired aged 30-35 expect to see a comfortable widebody position with decent a seniority during their career? What about narrowbody?

Is it reasonable to anticipate significant fleet growth over the next 30 years — enough to render this question irrelevant? How many pilots do you expect AC will have in 10, 20, and 30 years?

Widebody Captain will depend entirely on growth. Without growth, if you’re coming in now at 35, I doubt you’ll retire with enough seniority to take a widebody captain position at all. Educated guess is 1250-1750 pilots on seniority list now under 35. That’ll land you roughly 15%-30% narrowbody captain for your last 5 years, which will be just enough to hold Christmas off.

Now the thing about AC is that you can attain pay or schedule quite quickly, but not both. In 3-4 years you could either be a junior narrow body captain making $200k+ or a senior narrow body FO making $125k+ but having a great work schedule.

AC growth will depend mostly on how much the federal government and other stakeholders continues to bleed the industry. AIFs, airport leases, Nav Can fees have all sky rocketed. With an incoming recession who knows how sustainable the growth will be going forward. AC also has not released any growth plans, there are new aircraft on order, but those will likely just replace the ageing 320 fleet.

Some good points here. Sometimes you have to make a decision without knowing exactly how growth is going to look in the future, which is a difficult decision.

[alkaseltzer]

After all the hiring that transpired between 2017-2020, can a pilot hired aged 30-35 expect to see a comfortable widebody position with decent a seniority during their career? What about narrowbody?

Is it reasonable to anticipate significant fleet growth over the next 30 years — enough to render this question irrelevant? How many pilots do you expect AC will have in 10, 20, and 30 years?

7,000/7,500/6,000 lol