Is There Still A Pilot Shortage In 2026?
No flight school is a neutral source on that question, and this one is not either. So this page does not answer it. It sets out what is actually fixed — the hours the regulation requires, how long they take, what the route costs here — and points you at the one source that is neutral.
Why We Will Not Tell You There Is A Shortage
Every school that answers this question is answering it about its own product. That is worth saying out loud before anything else on the page.
Search the phrase and you will find a dozen confident answers, most of them published by organisations that sell flight training, a few by publications that sell advertising to organisations that sell flight training. The confident ones are the least useful. A training provider forecasting strong demand for the thing it trains you to do is not evidence; it is a sales argument with a chart attached.
We are in exactly that position. Airline Pilot Flight School sells a route from no logbook to a commercial certificate and instructor ratings for $89,000, and $84,000 until the end of September. If hiring is strong we sell more of them. That conflict does not go away because we acknowledge it, but acknowledging it is the minimum honest thing to do, and it is the reason this page contains no hiring number of our own.
What we can do is separate the parts of the question that are settled from the parts that are not. The hours are settled, because they are in the regulation. The time is largely settled, because it is arithmetic on how often you can fly. The cost here is settled, because we publish it as a single fixed figure. Carrier hiring in the year you happen to arrive is not settled by anybody, and anyone telling you otherwise is guessing in public.
So the useful version of the question is not is there a shortage. It is what does the route cost, how long does it take, and what happens to me if hiring is slow in the month I finish. Those three have answers. The rest of this page is those answers.
What Is Fixed, What Is Not, And Who Fixes It
Four things, in the order they matter to somebody deciding whether to start.
What The Regulation Fixes
14 CFR 61.159 sets the aeronautical experience for an airline transport pilot certificate in the aeroplane category, multi-engine class: 1,500 hours of total time, with named components inside it — cross-country, night, instrument and pilot-in-command time. 14 CFR 121.436 is the rule that makes it matter, because it requires an airline transport pilot certificate to serve as a second in command in part 121 operations. Between them, those two paragraphs are why the number 1,500 governs every career plan in the United States.
14 CFR 61.160 provides restricted privileges at 750, 1,000 or 1,250 hours — through military service, or through a degree with an aviation major from an institution that holds a letter of authorisation under 14 CFR 61.169. That route runs through a university, not through a flight school. We are a part 61 flight school and not a degree-granting institution, so our students go to 1,500. We would rather say that on this page than have you discover it at hour 1,100.
- 1,500 hours for an ATP certificate — 14 CFR 61.159
- ATP required for a part 121 second in command — 14 CFR 121.436
- 750, 1,000 or 1,250 restricted — 14 CFR 61.160, via 14 CFR 61.169 institutions
- 250 hours for a commercial certificate — 14 CFR 61.129
What Nobody Can Fix For You
Carriers decide how many people they hire, when, at what minimums, and on what equipment. Those decisions move with fuel, with aircraft deliveries, with retirements, with the economy, and with events nobody has on a calendar. No flight school has any influence over them and none has advance sight of them.
Seniority compounds the uncertainty in both directions. Two people who finish training four months apart can end up on different sides of a hiring window, and the one who arrived first keeps that advantage for a career. That is a real feature of the industry and it cuts both ways: it is an argument for starting sooner if you are going to start at all, and it is emphatically not a reason to start if the arithmetic does not work.
Where To Read The Projections
The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes employment projections for airline and commercial pilots in the Occupational Outlook Handbook. It is produced by people with no aircraft to sell, it states its methodology, and it is revised on a published schedule. It is the only source this school cites on employment, and we cite it by pointing at it rather than by quoting a figure that will be out of date before you finish reading.
Our pilot career outlook page works through what those projections do and do not say, including the difference between a projected opening and a job offer. If you read one other page on this site before deciding anything, read that one.
The Question Worth Asking Instead
Ask what happens if hiring is slow in the month you finish. The answer for somebody who trained here is that you hold a commercial certificate and instructor ratings, which means you are employable as an instructor while the hours build, and the hours you build are the hours 61.159 counts. A route that ends at a commercial certificate with no instructor rating leaves you qualified to be paid and short of a way to be paid.
That is the practical reason the CFI, CFII and MEI ratings are inside the $89,000 figure rather than sold afterwards, and it is the part of the plan that does not depend on anybody’s forecast being right.
The Hours Between You And A Right-Hand Seat
Six rungs, each set by a paragraph of 14 CFR part 61. The figures below are hours and regulations. There are no salary figures on this page, for the same reason there are no hiring figures.
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Day One
No Logbook
0 hrsWhere nearly everybody on the career route starts. A $229 discovery flight is logged as dual received, so the first hour of the 1,500 is the one you fly before you have decided anything.
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Months 3 To 6
Private Pilot Certificate
40 hrsSource: 14 CFR 61.109(a)The legal floor is 40. Fifty to sixty is what a student flying two or three times a week actually takes, which is why the Comprehensive program is priced at 60.
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Next
Instrument Rating
50 hrs cross-country PICSource: 14 CFR 61.65(d)Forty hours of actual or simulated instrument time inside it. Redbird MCX hours count within the limits the regulation sets, and the Redbird is never weather-cancelled.
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Then
Commercial Certificate
250 hrsSource: 14 CFR 61.129(a)The rung at which flying can legally be paid work. Most of the gap between 60 and 250 is flown as cross-country and complex time rather than as circuits.
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The Hinge
CFI, CFII And MEI
3 ratingsSource: 14 CFR 61.183 and 61.191The instructor ratings are how the hours between 250 and 1,500 get built and paid for at the same time. They are inside the $89,000 figure, not sold afterwards.
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The End Of The Ladder
Airline Transport Pilot
1,500 hrsSource: 14 CFR 61.159 — restricted privileges at 750, 1,000 or 1,250 under 61.16014 CFR 121.436 requires the certificate to serve as a second in command in part 121 operations. The restricted routes run through military service or a 14 CFR 61.169 institution, not through a part 61 flight school.
This ladder describes the certificates and the hours. It does not describe a job. Hiring minimums, seniority and pay are set by carriers, not by training providers, and nothing on this page is a representation about employment.
Three Things You Control, And One You Do Not
The forecast is the variable nobody owns. The other three are decided by where you train and how often you fly.
How often you fly. Spacing, not aptitude, is what moves the hour count. Skills learned on Tuesday and repeated on Saturday hold; the same skills repeated a fortnight later have to be relearned first, and the relearning is billed. Van Nuys gives you 355 training-capable days a year, counted from NOAA ASOS observations at KVNY over the twelve months to 1 August 2026, so the calendar constraint here is almost always yours rather than the weather’s.
Whether the aeroplane is available. A career route is twelve to eighteen months of scheduled aircraft. Six types on our own books and a maintenance shop on the field are not a boast, they are the two things that most often decide whether a booked lesson happens.
Whether you can be paid while you build. Instructing is the ordinary route from 250 hours to 1,500, and it requires ratings somebody has to teach you. CFI, CFII and MEI are taught here, so nobody has to change school at the exact point in the plan where momentum matters most.
What you do not control is what carriers do in the month you arrive. Which is why the plan should survive being wrong about that. Ours does: at the end of it you hold a commercial certificate and three instructor ratings, and both of those are worth having whatever the hiring page of any airline says that week.
What Is Checkable Here
Six Aircraft Types, Owned
Cessna 162 Skycatcher, Piper Warrior, Diamond DA20-C1, Piper Arrow II, Piper Seminole and Cirrus SR22 Turbo, all on our own books and maintained in our own shop at Van Nuys.
One Student, One Instructor
Twelve people on the roster, ten of them flight instructors. Every lesson is flown one student, one instructor, one aeroplane.
Redbird MCX Full-Motion Simulator
An FAA-approved AATD with three-axis electric motion, 210° wraparound visuals and a real Garmin G430. $189 a session, and never weather-cancelled.
355 Measured Flyable Days
Counted from NOAA ASOS observations at Van Nuys over the twelve months to 1 August 2026. Tempo is what protects the hour count.
One Figure, Fixed
$89,000 for the whole route, $84,000 during the offer, fixed on the day you enroll for the full duration of that program. No hourly top-up.
Questions About The Pilot Shortage And Airline Hiring
We do not publish an answer to that, because we sell flight training and any answer we gave would be a sales argument. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes employment projections for airline and commercial pilots in its Occupational Outlook Handbook; it has no aircraft to sell, it states its methodology and it is revised on a published schedule. Read it there. Our pilot career outlook page works through what those projections do and do not mean for somebody starting training.
Because the number would come from us, and we are the party selling the training. It would also be stale quickly. What is not stale is the regulation: 1,500 hours under 14 CFR 61.159, and an ATP certificate required for a part 121 second in command under 14 CFR 121.436. Those govern the plan regardless of what any hiring cycle does.
1,500 hours of total time for an unrestricted airline transport pilot certificate under 14 CFR 61.159, with named cross-country, night, instrument and pilot-in-command components inside that total. 14 CFR 61.160 allows restricted privileges at 750, 1,000 or 1,250 hours through military service or a degree with an aviation major from an institution holding a letter of authorisation under 14 CFR 61.169.
No. The 1,000 and 1,250 hour routes in 14 CFR 61.160 run through a degree at an institution that holds a letter of authorisation under 14 CFR 61.169, and the 750 hour route is military. We are a 14 CFR part 61 flight school and not a degree-granting institution, so our students build to 1,500 under 61.159. Any school that lets you assume otherwise is doing you a disservice you will discover at about hour 1,100.
The certificates themselves take twelve to eighteen months of full-time training here, and that ends at a commercial certificate with the instructor ratings. The hours from roughly 250 to 1,500 are built afterwards, usually by instructing, and how long that takes depends on how much you fly rather than on the school. The hour-building page works through the arithmetic honestly.
You hold a commercial certificate and the CFI, CFII and MEI ratings, which means you can be paid to fly while the hours build. That is the whole reason the instructor ratings are inside the $89,000 program price rather than sold as an extra afterwards. A route that ends at a commercial certificate with no instructor rating leaves you legally able to be paid and short of a way to be paid.
No. There is no cadet program here, no pathway agreement, no conditional offer and no hiring relationship with any carrier. The word “airline” in our name describes the destination our students are training for, not a relationship with an airline. Nothing sold on this site guarantees employment.
The only version of that question we can answer is the arithmetic one. Training takes twelve to eighteen months full time, plus the hours between the commercial certificate and 1,500, so whoever starts today is arriving in a hiring market nobody can see yet. That argues for judging the decision on whether you can afford the route and want the work, rather than on a forecast. If you can and you do, start; if you cannot, no forecast makes it affordable.
$89,000 for every certificate and rating in one sequence — private, instrument, commercial, the multi-engine class rating in our own Piper Seminole, and CFI, CFII and MEI. It is $84,000 for enrolments completed by 11:59pm Pacific on 30 September 2026. The figure is fixed on the day you enroll and holds for the full duration of the program. The examiner’s fees, the FAA knowledge test fees, your medical examinations and your own equipment are set by other people and are not included.
Plenty of people here are doing exactly that, usually in their thirties or forties, and usually while still working for part of the route. The honest constraints are cash flow and calendar rather than age — 14 CFR sets no upper age limit for the certificates. The career change page and the working-full-time page both work through it without a sales pitch.
One Hour Settles More Than Any Forecast
No employment projection tells you whether you will enjoy the work, and that is the variable a career change actually turns on. Sixty minutes in the left seat over Los Angeles does tell you, it costs $229, and it comes straight off the program price if you enroll within a day.
Where To Go Next
The Career Route
The Airline Pilot Training Program, Phase By PhaseHow To Become An Airline PilotHow Long It Takes To Become An Airline PilotCareer Change To Pilot: The Arithmetic Of AgeThe Hours And The Rules
The 1500 Hour Rule: 61.159 And 121.436Restricted ATP: 750, 1,000 Or 1,250 HoursATP Certificate RequirementsBuilding Flight Hours: The 1,200 Nobody Sells YouAbout The Claims On This Page
This page states no hiring forecast, no demand figure and no employment projection of its own. Where projections are needed it points at the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, which is published independently of this school and of the flight training industry. Hiring minimums, seniority and pay are set by carriers rather than by training providers, and nothing on this page or anywhere on this site is a representation about employment.
Every regulation cited here is in 14 CFR and is quoted because it applies to every flight school in the United States, including ours: 14 CFR 61.109(a), 61.129, 61.159, 61.160, 61.169, 61.183, 61.191 and 121.436. Where this page describes what usually happens rather than what is required, it is describing a pattern rather than making a promise about you.
Airline Pilot Flight School is a 14 CFR part 61 training provider at Van Nuys Airport, operating since 2019 with zero accidents and zero incidents as 49 CFR 830.2 defines those words. We are not an airline and we are not owned by one. There is no cadet program, no pathway agreement, no conditional offer and no hiring relationship with any carrier. We publish no pass rate, no graduate count and no star rating.
Program prices include the aircraft, the fuel, the instructor, the ground instruction, the simulator hours and the training materials. They do not include designated examiner fees, FAA knowledge test fees, aviation medical examinations or personal equipment. Sale prices apply to enrolments completed by 11:59pm Pacific on 30 September 2026; the list price of the airline program is $89,000.
Fly The Aeroplane Once, Then Decide
The assessment flight is the first hour of the syllabus and a two-way evaluation. You fly it from the left seat with an instructor beside you, they write down what they saw, and you get an honest read on whether the plan is realistic. It is loggable, and it is credited in full against enrolment if you enroll within 24 hours.
What happens on an assessment flight →