Aviation Career Paths

What is a professional pilot? Most often, members of the general public would picture an airline pilot wearing a uniform with gold bars, greeting passengers as they board a flight. In reality, this type of pilot represents a small proportion of the professional pilots working in Canada. The type of flying that a pilot does is largely governed by the amount of flight experience he or she has or in other words, the number of "hours." Let's break the hour ranges down and then discuss potential jobs in that range:

0-250 hours: Undergoing flight training

At 200 hours, it is possible to attain a Commercial Pilot Licence (CPL). This simply allows a pilot to make money flying airplanes that he or she is qualified to fly. On a basic CPL, this is all single engine, single pilot, land airplanes. Additional training is required to fly two-pilot airplanes, multi-engine airplanes, and seaplanes. In any case, job prospects for a pilot with 250 hours are quite limited. Generally, with this type of experience, you have three options:

• to undergo additional training and become a flight instructor
• to get an entry-level non flying position with a company that will eventually let you progress in to flight operations
• to join the Canadian Forces as a pilot

Those are essentially your only options until you have at least 1000 hours.

Between 1000 and 2000 hours

Whatever way you have attained your first 1000 hours, your options are starting to open up a little. At 1500 hours you qualify to hold an Airline Transport Pilot Licence (ATPL) which makes you somewhat more marketable, because it allows you to serve as a captain in a two-pilot airplane. In this hour range you may be flying as the sole pilot on a light airplane transporting cargo or conducting aerial survey. You may also be the first officer in a light two-pilot airplane transporting passengers. In some cases it will be with the same company that you started, but usually and particularly in the case of flight instructors, it will require a change of jobs.

Between 2000 and 4000 hours

In this hour range if you have stayed with your employer, you are likely a captain on the aircraft you have been flying previously, or you are a first officer on medium aircraft, such as you might fly on short hops between small cities. It may be that you are flying scheduled service for a regional airline, or non-scheduled service for a corporate flight department. As you get closer to the high end of this range, you are looking at flying as a captain on your current airplane.

4000+ hours

Whatever type of flying you have decided you would like to do, you are now likely interviewing with the company you want to retire at. There are many different types of flying and lifestyles in this range. For example, major airlines, captain of a corporate flight department, working for a government agency, such as Transport Canada or the Ministry of Natural Resources, or even Chief Pilot of a commercial air operator.