Expert: D. Norkus - 4/9/2009

Question
Hey Dottie, I had a question about moving up in the "rankings" as a commercial airline pilot.  I know that you have to start as a F/O, but how do you get to a captain?  Can you speed up the time somehow? How long do you have to spend as a F/O before you can become a captain?

Thanks,  John

Answer
John

Moving up to captain requires expansion or attrition with your airline. Of the total number of pilots employed, about half are captains. In order for a first officer to move up to the top 50% and upgrade to captain, they either need some captains above them in tenure (what we call "seniority") to leave or the airline needs to expand and create the need for more pilots.

The time to upgrade depends on the airline. It isn't based on flight experience but hire date*. (As long as the pilot has an FAA Airline Transport Pilot certificate, First Officers are only required to have an FAA Commercial pilot certificate.) At some airlines it may take a couple of years to upgrade, while at others it takes decades. The time to upgrade will depend heavily upon the expansion (or lack thereof) and attrition with the company. Only a few years ago, some regional airlines were upgrading in just 18 months. In the current economy, most airlines are contracting and many are even furloughing pilots. This means FOs at those companies will be so for a while longer- if they don't get furloughed because they are on the bottom of the seniority list!

On my site, I tallied the time to upgrade for the regional airlines-
http://www.pilotcareer.info
Since the industry is now in a period of contraction, the times to upgrade are now on the increase.

You can also look up the hire date of the most junior captain by airline at http://www.airlinepilotcentral.com and see how long it took to upgrade at each major airline

Can you speed it up? Not really. However, there are some occasions where a few airlines have hired very experienced pilots as "street captains" and put them directly in the left seat. That is about the only way to 'speed it up' (*this is the only time when experience trumps hire date to upgrade at an airline). That is because their first officers are not yet seasoned enough to meet the Airline Transport Pilot/ATP requirements to become a captain yet. In the past few years when hiring was brisk, some regional carriers with fast upgrade times, hired very low time pilots (300 hours) straight out of regional airline affiliated flight academys as there was such a need to fill the position. If those pilots reach the 50% mark on the pilot seniority list and do not yet meet the requirements for the ATP, then pilots junior to them with the requisite flight experience may bid for and become a captain before they do.

Dottie