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The volume of ATP certificates issued in the United States is something that directly relates to our ability to provide pilots for commercial airline operations. As a base certificate requirement, only pilots who meet this certificate level can be employed at airlines, and many cargo carriers, operations. As such, knowing how many of these we issue each year is something that directly helps us as an industry understand our ability to staff these job functions.

This past year, 2022, we generated more ATP certificate issuance in the United States than any recent year; doubling what we have done in either of the past two years and significantly more than what we have issued in any one year in well over a decade.

But is this enough? Well, that’s a different question and one we can also contextualize.

First, let’s look at the numbers.

Increased Total ATP Certificates Issued in 2022

This past year we saw what appears to be a total of 9387 ATP certificates issued. This outpaces what we have done in recent years, and, in fact, I have been tracking these numbers since 1990 and at no point in that time have we issued more than 9000 ATP certificates in any year. This is kind of a record year.

It is worth noting that in the past couple of years, the lower numbers of issuances were surely affected by the effects of COVID. We see a similar drop in issuance numbers per year in 2009 and 2010 as regulatory changes took effect regarding what requirements needed to be met to qualify for an ATP certificate. Taking these two anomalies out of the averages, we typically issue an average of around 6000 ATP certificates per year, so 2022 is a high point and shows a significant increase in our issuance trend.

Highly active hiring and demand for ATP-qualified pilots is a major factor that has driven the training for and certification of pilots in the past year. Since a large portion of the ATP certificate training and certification is now done at airlines in their initial training processes, the entities needing these pilots are directly affecting the training volume to meet their own employee needs.

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Should pilots be trained as generalists, with a broad set of base skills, and then made into specialists for specific conditions and operational environments? Or should we be training pilots to specialize in a specific role and not worry about building generalist skills into them that may not be needed in the jobs they are going to end up doing?

It’s an interesting philosophical question when it comes to the strategy of training pilots.

The U.S. aviation training system is one that has been based on mentorship and one-on-one relationships between instructors with their students for many decades. We trust that a more senior CFI will work with a new or lessor experienced student to pass along knowledge, skills, and risk management mindsets that will develop them into capable pilots. It’s a stepping stone process that builds basic pilotage and then enhances that knowledge base by adding skills and knowledge as they proceed from being a pilot capable of flying themselves to being one that might be tasked, and trusted, with flying hundreds of passengers in the back of their aircraft for hire.

We still train pilots in “little airplanes” to fly basic VFR around our national airspace system and to fly in instrument conditions under the instrument procedures rules. This is all done in the general aviation flight realm. But once we have done this, and after these pilots have gained some experience, they are unlikely to fly in this operational environment again in most cases for modern professional pilots. They leave this realm and transition to regional and major airlines and cargo carriers and fly in the commercial operations realm. While general aviation and commercial operations share the same airspace sometimes, how they get flights done is very different. In most larger commercial operations, the pilots have a great operational infrastructure that ranges from ramp help to dispatchers that feed them information, to cabin crew, and an overall operational specifications process that enhances and ensures safety. A general aviation pilot has none of this. And, in fact, training someone as a general aviation pilot from the outset may, in the opinion of some, actually detract from the development of working within this larger framework that is a commercial operation. A general aviation pilot is many times more of a lone wolf; responsible for all the decisions and planning for a flight themselves.

There is an argument to be made that building this individualistic skill set is something that a pilot needs to have so they can have that skill if ever needed later in their career. But, is that argument still accurate? Continue reading →