Overall pilot certification events can help us evaluate the flow of pilots who will be coming through our training system for potential professional pilot service when all their training sequences have been completed. As we look at the trends here, 2024 saw a drop in the numbers of key certification events compared to the previous year, the first time that rate has dropped in a number of years.

When we look at the overall number of certifications for all pilot certifications, we see that the following graph shows this drop from 2023 to 2024. With that, the certification numbers are still higher than many recent previous years and are very robust within an overall perspective.

Specific Certificates/Ratings Show Drop

It is worth taking a more granular look at these numbers however, with focus on some specific certificate and ratings that are a part of the overall pilot career training path sequence.

This trending data shows dropping rates in private and commercial pilot certificates and instrument ratings from 2023 to 204; again, still higher than many of the recent years so still robust.

But it does raise a question, are we seeing a tapering off of growth, an indication that we have reached a maximum training ability capacity, or is something else reducing or restricting our ability to produce more certification events?

I don’t have the answer definitively to this, but I believe it may be a little bit of all of those factors. That being said, another factor does seem to show us something interesting. Student pilot certificate issuances.

Click here if you want to see the much more detailed table these graphs are generated from with issuance data from each year going back to 1990.

Student Pilot Certificate Issuances Drop

For the first time since 2016, when hiring was very different and when we made a change from student pilot certificates being on a pilot’s medical certificate to requiring them to be a plastic FAA issued airman certificate, we saw a drop in the issuance of student pilot certificates. It is a relatively significant drop from a percentage base also, at 12% less than the previous year.

There is little barrier to issuance of these, as it is a purely administrative function that can easily be completed by any CFI, not requiring any FAA inspector or DPE to become engaged with the process. So, there shouldn’t be any real outside barriers to this certificate issuance.

It may be an indicator of interest in new training entrants into the career path. As airline hiring rumors of slowing have happened over the past year compared with other recent years where the fevered pitch of hiring drum was being spread, we might be seeing a slightly lower interest level beginning to manifest itself? Or a cautious approach to entering the career path? This is a data point that will be interesting to watch again over the next couple of years. It also tracks that if we have fewer student pilot entrants coming into the system, we will have fewer certifications at the higher level certificates in the the next year as the student pilot certificate is a prerequisite for those future certifications.