Tracking ATP Certification and the ATP Population

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I made a post a couple weeks back about the yearly ATP certification events and how that is a part of our aviation pilot career pipeline metrics, but with some additional data from the 2024 U.S. Civil Airman data, I thought I would go a little futher into some of the data.

As we see from the next chart, we again see a robust production of ATP pilot certificates in 2024, although a drop in numbers from 2023, and in fact, lower than the 2022 production just slightly.

This is a good sign that we are still making significant numbers of ATP certificate holders.

But it is an interesting point that we did dip in our production in 2024 compared with the past year.

We can also see some hints at what might be coming when we also include consideration of taking the ATP knowledge tests, a precursor to the future ATP practical test (frequently combined with an aircraft type rating).

We see this number drop in the knowledge test numbers just over 10% from the previous year.

Let’s go on to another point, how many total ATP certificates are held.

Total Number ATP Certificate Holders

When we look at the trend of total holders of ATP certificates, we see that the number on a gross consideration has continued to climb through the years.

That is just part of the story though, because not everyone who hold ATP certificates does or are even able to fly professionally utilizing those privileges.

With the continued application of mandatory retirement age of 65 for airline service, many ATP certificate holders find themselves over this age.

When we look at the demographic age breakdowns of the ATP population, we can see that the percentage of ATPs who are between the ages of 50-65 (the black line) is a growing number, rising from 2001 from about 32% of the population to nearly 45% of the ATP population. These all represent ATPs that will need to retire from airline service within the next 15 years. Those positions will need to be filled with new ATP certificate holders.

Looking at the percentage of ATPs who are under the age of 30 (the red line), we see this number increasing also. This is representative of the influx of new, young, ATP certificate holders at a high rate over the past few years.

Our ATP population has a percentage of ATPs that are over the age of 65 (the blue line) that continues to grow. It has grown from 5% in 2001 to over 15% now. These pilots can’t live forever, and certainly cannot fly as ATP pilots in airline operations at this point. As they age and pass away, they are going to drop out of our system and have the mix of age change significantly within the next 10-15 years based on statistical aging and death considerations.

Bringing this all together, the overall age of ATP certificate holders is trending downward. This is due to the influx of younger pilots becoming ATP certified and becoming a larger part of the portion of ATP pilots in our system. I believe that this is going to become a continued trend as our ATP population has older members of our population pass along and the larger bulk of the younger ATP certificate holders become a bigger portion of the mix.

Our ATP certification data continues to show robust training and certification activity and some very interesting age demographic data that may give us some hints at the mix of our ATP population in the near future. It is also a strong indicator that there will be continued heavy retirement and a need for new ATP pilot production for professional pilot service for the foreseeable future.

 

Pilot Certificate Issuance Drops [but still robust] in 2024

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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.

Airman Certification Test Pass Rates Drop Again in 2024

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For the second year in a row, overall pass rates for airman certification saw a drop. In 2020 and 2021 we saw an overall pass rate on all original issuance airman certification events nearing the 81% rate, but last year and this year we saw drops of overall pass rates. You can see this in the following chart:

But let’s dig deeper into some of the primary certification events that related to main certificates and ratings in the career pilot training path.

If we look specifically at the pass rates for initial private pilot airplane, commercial pilot airplane, and initial CFI airplane, and initial ATP airplane certification events, the good news is only found in the ATP numbers. Each of these specific certificates saw decreases in pass rates again in 2024 compared to the previous year, and overall downward trends slightly each year over the past few years.

You can see this in this next chart:

Both of these charts give us some visual representation of the data from the table to the right where these graphs come from, which is from the yearly airman certification data the FAA publishes and compiled into percentage for demonstration of the trends here.

These are not good trends. While we saw somewhat upward trending in pass rates from roughly 2014 through 2021, it appears the gains made over that time are beginning to erode and trend downward.

When trended over the long term (as you can see in the charts at the bottom of this post, the initial private pilot and commercial pilot certification events are actually trending downward over a longer period of time.

Why is this? And why have we seen an up and down happening?

Well, I am speculating a little bit here, but it certainly seems that dips in pass rates correlate closely with the recent heavy hiring of CFIs from the training environment into service as professional pilots in places like airlines, cargo carriers, etc. As we pilfer our CFI cadre, we are left with CFIs who are lessor experienced. One can easily see the connection between less experienced CFIs and the quality in their students.

Heavy turnover of CFIs in our system appears to be correlative with the quality of provision of training in our system.

I don’t have the exact answer of how to solve this, but it is something we as an aviation industry should be paying attention to and finding a way to stem or turn around. If we are seeing base certification events demonstrating less quality performance, it is an indicator of the skill level of our pilots we are generating for future professional service.

 

 

TSA Citizenship Verification Requirements for Flight Training Providers

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Many CFIs have questions about for what students a citizenship verification must be completed prior to beginning training.

The TSA has provided a great PDF document summarizing what is needed and how these requirements may affect you as a flight training provider or those for whom you provide training.

Click the graphic below to see a pdf document the TSA provided, “Flight Training Security Program – About the Regulation” to see some more details about this requirement and the regulation process relating to vetting of students who are U.S. citizens and for those who are non-U.S. citizens.

For CFIs who only provide training to U.S. citizens, the flight training provider must:

For most independent and contractor CFIs, the main application portions of this list include having a TSA provider account, validating your U.S. citizen training recipients documentation of citizenship (for 5 years), maintaining your initial and biennial security awareness training, and allowing the TSA to inspect and audit your records if requested.

These TSA Security Threat Assessments (citizenship validation and validation of training allowance for non-U.S. citizens is still required only for the following events:

    • Initial pilot certification (whether private, recreational, or a sport pilot certificate), which provides a pilot with basic piloting skills.
    • Instrument rating, which enhances a pilot’s abilities to pilot an aircraft in bad weather or at night and enables a pilot to better understand the instruments and physiological experiences of flying without reference to visual cues outside the aircraft.
    • Multi-engine rating, which provides a pilot with the skill to operate more complex, faster aircraft.
    • Type rating, which is a specific certification a pilot obtains to operate a certain type of aircraft, because this training is required beyond the initial, multi-engine, and instrument certification.
    • Recurrent training for type rating, which is required to maintain or renew a type rating already held by a pilot.

Other training events such as an addon sea-plane rating, commercial pilot training, CFI training, flight reviews, high performance, tailwheel or complex endorsements, add-on ratings or certificates, and other training outside this list do not require citizenship validation.

If you are working for a school or an FBO engaged in training as a more structured school, these requirements may be completed under a Security Coordinator for the school and tracked by school documentation processes. If you are providing independent instruction, you may need to conduct and track these efforts on your own. Be sure either this is the case or engage in doing so for yourself.