Ultimate Step by Step Guide to Becoming an Airline Pilot

All right. In this video, we’re going to tell you exactly how to become an airline pilot. We’ll tell you every single pilot certificate you’re going to have to accomplish, what you need to do to accomplish that all the way so you can become an airline pilot, make the big bucks, and fly the big aircraft.

All right, let’s get to it. First step is meeting the eligibility requirements to become any pilot certificate under the FAA. And so, there’s an age requirement. You got to be 16 years old to fly, first fly solo. That means without an instructor. You’ll do that in your private pilot training. Got to be 16 years old to do that. 17 years old by the time you receive your private pilot certificate. You got to be 17. And then 23 years old in order to get your airline transport pilot certificate. That’s going to be the final certificate you get in order to f fly airliners. And we’ll talk about all those certificates here in a little bit. Language. You got to be able to read, write, speak, and understand English. We’re talking to ATC. We’re talking to other pilots. We got to all be on the same page and understand the same language. ID and medical. You got to have a valid and current ID as approved by the FAA. And then you got to have a medical certificate. You got to have a third class medical certificate for private pilot, a second class for a commercial pilot certificate, and a first class for an airline transport pilot certificate. They get more stringent and  more difficult to pass the lower they get. So, first class is the most stringent and medical exam. It’s more stringent than the second class, which is more stringent than the third class. You can go ahead and get first class right away if you want to. If you know for sure you’re going all the way to an airline transport pilot.

Step two is to earn your private pilot certificate. So, this is the entry-level certificate that you’re going to need to get in order to become an airline pilot. There’s other entry-level certificates. there’s sport pilot and then there is recreational pilot. But if you go with those, you won’t be able to continue on get an IFR commercial and all the ones that we’re going to talk about. That’s one of the reasons why private pilot is the most common and popular one. It allows you the most privileges out of the other two and it also allows you to continue on if you want to make a career out of flying. So again, the first certificate is private pilot. In order to do this, you must complete ground training and receive an endorsement from the certified instructor who gave you or is aware that you did the ground training. You have the knowledge to take the FAA written exam. Then you have to pass that FA written exam using that endorsement kind of as your ticket to take it. Then you have to complete your flight training. It’s 40 hours minimum if you’re doing part 61 and 35 if part 141. But the national average is around 70 hours probably. Those are just the minimums that the FAA has set. And then you got to receive an endorsement from the certified instructor who gave you that flight training to take your FAA practical check ride. And then you got to pass the FAA practical check ride exam. So basically, you receive ground training, you receive an endorsement for ground training and you take a ground test. Then you receive flight training, you receive an endorsement for flight training, and then you take a flight test. Okay? Now, this kind of I want you to remember that because a lot of these certificates are the exact same, right? You do ground and you do flight. You got to do training endorsement and then pass a test.

So, the next one is an instrument rating. It’s actually not a certificate. It’s a rating that you add-on to your private pilot certificate. However, the things you have to do to get the instrument rating are almost identical to what you have to do to get another certificate. So private pilot, when you have a private pilot certificate, allows you to fly passengers and it allows you to fly under what we call visual flight rules or VFR. You’ll learn what this means exactly. It has to do with the visibility, how far you can see, and the cloud, how high or low the clouds are. But for now, just remember that it’s good weather, right? So, just think good weather. Private pilot allows you to fly passengers and in good weather. It does not allow you to fly for higher. So, you can’t pay less than your share of the flight costs. So, you can’t make money flying. And it doesn’t allow you to fly in instrument flight rules or IFR which is for now just remember bad weather. An instrument rating allows you to fly in this bad weather or what we call instrument meteorological conditions using instrument flight rules or IFR. So you need an instrument rating when the weather’s bad, the visibility is low, the ceiling is low, etc. To get an IFR rating, you must do the following. Again, you got to complete ground training and receive an endorsement to take your written exam. Then you got to pass that written exam. Then you got to do flight training, receive an endorsement from your instructor to take the practical exam. And then you got to pass the practical exam. So for instrument, it’s like there’s some more detailed requirements here, but the general gist, the minimums like we had for private pilot, again, these are just minimums. 40 hours of instrument time. That means like time where you’re using the instrument to fly, so you can’t see out of the cockpit or you’re using foggles or something like that, which you’ll learn later. 15 hours with an instructor at a minimum and 50 hours cross country as a minimum as well.

All right, next step is a commercial pilot certificate. All right, so at this point, right, you have your private pilot that allows you to fly passengers, but only in VFR weather, good weather. Then you get IFR that allows you to fly in passengers with passengers and in bad weather. And then now commercial pilot will allow you to add to that the ability to make money flying. So you can fly for hire. So to get a commercial pilot certificate, you have to again complete ground training and receive an endorsement from the instructor to take the ground exam. Then you have to pass the FAA written ground exam. Then again, you have to complete flight training, receive an endorsement from your instructor, and take the FAA practical check ride. And then you got to pass that practical check ride. So for the hours for a commercial pilot, you have to have 250 hours total as a minimum, 100 hours as PIC as a minimum with 50 of those in an airplane, 50 of those cross country, 10 instrument, 10 complex, and 10 at night. So, those are all the minimums in order to receive an endorsement from your instructor to take that practical check ride and get your commercial pilot certificate.

All right, step 5A. We got a couple I’m kind of dividing this step into a few. You got to build flight hours. So, at this point in your training, you’ll have at least at least 250 flight hours. More likely 300 to 500 hours is what you’re going to have. The next step is to build the required minimum hours to get your airline transport pilot certificate. So the big thing about an airline transport pilot certificate is just experience, right? So the the number of hours you have to have 15 hours for a airline transport pilot certificate. Unless you have what’s called a restricted ATP, airline transport pilot certificate. If you do that path, that’s usually when you go through a bachelor program. So you see these like aviation universities, they might have an associate program or a bachelor program, military as well where you can kind of reduce the amount of hours that you need if you’re also getting a degree. It’s kind of how that works and it’s called a restricted ATP. So I think it’s a,000 hours for bachelors and 1,250 for associate program. But it kind of varies based off the program and the military program. So whatever if you do go that route, you know, just you don’t have you’re not required of course to get a degree to become an airline pilot, but it does reduce your hours a little bit. So it’s up to you whether you want to do that route. It’s usually more expensive. Um but there is that option. All right, so continuing on, the most common way to build these flight hours is to become a flight instructor. So you’ll see these a lot in your own training. You’ll see, you know, hopefully it doesn’t happen to you too often. happened to me five times where my instructor was just building hours and building experience waiting to get an air airline pilot job and as soon as they got it they left and I had to get a new instructor. So that’s kind of the downside of this um for student pilots. kind of bad in that way for student pilots, but it’s good as it allows you to as a someone who’s trying to build hours to one, you don’t have to pay for renting the aircraft, the student does, and two, the student pays you per hour. So, you make some money while you’re building a lot of these hours. So, that’s why it’s so common for this to happen. To become a CFI, you need to pass a written exam similar to private pilot, a written exam for fundamentals of instructing. So you got to kind of learn some stuff about instructing and then take a check ride exam for CFI. Then you can get a CFI or CFI2 they call it. And that’s where you would be able to to do instrument training teach people instrument. Um but you can do either one depending on what kind of experience you want you want to gather.

All right. Step 5B is to earn a multi-engine rating. If you want to fly for the airlines. So, you’ll want to do this while you’re kind of flight instructing, while you’re building hours in whatever way you found best for you to build up to those 1500 hours that you need for airline transport pilot. At the same time, you want to get your multi-engine airlines because if you want to fly for an airline, you’re going to need it because airlines are always flying aircraft with two engines or more, right? Um they’re more redundant, safer for for, you know, flying a bunch of people. So, you’re gonna have to get your multi-engine rating if you want to fly for the airlines. To get this rating, again, this is not a certificate. It’s a rating that you would add on to your other certificates. Again, you have to complete ground training on a multi-engine aircraft, but you don’t, if you see this, you don’t have to get an endorsement for ground because there is no written exam for a multi-engine rating. But you still have to do ground with an instructor. Then you have to do flight training and receive an endorsement from the instructor to take a multi-engine check ride. Then you have to pass that check ride. So it’s the exact same as the other ones except for just take out a written exam test. There’s no written exam test for multi-genine. There’s still ground training that’s required and has to be put in your log book from an instru certified instructor. There’s still flight training and the endorsement and there’s still a practical check ride, but there’s just no written exam here. no written exam for a multi-engine add-on. So, that’s nice. One less test we got to do.

All right. Step six is to earn your airline transport pilot or ATP certificate. This is the highest level of FAA pilot certificate. To obtain this, again, you have to complete ground training and receive an endorsement for the ATP written exam. You have to pass that ATP written exam. Then you have to complete all your flight training, have your minimum hours, which you talked about, 1,500 hours total, unless it’s a restricted ATP. Then it can be a little less. Receive an endorsement from certified instructor to take the practical exam and then pass the practical ATP exam. So, same thing as private pilot, same thing as IFR, same thing as commercial pilot. You got to do the ground, get the ground endorsement, take the ground test, got to do flight, get the flight endorsement, take the flight test. All right. Again, we mentioned this earlier, but you got to be at least 23 years old to obtain your ATP. So, at this point, you got to be at least 23 years old.

All right, step 7A is get hired, right? So, this is a key step, but usually people will apply, they’ll interview, and they’ll continue to gain experience. No matter whether you’re paying for your own training, you’re at some program or or you know, school or you’re in the military or you’re flight instructing, whatever it is you’re doing, just continue to build those hours and gain experience. Apply and interview as much as possible. Most people in the step continue to conduct flight training like I mentioned as they apply and interview to become a first officer or a co-pilot at a regional airline. That’s usually the first stepping point, right? you go to one of those re regional airlines, you know, that are flying a little bit smaller planes and only traveling, you know, across state or from one state over or something like that. Once hired, the airline will provide you with aircraft specific type training. So, your training is not over. Once you get hired, then you have to get a type certificate for the type of airplane. Type certificates are required for airplane over 12,500 lb. Once you fly for the airlines, almost all the aircraft are above that weight. So they require all the pilots to have type certificate rating for the airplane they fly and that includes training, but your the person whoever hires you is going to provide that training for you.

All right. Next, you would get want to get hired at a major airline. As you build up experience flying at regional airlines, you may begin to apply for a promotion to first officer. So where you’re the captain, right? So, you’re you’re the co-pilot, you’re um you’re the co-pilot, you’ve been gaining experience there, you can get a promotion to become the captain, first pilot or first officer, right? Or you may just go straight to a major airline and kind of go up that way and be a co-pilot there before you become the captain or first officer at a major airline. So, there’s kind of multiple ways to do it, right? Um, but major airlines such as Delta, United, Southwest, Alaska, things like that. Once hired, the airline again will provide you with types training for the aircraft they plan to have you fly in. So, let’s say you’re flying for the regional airlines as a co-pilot and then you get hired at for Alaska Airlines as a co-pilot and they have you training on a Boeing 737, you know, whatever variant of that is, and they want you to fly that specific train plane. So, they’ll have you do that type certificate training, earn your type certificate for that airplane. Then you would start flying that airplane as a co-pilot, and then from there, you would want to get promoted to a captain.

All right? So, that’s all you got to do, right? It’s a lot of work. Um, it is a lot of work, a lot of hours, a lot of money. But as of 2023, 2024, a pilot career had a better return on investment than a doctor or a lawyer does. So, there’s some pilots out there, you know, as you gain more experience and you fly more things like that, you know, once you get up to like 20 years of experience and things like that, there’s pilots out there that are making over a million dollars per year. Um, so the return, so if your flight training is ends up being $100,000, you know, in 20 years, if you’re making a million dollars a year, I would say that’s worth it. And you know how expensive it is to become a doctor, become a go to law school, to become a lawyer, that’s even more expensive than it is the training to become a pilot. You know, instead of 100,000, you’re looking at two, three, four, $500,000, student loans, all that stuff. So although it’s a lot of work and although it is a lot of time, a lot of money, you got to think of it in perspective of kind of other high-paying valuable jobs in our society. And it really is when you look at it that way, it is a great choice still to this day. All right. So that is it. That is how you become an airline pilot.