Airline Pilot Grind: Keeping Chin Up and Nose Down Remains Good Advice

For those who took up professional flying in the past few years, we will have much in common in years to come.

Sam Weigel

Tuesday, September 16, 2025 at 08:00 AM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Travis Tingle

During the arduous journey to becoming an airline pilot, the author says his ‘saving grace was the people I flew with...’ [Courtesy: Sam Weigel]

Key Takeaways:

The airline industry has abruptly shifted from a significant pilot hiring boom (2022-2024), driven by post-COVID recovery, to a sharp downturn in 2025, with major airlines cutting back hiring and regional/low-cost carriers ceasing entirely due to financial struggles.
This market contraction highlights aviation's cyclical nature, mirroring the challenging "Lost Decade" the author experienced after 9/11, which required years of perseverance through regional flying and financial difficulties.
The author advises new pilots, who entered during the recent boom and now face a difficult job market, to maintain their love of flying, find strength in camaraderie, and be prepared for a long grind, drawing parallels to his own arduous career path.

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The last five years have been a wild ride in the airline industry. We went from a healthy job market in 2019 to the apparent cataclysm of COVID-19—coming within a hair’s breadth of mass layoffs—to the abrupt recovery of 2021, the airlines’ belated realization that they had trimmed too much, and a veritable blowout of pilot hiring in 2022-24.

For three years the major carriers grabbed up new airline pilot hires at staggering rates, regional and low cost airlines struggled to fill classes and retain first officers, and both corporate flight departments and the military struggled with attrition as the word got out about that greener grass just over the fence.