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 experienced a dramatic pilot hiring boom from 2022-2024 following the COVID-19 recovery, characterized by rapid career progression and high demand.
By 2025, this hiring spree has sharply contracted, with major airlines trimming recruitment to replacement levels and low-cost and regional carriers struggling, marking a return to a cyclical downturn.
The author emphasizes that aviation is inherently a cyclical business prone to booms and busts, drawing parallels to his "Lost Decade" after 9/11 and advising newer pilots to prepare for potential grind and instability.
Despite the industry's volatility and career challenges, the intrinsic joy of flying and the strong camaraderie among colleagues are highlighted as crucial elements that sustain pilots through difficult periods.

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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.