Originally Posted by
muppetofthenorth
Far more than they can handle.
Pilot slots are about to be massively reduced as MFTS fails to deliver the throughput needed. Many applicants spend months waiting for medicals, OASC dates, and then spend even longer in the Sift.
It's a prestige role, and an aspirational one, it's always going to be over-subscribed. Actual numbers, though (rather than anecdotes), will be hard to come by.
For Pilot the number of applicants are, and have been for years, per year in the thousands, probably last year 4000+ applied.
For the past 5 years the number of Pilots getting selected for each IOT has been about 20. So around 100 Pilots being selected a year. Given the problems with MFTS now only 4 Pilots per IOT so no more than 25 per year.