Number of Pilots Needed per plane

[hopeful_pilot]

Hi, I have always wondered abt this..how many pilots (including those on standby and backup) are actually needed for 1 plane?

I do understand that quite alot of pilots are needed as backup is that true?

[Been Accounting]

From 4.5 to 6.5 crews per aircraft depending on fleet size, route frequency, sector length etc

... and not forgetting utilisation!

[nuclear weapon]

For an airline in africa its 10 pilots to one 737 I assume ryanair is about 10:1 as well. BA should be slightly more.

[Dan Winterland]

Depends. One airline I worked for (long haul only) crewed at 8.5 crews per aircraft and there were on average three pilots per crew as a lot of the trips were ultra long haul and needed up to 4 pilots. So 25 per aircraft in this case.

[Cyrano]

UK regional a couple of years ago (pretty high utilisation, but efficiently crewed): about 4.5 crews (i.e. 9 pilots) per aircraft.

[747-436]

It depends on whether the flights are predominantly short, medium or long haul as well. With medium haul for instance with 7 aircraft you might need 130 pilots, but with short haul you could have 12 aircraft with the same number of pilots. If routes start requiring night stops away from base then you often need a different set of crew to be down there already to bring the aircraft back, where as on a short haul rotation the same crew would often do both. Also with long haul operations some flights are not daily so a crew would be away from base for 4 days or so so they can;t be utilised during this time. With short haul the pilots could be working all the time. This also has to be considered when working out crews per aircraft.

Another factor to consider is if the airline uses its own Training Captains to train in Sims etc this will also take them off the line for days at a time so this also needs additional crew. There are many many variable factors when working out the numbers of crew needed per aircraft.

[TheGorrilla]

BA have a mixture of long and short haul aircraft, with a total of about 235 aircraft. 3400 ish pilots, so that averages out at around 14.5 pilots per plane.