How many air transport pilots are there in the world???

[mrsurrey]

Hi everyone,

This has got me stumped. I need to know how many pilots in the world have an air transport licence but can't find the information anywhere. Does anyone know where I should go to find this information?

Thanks for your help,

MrS

[Lasiorhinus]

This one will take a bit of research.

First of all, you need to be more specific in your question. Do you want to know how many people are employed as airline transport pilots, (bearing in mind that the copilot of a large transport category aircraft is legally only required to have a commercial licence), or do you wish to know how many people have airline transport pilot licences (bearing in mind people may have an ATPL but fly Cessna 210s in the bush - and indeed may not actually be employed as a pilot at all), or do you want to know how many people have airline transport licences WITH a current medical certificate?

Depending on the answer to that, your method of working it out will be slightly different, but my suggestion would be to compile a list of every Civil Aviation Administrator in the world, and contact them each individually. They will have the breakdowns for some of this data, but each for their own jurisdiction only.

Then, of course, you have to figure out how many people have ATPLs from more than one country!

[Contacttower]

Not sure about the world, but as a start I believe there are about 12,000 in the UK.

[vapilot2004]

In 2006 there were about 135,000 active ATP certificate holders living in the states.

These folks www.ifalpa.org, may have some idea of the number of ATP holders worldwide.