Every quarter, Canada’s governing aviation body (Transport Canada) publishes statistics on the number of licenses currently in force. They do a nice job of breaking down the stats by type of license, gender, age, student permits, newly issued, air traffic controllers, province and region, among others. I belong to the column of newly issued aeroplane private licenses, so I thought I would make a few graphs to illustrate the breakdown between a few different classes of data. All data is current as of June 2009.

To start, I thought I would compare the number of private (PPL), commercial (CPL), and airline transport (ATPL) licenses currently in force in Canada. As you can see from the chart below, the vast majority of aeroplane licenses issued in Canada are PPLs with about 27,000 in force. The next biggest chunk comes from the ATPL group with over 11,000 in force and finally the CPLs with 8,000.

No surprises here. The PPL is the least specialized license you can obtain in this group so naturally most of the weekend pilots and general aviation pilots will be included here. The CPL allows you to fly for hire, but there’s only so much you can do with it if you expect to move up to the airlines, so that’s probably why you see it at the bottom of the stack numbers-wise. The airline pilots and aspiring airline pilots hold the ATPLs and make up a good chunk of the total licenses issued at almost one quarter.

Next, I’ve included the same data but for helicopter licenses. You’ll notice that most of the licenses held in this class are by the CPLs. ATPLs make up the next biggest group while PPL helicopter licenses bring up the rear. I believe that helicopters are a little more expensive to operate and maintain than your average single engine airplane so perhaps that’s why we see a huge drop in PPL helicopter licenses in force.

The next logical step would be to look at the split between male and female PPL, CPL, and ATPL aeroplane licenses. Before I looked at the numbers, I knew that there were less female pilots than males, but I was actually quite stunned when I saw the stats.

I figured that the split would be more around 15-20% female, but the number is actually much lower at between 5-7%. In my experience, there have only ever been one or two female flight instructors at the schools I’ve been at and I think I’ve been on two commercial flights where the first officer was female. I have never seen a female captain before but I’m sure there are lots out there.

The final category I’ll look at is one of the more important categories for myself: age. Since I’m working towards my CPL and eventually my ATPL, I want to know when to expect airlines to hire. A big factor is the number of pilots that will retire in the near future. I know that we’re currently in a recession, but the economy will no doubt recover by the time I’m ready to start working as an instructor, so I’m not too worried. Here are the numbers (click to enlarge):

In the PPL category, most of the licenses are held by people under 30. Looking at the bell curve of numbers between 30 and 65, the peak comes at license holders aged 50-54 years old. It’s important to take into account generational bias here because this is exactly where the baby-boomers fall.

Moving onto the CPL category, we can see that the younger folks definitely rule the commercial licenses. Pilots under 40 hold the majority of the CPLs in force in Canada. There is a bit of a bump with the baby-boomers again at ages 50-54.

Finally, the ATPLs. This category is a little more constant towards the middle age groups. The most ATPLs are issued to pilots aged 35-39 where only very few are issued to pilots aged over 60. With stringent medical requirements, many pilots over the age of 50 are forced to retire as their bodies age. While I feel bad for these guys, it will eventually open doors for me. Looking at ATPLs aged over 50, we can see that there are 3,948 of them. This means that within the next 10-15 years, we’ll probably see most of these guys retire. In percentage terms, close to 36% of ATPLs will be retiring in the next decade, if not sooner. This is great news for aspiring airline pilots such as myself. Even if I can’t land a job in the airlines, the vacuum effect of these retirements combined with the hopeful upturn in the economy will create jobs at all levels of commercial aviation in Canada and around the world.