How many hours does a pilot work?

The federal regulations, however, have strict limits on the number of hours a pilot can fly and the minimum amount of rest between flights is a large determining factor of how many hours a pilot will fly and spend doing pre-and post-flight duties. The seniority a pilot has with his/her particular airline and the length of flights are also factors.

A seniority number is assigned to a pilot generally based on the date of the pilot's hire onto the airline. The higher seniority a pilot possesses, the more discretion they have when it comes to choosing their schedule, trip destinations, based location, aircraft type, and other perks associated with tenure at an airline.

The FAA limits the number of hours a pilot can fly consecutively and also within a calendar week, month, and year. Ample rest times are also required between flights of certain lengths in order to remain compliant with FAA safety regulations.

For example, a short-haul flight lasts from 30 minutes to three hours, a mid-haul flight lasts from three to six hours, a long-haul flight lasts six to 12 hours and an ultra-long-haul flight lasts longer than 12 hours.

The flight time limitations impact the pilot depending on the length of flights. For example, long-haul pilots work longer shifts, but they generally receive longer periods of time off between working days than short-haul pilots.

Although pilots are limited in the number of hours they can fly per week, they still must perform ground duties such as maintenance checks, studying weather reports, building flight plans, refueling, preflight inspections, postflight checks, and so forth.

Types of Pilots and How Many Hours They Work:

• Commercial Pilot: 85 flight hours and 80 ground hours per month

• Flight Instructor: 80-100 flight hours and 100 ground hours per month

• Airline Transport Pilot: 75-100 flight hours and 150 ground hours per month

Pilot hours work based on duration:

• Daily - An airline transport pilot can fly up to eight hours per 24 hour period and up to 10 hours if a second pilot is aboard. Pilots are required to rest a minimum of 16 hours postflight. Some variances to these regulations exist depending on the company's operations specifications.

• Monthly - The average airline pilot flies 75 hours per month, but pilots are allowed to fly up to 100 hours within 30 days.

• Yearly - The average airline pilot will fly 700 hours per year and are not to exceed 1,000 flight hours within a 12-month period.