The answer changes significantly depending on what plane a pilot flies.
Airline pilots fly a lot. Over the course of the year, it would be easy to lose track of hours and sectors flown if not for scrupulous timekeeping both on the part of pilots as well as by the airlines they fly for. Let’s talk about how many trips and hours a line pilot might fly over the course of a calendar year.
Flight Duty Limitations
The most important consideration for pilot schedulers is ensuring that pilots are adhering to the legal maximums. In the United States, the Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs) limit pilots to 36 flight hours in a week, 100 hours in 672 hours (28 days), and 1,000 hours in a 365-day calendar period. As a hard answer, the maximum number of hours a pilot can fly in a year is 1,000 hours. European airline pilots (and pretty much every airline pilot) abide by very similar rules.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) stipulates its flight duty limitations in Regulation 83/2014. The only difference between EASA regulations and the FAA is that European pilots cannot exceed 900 flight hours in a calendar year, but they are allowed 1,000 hours within 12 consecutive calendar months like their American counterparts. These limitations are well-known by pilots as every airline is required to conduct fatigue management courses as part of its legal operating certificate.
Different Planes, Different Schedules
The amount of cycles a pilot flies in a year varies significantly depending on the aircraft they fly for their airline. Consider two pilots who work for the same airline and are based in Los Angeles. One flies the Boeing 777, while the other flies the Airbus A320. The 777 pilot might have a three-day trip scheduled to fly to London and back. This trip will have a “block time” of somewhere close to 20 hours, depending on the season.
The A320 pilot also has a three-day trip worth 16 hours. Their trip takes them from L.A. to Chicago on the first day, Orlando, Charlotte, and Philadelphia on the second day, and then stops in Phoenix before returning to L.A. on the final day. Both pilots flew roughly the same amount of hours, but the Airbus pilot flew four more sectors than the Boeing long-haul pilot. There is even a chance that the long-haul pilot did not perform a takeoff and landing since the trip required three pilots for only two flights.
This comparison becomes even starker when you consider regional airline pilot schedules. Every regional airline is different and adjusts its schedule monthly depending on what is required of them by the mainline airline whose brand they fly for. It is not uncommon for regional pilot schedules to have four-day trip sequences with 12 flights that are worth roughly 18 hours. Assuming a regional pilot flies four of these trips per month for 12 months, it gets them just about to the legal maximum of 1,000 hours for the year.
Looking at the two extremes, a pilot who flies lots of shorter trips might accumulate 950 flight duty hours in a year and fly more than 500 sectors, while a long-haul pilot might be on duty for as many hours but fly approximately 100 flights. This is purely hypothetical and does not take into account time spent in annual training or vacation. The point still remains: The type of aircraft a pilot flies significantly changes the number of flights they work in a year.
Source: Simple Flying
