We counted 11,727 open aviation jobs from 1,498 employers. Captain pay held at $200,000 and the captain shortage barely eased. The surprise is who is hiring pilots. The two employers posting the most pilot jobs on WingmanPro both fly air ambulances.
By WingmanPro Research · Published October 9, 2026
This is the second monthly State of Aviation Jobs report. Employers have 51,799 jobs posted on WingmanPro this week, and 11,727 of them are aviation work: flying, fixing, crewing, dispatching, or running aircraft and airports. The rest are office, software and engineering roles at aerospace companies, and this report leaves them out. Pay figures are medians of posted ranges, annualized, in US dollars, as of October 9, 2026.
The short answers first. Captain listings post a median of $200,130 and first officer listings $110,000. Helicopter pilot listings post $102,516. Air medical operators now post one pilot job in five, and they pay $96,883 for helicopter pilots. Avionics technicians post $119,520, flight instructors $85,883, A&P mechanics $82,347 and flight attendants $64,501. The median aviation job on the board posts $85,000.
If you read September's report, two of those numbers will look wrong. The market did not move that much; the count got stricter. September measured all 32,138 listings on the board, so a thermal engineer at a defense contractor counted the same as a line pilot. This month we count only aviation work, using the same test that decides which jobs get a public, search-indexed page on WingmanPro. We also stopped taking every posted range at face value. One aircraft management company posts $50,000 to $500,000 on 153 listings. Nobody is offering a pilot somewhere between fifty and five hundred thousand dollars. It is a placeholder, and we now drop it. Those two changes take the overall median from September's $132,000 to $85,000. Wherever this report compares with September, we recomputed September under the same rules.
September's report ended with four things to watch. Here is the scorecard, plus two rows we were not watching that moved more than any of them.
| Measure | September | October |
|---|---|---|
| Captain listings per first officer listing | 2.9 | 2.7 |
| Median captain posted pay | $195,000 | $200,130 |
| Median King Air captain posted pay | $110,000 | $104,573 |
| Avionics premium over A&P mechanics | $41,340 | $37,173 |
| Listings that state pay | 50.3% | 50.2% |
| Air medical share of pilot listings | 12.8% | 20.7% |
| Median helicopter pilot posted pay | $91,370 | $102,516 |
Air medical operators post 418 of the 2,020 pilot jobs on the board, 20.7 percent. In September it was one in eight. Neither of the two biggest posters of pilot jobs on WingmanPro is an airline. Air Methods lists 157 pilot openings and Global Medical Response 149. Global Medical Response posted 259 of its 275 current listings since September 1, most of them line pilot seats at bases from Beckley, West Virginia to Ponca City, Oklahoma.
| Employer | Median posted pay | Listings with pay |
|---|---|---|
| Air medical operators | $96,883 | 224 |
| Government, utility and other operators | $126,253 | 56 |
| All helicopter pilot listings | $102,516 | 280 |
The helicopter median rose $11,146 in a month, and nearly all of that is one employer. Air Methods posts the same narrow band at most bases, $82,900 to $93,251. Global Medical Response posts $88,759 to $141,570 depending on base and program. When the higher payer adds more than a hundred listings, the median follows it up.
The best-paid helicopter flying on the board is not medical. Customs and Border Protection and Army National Guard units post about $126,000 to $128,000, and the non-medical group as a whole posts $126,253. Those employers state pay far less often, 24.1 percent of the time against 64.4 percent for air medical, so that sample is thin.
Getting hired is the hard part. Of the 382 helicopter listings that name a minimum, 262 ask for 2,000 hours, and only 21 accept 1,000 or fewer. The rotor discount is still large, too. Jet pilot listings post a median of $200,000, about $97,500 above helicopters. In September the gap was about $108,600.
Captain listings outnumber first officer listings 631 to 230. The median captain listing posts $200,130 across 207 listings with pay, and the median first officer listing posts $110,000 across 73. That is a $90,130 premium for the fourth stripe, up from about $85,000 in September. What the industry lacks is pilots who can sign for the airplane.
The aircraft still sets the price. A Gulfstream captain listing posts more than twice what a King Air captain listing does.
| Aircraft family | Median posted salary | Listings with pay |
|---|---|---|
| Gulfstream | $245,000 | 58 |
| Bombardier (Global, Challenger) | $230,000 | 53 |
| Dassault Falcon | $223,000 | 19 |
| Cessna Citation | $171,250 | 26 |
| Pilatus | $163,000 | 12 |
| Beechcraft King Air | $104,573 | 13 |
Gulfstream sits $30,000 below the figure we printed in September. That is the placeholder fix, not a pay cut. A $50,000 to $500,000 range has a midpoint of exactly $275,000, and in early September 53 of those listings were Gulfstream captain seats. Measured this month's way, September's Gulfstream median was $257,625, so the real change is a slip of about $12,600 on a small sample. At the top end, Jet Aviation is advertising Gulfstream G700 lead captain seats at $385,000 to $435,000 in California and $400,000 to $420,000 in South Texas.
| Operation | Median posted pay | Pilot listings with pay |
|---|---|---|
| Corporate (Part 91) | $200,000 | 149 |
| Charter (Part 135) | $155,000 | 159 |
| Airline (Part 121) | $139,000 | 215 |
| Air medical | $99,593 | 283 |
Unlike September's version of this table, every row here is pilots only, so gate agents and ramp crews no longer drag down the airline line. Corporate flight departments are still the top bidder. Treat the airline figure as a ceiling. Airlines mostly quote hourly rates, and we annualize those at 2,080 hours, more than an airline pilot is paid for in a year. A mainline career can still win on lifetime earnings once seniority and widebody upgrades compound.
| Position | Median posted pay | Listings with pay |
|---|---|---|
| Captain | $200,130 | 207 |
| Aviation management | $119,625 | 500 |
| Avionics technician | $119,520 | 528 |
| Pilot (all seats) | $116,497 | 802 |
| First officer | $110,000 | 73 |
| Flight instructor | $85,883 | 103 |
| A&P mechanic | $82,347 | 1,157 |
| Flight attendant | $64,501 | 59 |
| Aircraft dispatcher | $54,600 | 94 |
| Ground crew | $42,910 | 319 |
Maintenance is where the volume is. Employers posted 1,219 mechanic and avionics listings in the last 30 days against 678 pilot listings, nearly two to one. With 2,402 open listings, A&P mechanics are the biggest job family we track.
Avionics still pays $37,173 more than general A&P work. That is about $4,000 less than in September, and still a big premium for one specialty.
Flight attendant listings post $64,501, the lowest of any flying job, and only 35 percent state pay at all. United's cabin listings post $77,168. The private cabin is still the exception. Clay Lacy Aviation lists Gulfstream and Global cabin attendant seats at $170,000 to $200,000.
| Employer | Open aviation jobs |
|---|---|
| American Airlines group (incl. Envoy, PSA, Piedmont) | 1,333 |
| Airbus | 637 |
| Air Methods | 444 |
| Southwest Airlines | 409 |
| Delta Air Lines | 392 |
| Global Medical Response | 275 |
| RTX | 273 |
| Boeing | 249 |
The American Airlines group posts more aviation jobs than anyone, but read the mix before you apply. 811 of its 1,333 listings sit outside the flying, maintenance and ground crew families, mostly customer service and gate agent roles, with a median posted pay of $36,920. 19 are for pilots. Southwest has 6 pilot listings out of 409, and Delta 7 out of 392. The airlines are hiring the terminal far more than the flight deck.
This is also where the two ways of counting disagree most. RTX has 8,919 listings on WingmanPro, and 273 of them are aviation work. Anduril has 4,042, and 103. Count every opening, as our aerospace hiring report does, and the defense and space companies dwarf the airlines. Count only aviation work and the airlines lead. Both are true; they answer different questions.
| State | Open aviation jobs | Median posted pay |
|---|---|---|
| California | 1,327 | $125,000 |
| Texas | 1,140 | $84,176 |
| Florida | 571 | $76,960 |
| New York | 571 | $81,330 |
| Illinois | 535 | $90,000 |
| Georgia | 491 | $79,903 |
| Washington | 446 | $95,489 |
| Colorado | 337 | $92,369 |
Take out the office roles and California's lead almost disappears. It has 1,327 aviation jobs to Texas's 1,140. September's count, office roles included, had California holding one job in five. California still pays the most by a distance, $125,000 against $84,176 in Texas. Its pay-transparency law also means 79.4 percent of California listings show a number, against 34.0 percent in Texas, so California pay is the better measured of the two. Another 2,787 listings are outside the US or name no state.
Every listing behind these numbers is live on the board today; the links below go straight to the relevant slices.
Helicopter pilot listings on WingmanPro post a median of $102,516 a year, and the middle half runs from $88,076 to $116,497. Air medical operators post $96,883. Government, utility and other operators post $126,253, though they state pay far less often.
Air medical helicopter listings post a median of $96,883. Air Methods posts $82,900 to $93,251 at most bases, and Global Medical Response posts $88,759 to $141,570 depending on base and program. Most of those listings ask for 2,000 flight hours.
Getting the first one is. Of the 382 helicopter listings that name a minimum, 262 ask for 2,000 hours and only 21 accept 1,000 or fewer. Most new helicopter pilots build that time as instructors before they qualify for air medical, tour or utility work.
Not for captains. Captain listings outnumber first officer listings 2.7 to 1, down slightly from 2.9 in September, and the median captain listing posts $200,130. The squeeze is on experienced pilots who can sign for the airplane, not on pilots in general.
Senior captains on ultra-long-range business jets. Jet Aviation is advertising Gulfstream G700 lead captain seats at $385,000 to $435,000 in California and $400,000 to $420,000 in South Texas. The median Gulfstream captain listing posts $245,000.
Corporate pilot listings, the Part 91 flight departments, post a median of $200,000, the highest of any type of operation, against $155,000 for charter and $139,000 for airline pilot listings.
This report is a snapshot of every job posted on WingmanPro on October 9, 2026: 51,799 open listings, of which 11,727 are aviation jobs from 1,498 employers. A listing counts as aviation work when the board files it under an aviation role such as pilot, mechanic, flight instructor, flight attendant, dispatcher or ground crew, when its title names aviation work, or when the employer is an aviation operator. It is the same test that decides which jobs get a public, search-indexed page.
Salary statistics use the 5,682 US-dollar aviation listings that state a usable pay range. We take the midpoint of each posted range, or the single bound where only one is given. We annualize hourly rates at 2,080 hours, daily at 260 days, weekly at 52 weeks and monthly at 12 months, the same conversions the board's pay filter uses. We exclude values that annualize below $20,000 or above $2,000,000 and, new this month, ranges whose top is five or more times their bottom, which removes 160 placeholder ranges.
We recomputed every September comparison from the listings that were live on September 9, 2026, under this month's rules and sources, so they differ from the figures printed in the September report. All figures are medians, not averages. We derive seat, aircraft and operation tags from listing text; air medical means listings from air ambulance operators. Most tables show how many listings with pay sit behind each median, so be more skeptical of the small ones. The September comparison table does not, and the state table counts all open jobs, with or without pay. Spot an error? Write to support@wingmanpro.com.