Latest Data on U.S. Women Pilots
FAA statistics for year-end 2025
When it comes to women pilots, FLYING Magazine makes a common mistake with the latest FAA’s U.S. Civil Airmen Statistics. When student pilots are included, the pilot totals are inflated and skewed. The FAA provides numbers for “Pilot Total without Student Category”, if only people would bother to look. For 2025, that number is 517,233 total pilots, and 39,940 total women pilots — a far cry from the “milestone” of 100,000+ women pilots cited in their articles and posts.
WHY NOT INCLUDE STUDENT PILOTS? Student pilots hold no aircraft ratings, cannot fly except under the supervision of a flight instructor, and might never fly solo. And they are over-counted by the FAA, because “there is no expiration date on the new student pilot certificates, which generates a cumulative increase in the numbers”, according to the information provided with their data.
ATTRITION: According to an AOPA study, attrition among student pilots is estimated to be as a high as 70% to 80%. Signs of this are seen in the FAA data by comparing the number of student pilot certificates in one year to new entry-level pilot certificates issued in the following year. There were 345,495 student pilot certificates in 2024, and a total of 57,772 new recreational, sport, and private pilot certificates issued in 2025, for example.
Accuracy demands that we cite total pilot figures withOUT student pilots for all these reasons, especially when presenting data on women pilots.
ACCURATE DATA ON U.S. WOMEN PILOTS FOR 2025
MORE WOMEN PILOTS: There are more active rated women pilots in the United States than ever before — nearly 40,000.
GROWTH: Due to an increase in pilots overall, women’s representation is still small and rising slowly: Women represent 7.72% of all rated pilots in the United States, an increase from 6.35% in 2024.
GROWTH AT HIGHEST LEVEL: Women are estimated to be about 5.5% to 6% of U.S. airline pilots. Note that not every pilot holding the Airline Transport Pilot certificate is employed as an airline pilot. Even so, more women who learn to fly are aiming to be airline pilots and high-level professional pilots, as seen in the average age of ATP certificate holders, which is 50 years old overall but 44 years old for women.
LATEST NUMBERS: Women are now…
o 7.72% of all rated pilots
o 9.41% of Private Pilots
o 10.88% of Commercial Pilots
o 5.71% of Airline Transport Pilots
o 9.59% of Flight Instructors
o 8.99% of Remote Pilots
o 3.04% of Mechanics
o 21.19% of Dispatchers
o 78% of Flight Attendants
Additional statistics are here.
© 2026 Jenny T. Beatty. All Rights Reserved.
Graphic © 2026 Jenny T. Beatty. All Rights Reserved.
