Do You Need a Degree to Be a Pilot?

No US airline requires a college degree

Delta

United

American

Southwest

And every regional, where nearly every new pilot starts. Delta, the last holdout, dropped it in January 2022.

Who asks for what

Employer	Degree	What matters instead
Regional airlines	Not required	Where nearly every new commercial pilot starts. Certificates, hours, interview.
US majors	Preferred, not required	Delta was last to drop this requirement in January, 2022
Cargo (FedEx, UPS)	Listed as preferred	Weighted more heavily than at a passenger airline, in a competitive pool.
Corporate, charter, Part 135	Not required	Type ratings, turbine time and who vouches for you.
Flight instruction	Not required	A CFI certificate is a certificate, not a credential. First paid flying job for most pilots.
US military	Required	Pilots are commissioned officers, and a commission needs a bachelor’s degree. No enlisted pilot path.

Preferred breaks a tie between two equal applicants. It does not screen anyone out, and at the regionals it does not come up.

What is actually required

The gates that stop people are federal, not academic. In the order they can end the plan:

A medical certificate: A first-class medical is the airline standard, and it is the one thing here you cannot study your way past. Sit the exam with an FAA-designated examiner before you spend money on anything else.
The certificates and ratings: Private, instrument, commercial, multi-engine, and for most people the instructor certificates on top. Each one is a written test, a flight test and an examiner.
1,500 hours: The ATP under 14 CFR 61.159, with its own cross-country, night and instrument breakdown. This is the long part of the path.
The records and the interview: Background checks, a Pilot Records Database review, a clean driving record, and an interview that is mostly about judgment. Careers are won and lost here, not on transcripts.

Where a degree still helps

500 fewer hours, if it is the right degree: An aviation major from an FAA-authorized school gets you a restricted ATP at 1,000 hours instead of 1,500 (14 CFR 61.160). At an airline, date of hire sets pay, schedule, base and upgrade for the rest of your career, so arriving a year earlier compounds. This is the one thing a degree does that a logbook cannot.
A floor if the medical goes: Every paid flying job runs on an FAA medical. Most pilots keep theirs for a whole career. The ones who do not need something else to stand on, and loss-of-license insurance is the other half of that answer.
The jobs after the flying: Chief pilot roles, airline management, safety departments, some foreign carriers. None of them are the entry-level job, but a career lasts forty years.
Visas and cadet schemes: Some overseas carriers still list a degree, and some immigration rules weight one. If the plan involves flying outside the US, check that country rather than assuming the US answer travels.

The order people get wrong

If you want both, train first. Flight training is cheapest and fastest continuous, and a degree tolerates being spread out. Instructing pays while you build the 1,500 hours, and that is exactly when an online degree fits. The other way round means four years of tuition before the clock on your flying career even starts, and each of those years is a year of airline seniority you never get back.

The exception is the aviation degree that comes with the 1,000-hour ATP. If you are certain at eighteen and can fund it, that path holds together. Just price it first, because it is the most expensive way to reach the same certificates.

Questions

Do airlines require a college degree?

Not any more. Delta was the last US major to require one and dropped it in January 2022. Its published requirements now say a four-year degree is highly preferred but not a requirement. United, American and Southwest read the same, and the regionals never asked.

What do they require instead?

An ATP certificate, which means 1,500 hours, a first-class medical, the hour breakdowns in 14 CFR 61.159, a clean record and the interview. Those are the gates. A degree is a tiebreaker between qualified applicants.

What about FedEx and UPS?

FedEx lists a bachelor’s degree as preferred in its published pilot minimums, not required. Cargo has historically weighted a degree more heavily than the passenger airlines, so it is worth more there.

Do you need a degree to be a military pilot?

Yes, and here the answer is absolute. US military pilots are commissioned officers and a commission requires a bachelor’s degree. There is no enlisted pilot path.

Does a degree get you hired faster?

Only in one way. An aviation degree from an FAA-authorized school qualifies you for a restricted ATP at 1,000 hours instead of 1,500, an associate at 1,250. That is six months to a year earlier in an airline seat.

Should I get one anyway?

Plenty of pilots do, usually online during the instructing years when the schedule is their own. The case has little to do with getting hired and a lot to do with what happens if you lose your medical.

Sources

Last reviewed September 2026. Figures are the most recent published at that time. Wages, prices, rules and airline hiring minimums move, so check the source before you make a decision on one of these numbers.