7

Title says it all. I don't see this information online anywhere. A breakdown by PPL/CPL would be nice. I have a vague memory of someone telling me 300 but that seems a tad low for a city of 7.5 million.

fooot
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tar
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    Given a fleet size of 135 aircraft of Cathay Pacific, 300 pilots is definitely too low. – DeltaLima Jul 09 '14 at 07:54
  • What makes you think Cathay pilots are licensed in Hong Kong? I know that flight training in Hong Kong is almost nonexistent due to high costs. – tar Jul 09 '14 at 09:02
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    The training has not to take place in Hong Kong to apply for a license in Hong Kong I think. I assume that operating a commercial aircraft registered in Hong Kong requires a Hong Kong issued license, hence my previous comment. – DeltaLima Jul 09 '14 at 13:53
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    Asking a question about a specific aspect of flying allows one of the 'experts' here to answer it. I don't intend ANY disrespect by those quote, I'm simply acknowledging by it the fact that most (or all) of the pilots/enthusiasts would (vehemenently) deny being expert at all. Asking a question requiring minutia of engineering detail would probably get Knapf to answer. :) Asking a question which does not require the above would enable any of us to do research to get your answer. Since you've already admitted to researching this, I'm not sure any of us can do any better. :D – CGCampbell Jul 09 '14 at 15:22
  • According to an article (http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1524803/alarming-number-pilots-quit-hong-kong-airlines), there are "The resignations leave the airline [Hong Kong Airlines] with about 250 pilots to fly its 22 aircraft, sources said. Cathay Pacific has more than 2,900 pilots to fly about 140 aircraft." – CGCampbell Jul 09 '14 at 15:27
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    @fooot The US has ~620,000 pilots, for a population of 319,000,000 (0.2%), if we assume a similar ratio for Hong Kong we get a little over 14,000 pilots. I suspect the truth is somewhere in between those numbers, though I have no proof. (I do know that comparatively the United States has a pretty high per capita number of pilots than most other nations, owing to our somewhat more GA-friendly training/regulatory environment & infrastructure.) – voretaq7 Jul 10 '14 at 01:06
  • @fooot those are very interesting stats. I hadn't thought about comparing to China but it's logical! Thank you. – tar Jul 10 '14 at 02:49
  • @DeltaLima that's exactly the reason I'm tying to find this number - I'm converting my Canadian PPL to Hong Kong and I want to know how rare I am :) – tar Jul 10 '14 at 02:50
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    I can't answer the question, but the HK Civil Aviation Department has a form for requesting information; you might be able to get it that way. – Pondlife Sep 09 '14 at 16:32
  • @voretaq7 The thing that surprised me most the last time I saw the numbers for the U.S. was the number of ATPs we have. We have over 140,000 ATPs! As far as comparing HK to the rest of China... you're probably better off comparing it to, say, South Korea, Taiwan, or Japan. Hong Kong is very different economically from the majority of the Chinese population. – reirab Jan 29 '15 at 22:15

1 Answers1

15

I reached out to the Hong Kong Civil Aviation Department and asked this question. To my surprise, I got an answer back in less than 12 hours.

As of December 31, 2014, they report:

  • 219 private pilots
  • 951 commercial pilots
  • 4007 ATPL holders
  • 20 MCPL holders

For a total of 5197 pilots licensed in Hong Kong.

voretaq7
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paulr
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    Although this information isn't publicly available, but +1 for getting to a long forgotten question. – Farhan Jan 29 '15 at 20:32
  • @Farhan Well it's sort-of publicly available - we have a point-in-time snapshot that Paul found for us, and information on how to contact the Hong Kong Civil Aviation Department in case anyone needs more up-to-date information – voretaq7 Jan 29 '15 at 22:22