First Officer Retention
Canada’s Airlines Need to Compete for Their Future Captains
Across Canada, the job market for First Officers is real, and it’s active. WestJet is openly recruiting pilots for both mainline and Encore. Flair is advertising 737 First Officer positions in Toronto and Vancouver. Air Transat is hiring A321/A330 First Officers out of Toronto. Porter continues to expand with E2 jets and is recruiting FOs to match that growth. Even the regionals—Jazz, Central Mountain Air, Perimeter—are actively looking for pilots.
In that environment, every FO knows they have options. Most are still building experience and preparing for the left seat, but they’re also quietly comparing what each airline offers over the first ten to twelve years of their career. They look at entry‑level pay, how quickly the scale moves, and what the top of the FO ladder looks like before upgrade. When one carrier offers a clearly stronger financial path, it’s hard to justify staying somewhere that doesn’t.
Retention doesn’t start when a pilot becomes a Captain; it starts the day they join the line. If FO wages sit noticeably below what other carriers are paying, pilots won’t wait around to see if things improve. They’ll move to the airline that gives them the best chance to build a stable, long‑term career, a rational response to a market where multiple airlines are hiring.
For Canadian air carriers, the message in upcoming negotiations is straightforward: FO pay is now a primary retention tool, not a secondary issue. Contracts need entry rates that reflect current living costs and training investment, mid‑scale pay that keeps pilots engaged through their development years, and top‑scale FO wages that make staying put more attractive than jumping ship just before upgrade. Long, shallow pay ladders that leave FOs underpaid for a decade are no longer compatible with a market where another carrier is ready to hire them tomorrow.
Airlines don’t need to reinvent their business models to keep their future Captains. They do, however, need to recognize that the right seat is where pilots decide whether they see a future with the company. In a Canada where WestJet, Flair, Air Transat, Porter, and the regionals are all hiring, FO pay that fails to compete is simply an invitation to leave.
If carriers want stability on the flight deck, they need to start by making it genuinely worthwhile for First Officers to stay.
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