6,000 aircraft. A quarter of the global fleet. An ageing workforce,pilot shortages, and operational complexity that demands more than scaled-down versions of mainline training.

The Segment Hiding in Plain Sight

In October 2025, McKinsey & Company published a detailed analysis of the regional aviation sector that challenged a series of widely held assumptions about one of the industry’s most important but least understood segments. The numbers are substantial: approximately 6,000 regional aircraft in operation worldwide, roughly 40 percent located in North America, 23 percent in Asia-Pacific, and 20 percent in Europe. Regional aviation accounts for 9.3 million flights annually and provides approximately 11 percent of total commercial aviation seats from roughly a quarter of the global commercial fleet.

Yet despite its scale and strategic importance, regional aviation has not experienced the same dynamic post-pandemic recovery as the wider industry. McKinsey’s analysis reveals a nuanced picture: service using small narrowbody aircraft has recovered strongly, with 19 percent more flights in 2025 than in 2019. But service using smaller regional jets and turboprops has lagged significantly, with small turboprop flights still 27 percent below their 2019 levels and small regional jets down 50 percent.

The causes are multiple and interconnected: pilot shortages, ageing fleets, limited manufacturer investment, and rising airport charges. The German domestic route count, for instance, stands at just 38 percent of what it was twenty years ago. But McKinsey’s most provocative finding is that significant unserved markets remain across every region. Across the globe, there are city pairs with meaningful connecting traffic but no nonstop service, representing substantial opportunities for operators equipped to serve them.

For airline executives, training department heads, and workforce strategists, the McKinsey analysis raises a question that the industry has been slow to address: regional aviation has distinct operational characteristics that create distinct competency demands. Yet the training and talent development infrastructure available to regional operators is overwhelmingly designed for the mainline environment. This mismatch is constraining the sector’s recovery and limiting its future potential.

The Diversity Challenge: One Segment, Many Missions

McKinsey’s first and arguably most important insight is that regional aviation is remarkably heterogeneous. The aircraft types alone span a wide spectrum: small turboprops with fewer than 50 seats, larger turboprops, three classes of regional jet, and a new generation of small narrowbodies such as the Airbus A220 and Embraer E195-E2 that are redefining what regional means.

The missions are equally diverse. Network airlines use regional aircraft to feed hubs from secondary cities. Point-to-point specialists operate independent route networks. Contract carriers fly under capacity purchase agreements (CPAs) where the commercial risk sits with the mainline partner. Public Service Obligation operators provide essential connectivity to remote communities under government subsidy.

This diversity has profound implications for pilot competency. A turboprop captain operating into short, uncontrolled strips in remote terrain faces a fundamentally different operational environment than a regional jet first officer feeding a major hub in dense European airspace. Both require the core ICAO competencies, but the weighting, the context, and the specific behaviours that define competent performance differ substantially.

Yet the training systems that serve these operators rarely reflect this diversity. Type rating courses are standardised. Recurrent training follows generic syllabi. Assessment criteria are applied uniformly. The result is a one-size-fits-all approach to competency development in a segment where operational conditions vary more widely than in any other part of commercial aviation.

The Regional Pilot Crisis: Feeding the Drain

Regional aviation is caught in a workforce dynamic that threatens the sector’s viability. The pilot shortage that affects the entire industry hits regional operators disproportionately hard, because regional carriers have historically served as the training ground and feeder pipeline for mainline airlines. Pilots build their experience at regional operators, then move to the majors as soon as seniority and opportunity allow.

This creates a structural talent drain that regional operators have limited tools to combat. McKinsey notes that pilot shortages, alongside ageing fleets and limited investment, have directly contributed to the slower recovery of smaller aircraft operations. The pilots are not leaving aviation; they are leaving regional aviation, drawn by the higher compensation, better schedules, and career progression that mainline carriers offer.

The consequences cascade through the system. Regional operators face perpetually high turnover, which means perpetually high training costs. Experienced captains are replaced by relatively junior upgrades who themselves will leave as soon as better options materialise. Institutional knowledge evaporates with each departure. And the training burden falls on a shrinking pool of experienced instructors who are themselves targets for mainline recruitment.

CAE’s 2025 Aviation Talent Forecast adds quantitative context: 300,000 new pilots will be needed globally over the next decade, with the FAA projecting 4,300 annual pilot retirements in the US alone. For regional operators, who sit at the bottom of the aviation compensation hierarchy, this environment means competing for talent with one hand tied behind their back. The question is whether smarter, more efficient approaches to pilot development can help level a playing field that economics alone cannot.

The CPA Paradox: Stability Without Autonomy

McKinsey’s analysis reveals that 54 percent of regional aircraft globally operate under capacity purchase agreements with major airline partners. Under CPA arrangements, the mainline carrier sells the tickets and assumes the commercial risk, while the regional operator focuses on operations and earns revenue based on block hours or completed flights. This model significantly reduces profit volatility for regional operators and has historically provided a degree of financial stability that independent operation cannot match.

But the CPA model creates a paradox for training and competency management. Regional operators under CPA agreements are required to maintain their mainline partner’s brand standards, safety culture, and operational procedures. Yet they typically operate different aircraft types, serve different route profiles, and manage a workforce with fundamentally different career dynamics. The mainline carrier’s training standards were designed for mainline operations. Adapting them to the regional environment often results in either over-specification, where requirements designed for widebody international operations are applied to turboprop domestic sectors, or under-specification, where the unique competency demands of regional operations are not addressed because they do not appear in the mainline syllabus.

This gap matters because regional operations often involve higher operational complexity per flight hour than mainline flying. Shorter sectors mean more takeoffs and landings per duty period. Smaller airports mean less infrastructure support, less robust approach aids, and more variable ground handling. Weather becomes a more frequent decision-making factor on routes that mainline operators can overfly. And the crew environment is smaller, meaning that individual performance variation has a proportionally larger impact on operational outcomes.

For regional operators, whether under CPA or operating independently, the training challenge is not about less rigour. It is about different rigour, tailored to the competency demands of their specific operational environment.

The Opportunity: Competency Management as Competitive Advantage

McKinsey identifies significant unserved market opportunities across every global region, particularly in Europe where low-cost carriers are absent and rail infrastructure is insufficient. New-generation regional aircraft are narrowing the cost gap with larger narrowbodies, delivering approximately three percent lower costs per available seat kilometre compared with older standard narrowbodies and nearly 50 percent lower per-flight operating costs than the latest-generation standard narrowbodies.

Regional aviation is also positioned to lead the industry in sustainable innovation. Smaller aircraft are closer to viable alternative propulsion, with hybrid-electric and hydrogen-fuel-cell powertrains potentially reaching scale in the regional segment first. The sector’s ability to capture these opportunities depends critically on whether it can solve its workforce challenge, not just in quantity, but in the quality and efficiency of how pilots are developed, assessed, and retained.

This is where integrated competency management becomes a competitive differentiator. The Airline Pilot Club (APC) has built an ecosystem designed for the specific challenges that regional operators face: high training volumes, constrained instructor capacity, diverse operational environments, and the constant pressure of talent drain.

APC Recruitment’s evidence-based selection process is particularly relevant for regional operators who cannot afford the cost of hiring mistakes. When turnover is structurally high, every selection decision that correctly identifies candidates with the non-technical competencies that predict operational success, not just the licences that qualify them for consideration, represents a direct financial saving in reduced training waste and extended retention.

APC Academy’s structured oversight model addresses the consistency challenge that regional operators face across multiple bases and training partnerships. Working with ATOs to deliver mentored pathways with standardised reporting, the Academy ensures that pilots entering the regional environment receive development that is aligned to the specific competency demands of their operational context, not a generic mainline syllabus scaled down.

Amelia, APC’s competency intelligence platform, delivers particular value in the regional context. When instructors are managing high-turnover cohorts with diverse backgrounds and limited time between training events, the ability to capture competency evidence digitally using the ORCA methodology and detect drift patterns through longitudinal analysis means that problems are surfaced before they become costly. The approximately 20-25% reduction in instructor paperwork directly addresses the capacity constraint that regional operators face with their limited instructor pools.

The ARPP provides regional operators with something the current market does not: access to pilots whose competency development has been continuously verified through data. For operators competing for talent against better-resourced mainline carriers, the ability to draw from a curated pool of pilots with transparent competency profiles reduces the recruitment risk and the time-to-productivity that the sector can least afford to waste.

The Strategic Imperative for Regional Aviation

McKinsey’s analysis makes clear that regional aviation is not a declining segment. It is a segment in transition, with significant market opportunities, improving aircraft economics, and a potential leadership role in sustainable aviation. But the sector’s ability to capitalise on these opportunities is constrained by a workforce model that was designed for a different era.

Regional operators have accepted high turnover as inevitable, training fragmentation as normal, and competency management as a mainline luxury. The McKinsey data suggests these assumptions are no longer tenable. In markets where route counts are declining, connectivity gaps are widening, and new-generation aircraft are making previously uneconomic routes viable, the operators who will capture the opportunity are those who can develop, assess, and retain pilots more efficiently and effectively than their competitors.

The average age of the regional passenger aircraft fleet is approximately 17 years, significantly older than the 11-year average for narrowbodies. Fleet renewal is coming. With it will come new aircraft types, new operational profiles, and new competency demands. The operators who build the competency infrastructure now will be positioned to manage this transition. Those who do not will face the compounding cost of fleet complexity layered on top of workforce fragility.

Regional aviation connects communities, feeds global networks, and provides the essential last mile of air transport connectivity. Its future depends not on whether the markets exist, but on whether the sector can build a workforce model that matches its ambition. The frameworks exist. The technology exists. The choice, as in every other segment of aviation, is whether to act now or pay the price of delay.

For more information on how The Airline Pilot Club is supporting regional aviation’s workforce challenge, visit www.airlinepilotclub.com.

Sources & Attribution

Source 1: McKinsey & Company – “Small Planes, Big Changes: The Evolving Business of Regional Aviation” (October 2025)

Comprehensive analysis of the global regional aviation sector. Approximately 6,000 aircraft in operation, 9.3 million annual flights, ~25% of the global commercial fleet providing ~11% of seats. Examines ten commonly held myths about the sector, revealing significant unserved market opportunities, improving aircraft economics, and the potential for regional aviation to lead sustainable innovation. Authors: Daniel Riefer, Javier Caballero, and colleagues from McKinsey’s Travel Practice.

Source 2: McKinsey & Company – “Short-Haul Flying Redefined: The Promise of Regional Air Mobility” (May 2023)

Analysis of the regional air mobility (RAM) opportunity. Identifies a total addressable market of $75–115 billion by 2035, representing 300–700 million passengers annually. Examines how new propulsion technologies, sustainability pressures, and mobility-as-a-service trends could drive a resurgence in short-range flight using 5–50 passenger aircraft.

Source 3: CAE – 2025 Aviation Talent Forecast (June 2025)

Global forecast identifying demand for 300,000 new pilots over the next decade. Projects 50% of flight decks staffed by pilots with less than 10 years’ experience. FAA projects 4,300 annual pilot retirements in the US. Dropout and failure rates remain high across training programmes.

This article represents the views of The Airline Pilot Club and is intended for informational purposes. All source material is attributed and used for commentary and analysis under fair use principles.