How Each Major Counts Flight Time

Your logbook does not change from airline to airline. What each airline counts does — enough that the same pilot can be eligible at one carrier, short at another, and not yet eligible at all at a third, with every number coming from the same honest book.

The differences are not trivia. They decide whether your total time survives a review, whether your PIC column means what the application thinks it means, and whether cargo is even an option yet. Here is the counting math, carrier by carrier, from the published rules.

The PIC rule that catches almost everyone

Four of the six carriers in this article define countable PIC the same way, and it is probably not how your logbook's PIC column was built:

PIC = the captain / aircraft commander of record who signed for the aircraft.

American states it that way in its Logbook Review Team guidance (SECONDARY reporting of the team's February 2026 briefing). Southwest publishes the same definition on its official careers page: captain/aircraft commander of record, or the pilot signing for the aircraft — not sole manipulator (OFFICIAL). FedEx's official FAQ says the same: Captain/Aircraft Commander of record, not sole manipulator (OFFICIAL). UPS counts PIC per 14 CFR 1.1 — final authority / designated PIC (SECONDARY-reported posting text; see the UPS note below).

Time you flew as sole manipulator in the right seat, while the captain signed for the aircraft, is SIC for these carriers — whatever your logbook column calls it. That is not a paperwork nuance. For a regional first officer, most turbine time is SIC by this test. Which is exactly why the cargo gates below land the way they do.

Two related rules from American's guidance: instructor time appears under both Instructor and PIC, but only time in a seat at a set of controls counts — no jumpseat instruction or evaluation. And if a block of claimed PIC cannot show you signed for the aircraft, it moves to SIC in that carrier's view. Your logbook does not change. The view is where honesty is enforced. Inflated PIC is the fastest credibility death in this market.

What gets excluded — and what quietly stays in

Simulator time: excluded from Total Time at American, and excluded from Southwest's stated categories. Log it as simulator time only, never inside a total.

Deadhead and "other" time: excluded from Total Time at American.

UAV / remotely piloted time: excluded from Total Time at American, and excluded at Southwest and FedEx, where only fixed-wing pilot time counts toward the stated categories.

Rotary-wing time: here the carriers split. American includes rotary in Total Time but requires it broken out, so the fixed-wing total is visible. Southwest counts only fixed-wing time toward its stated categories, and FedEx counts only fixed-wing pilot time — helicopter time excluded. Same logbook, three different totals.

Dual received: American's guidance says dual received may be entered in the SIC field so it counts toward Total Time. Leave it out of the grid and you understate your own total — in the worked example in our Prep Pack, that single omission understates total time by 236.8 hours and creates a mismatch against the pilot's other applications.

Long-haul relief (American): flights over 9 hours log two-thirds; over 12 hours, one-half — time at the controls.

Military time: do not pre-convert. American wants hours submitted raw and unconverted, with the Sorties Flown box checked; it applies its own conversion of about 0.3 hours per sortie. FedEx is the mirror image: enter the sortie count only — its system auto-converts at 0.30 per sortie. Enter converted hours at either carrier and you have double-counted yourself.

The six views, side by side

United (OFFICIAL minimums as summarized in fresh secondary coverage; the portal at pilothiring.united.com was live on October 15, 2026): 1,500 total time required; 1,000 fixed-wing turbine preferred; 100 hours in the last 12 months preferred. Also required: unrestricted ATP multiengine, a current First Class Medical, and an FCC Restricted Radiotelephone Operator Permit. Note the discipline: 1,500 is a gate, the turbine and recency figures are preferences. Confusing the two makes pilots self-reject from jobs they qualify for.

American (pilots.aa.com): American had published no current official minimums page that could be retrieved as of October 15, 2026, so we will not state American minimums as fact. Figures in circulation — 1,500 total time, roughly 2,500 competitive — are SECONDARY and stale; check the live portal. What is documented for American is the counting above, and it is the counting, not a minimum, that eliminates applicants: commander-only PIC, the exclusions, raw military hours, and a logbook total more than 10% off the application total flagged by the review team. See The Logbook Audit: What Recruiters Actually Check for the full list. One practical point: pilots.aa.com is a new in-house system, and anyone with a profile in the previous system must re-enter their information there.

Delta (OFFICIAL — Delta Pilot Careers Process & FAQs, crawled October 15, 2026): 1,500 hours total documented minimum; a minimum of 500 turbine hours in a non-powered-lift airplane, with 1,000 fixed-wing turbine preferred; a minimum of 250 hours PIC or SIC as defined in 14 CFR 61.159(a)(5); a minimum of 50 hours multiengine airplane. That "PIC or SIC" wording is Delta-specific — do not import it into the cargo views below. Delta also states the certificate nuance most guides get wrong: its requirement is a Commercial Pilot Certificate with Instrument–Airplane, plus all aeronautical experience requirements for an ATP under 61.159, plus a current ATP written. A held ATP certificate is not the stated requirement. And keep the floor in perspective: a Delta class starting September 29, 2026 averaged 5,200 hours total time against that 1,500 floor (SECONDARY — Delta-affiliated pilot channel, October 2026). Minimums make you eligible. They do not describe the class.

Southwest (OFFICIAL — careers page, updated about October 12, 2026): no total-time minimum is published on the current official page. The familiar "2,500 TT / 1,000 turbine PIC" figures are SECONDARY, from 2024–25, and stale — do not plan around them as fact. What Southwest does publish: an FAA ATP with "Airplane Multiengine Land" and "English Proficient," a First Class Medical, 500 hours fixed-wing turbine preferred (or completion of a Destination 225° pathway), and actively flying in two of the last five years preferred. PIC is commander of record, and only fixed-wing time counts toward the stated categories.

FedEx (OFFICIAL — pilot FAQ, current October 2026): 1,500 hours total fixed-wing, and the gate that matters: a minimum of 500 hours PIC in jet, or multi-engine turboprop of 12,500 lbs or more, or certain named single-engine turboprop equivalents (the T-6 Texan II and PC-12 are explicitly treated as equivalents), or a combination — with 1,000 hours PIC in jet preferred. Named jet-equivalent turboprops include the C-130, Q400, P-3, and ATR 42/72. Student time counts; simulator, helicopter, flight engineer, navigator, and similar non-pilot time does not.

UPS (SECONDARY — read this label): no official UPS pilot jobs page was captured in our October 15, 2026 research, and no live first officer posting was captured, so UPS's October 2026 hiring status is not verified. Posting extracts reported secondhand, consistently across sources, describe 1,500 hours total fixed-wing and 1,000 hours PIC in fixed-wing jet and/or multi-engine turboprop per 14 CFR 1.1 — as a minimum, not a preference. If those figures hold on a live posting, that is the heaviest PIC gate of any carrier here. Verify every UPS number against a live posting before relying on it. [UNVERIFIED — no official UPS competitive figure exists in the dossier; any vendor quoting one is inventing it, so we don't.]

This one-ledger, six-views problem — same hours, different math, every view reconciled to the tenth — is why we built the counting engine in the Major Ready Prep Pack as a spreadsheet with live formulas instead of six hand-built totals that drift apart. However you build yours, build it once, from one ledger, and derive every carrier's view from it.

The cargo lesson

Run the math for a typical regional FO: strong total time, several hundred hours of turbine SIC, and zero commander-of-record turbine PIC. That pilot can pass the passenger majors' eligibility screens and is not yet eligible for either cargo carrier — short FedEx's 500-hour PIC gate entirely, and short the secondary-reported UPS gate by 1,000 hours. That is a sequencing fact, not a discouragement. Cargo becomes available after upgrade. Applying on passenger-major math wastes effort — and at some carriers, attempts are a finite budget.

A four-minute check before any submission

1. Every live application's total time is identical, or differs only by a documented freeze-date delta (see the audit article).
2. No view shows PIC above your commander-tested PIC.
3. Simulator, deadhead, and UAV time appear nowhere inside any total.
4. Military time is raw, with sorties recorded the way that carrier's system wants them.

Red on any line: stop, fix, re-derive from the ledger. A variance caught at your kitchen table costs four minutes. The same variance caught at a review table costs far more.

Next steps

Start with the free Application Readiness Checklist to see where your numbers, documents, and records stand in one pass. If you want the counting done as a system — one ledger, all six carrier views, and a variance panel that flags a red total before you submit — that is File 02 of the Prep Pack ($79), alongside the logbook audit, the application data vault, and the window-day runbook.

And when a carrier's numbers do line up, timing takes over — which is the subject of Hiring Windows: How They Open, How They Close.

Facts verified October 15, 2026. Hiring processes change without notice — verify against the carrier's live posting before you submit. Sources are labeled OFFICIAL (airline/FAA) or SECONDARY (industry reporting and candidate reports) in the text; UPS figures are secondary-reported and unverified, as labeled. Where sources conflict, the official source governs.

Disclaimer: Major Ready provides career-preparation education — logbook organization, application readiness, and hiring-window monitoring. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to United Airlines, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Delta Air Lines, or any other carrier, and it is not a recruiting service. Major Ready does not guarantee interviews, job offers, or any hiring outcome; all hiring decisions are made solely by the airlines. Always verify minimums and requirements against the carrier's official postings, which control in the event of any difference.