Boeing 787 Pilot Jobs 2026: Airlines Flying the Dreamliner and Who Is Hiring

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner, in its 787-8, 787-9 and 787-10 models, flies with 41 of the 121 airlines on our jobs board. At the last check 19 of them had the First Officer seat open, recruiting or holding a pool, 24 publish a First Officer entry for pilots without a type rating, and 9 name a First Officer, Second Officer or cadet route on the 787 itself. This page lists each airline with that status, what it asks of the rating and its published minimum, then where a new First Officer actually starts, the routes that name the type, the agencies and expatriate contracts, the Captain routes, the one type rating the 787 shares with the 777 in Europe, the 787s on order, and the traps in a 787 vacancy. An open First Officer seat at a long-haul airline is not always a 787 seat: where the airline names a route on the type, we quote it as recorded.

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First Officer seat open (19)

Taking First Officer applications, or holding a First Officer pool or expression-of-interest list, at the last check.

First Officer seat through a cadet route only (4)

These airlines took First Officers only from their own cadet or academy schemes at the last check: no direct entry for licensed pilots.

Not recruiting First Officers at the last check (5)

A First Officer route exists, but no vacancy or campaign was open when we last checked. Several of these recruit in campaigns, so watch their careers pages.

First Officer status unconfirmed (11)

We found these airlines’ requirements but could not establish from their own pages whether a First Officer vacancy was open.

No First Officer route for outside pilots (2)

The record shows no First Officer entry open to pilots from outside; see each airline’s entry for the routes it does run.

Not counted: flydubai, whose record lists 30 787-9s only on order, the first due in August 2027 at the earliest, as its chief executive put it in April 2025 (checked 20 October 2026).

Where a new First Officer starts

40 of the 41 airlines on this page fly other types besides the 787, and the airline, its needs or its seniority list decides where a new pilot starts. In our records: Air France’s new First Officers start on the medium-haul network, then move to long-haul before command, and the airline, not you, chooses the aircraft type (checked 21 October 2026); KLM puts you, after selection, on whichever of its fleets has training capacity, and says there is no choice in this (checked 13 October 2026); Singapore Airlines places its direct-entry First Officers on the A350 or the A380, on fixed-term contracts of up to 12 months (checked 30 October 2026); Air New Zealand’s new First Officers usually join its turboprops, its jet fleet is filled mostly by internal transfer, and every new jet pilot starts at the bottom of the jet seniority list (checked 17 October 2026); Jetstar’s direct-entry First Officers join the A320 family (checked 22 October 2026); WestJet’s mainline First Officer posting is for the B737, and its fleet moves follow seniority (checked 15 October 2026); Japan Airlines’ contract First Officers, by contrast, join its 787 fleet (checked 21 October 2026). Ask which fleet you would join, and how long a move to the 787 usually takes, before you count on flying it.

First Officer routes on the 787, in the airlines’ words (9)

The First Officer, Second Officer, co-pilot and cadet routes our records name on the 787, worded as recorded at the date shown, open or closed. An airline missing here may still put new pilots on the 787; it just does not name the type in its routes.

• Air New Zealand F/O: Talent pool
  Expression of interest — jet fleet: Second Officer on the 787/777 or First Officer on the A320/A321, filled mostly by internal transfer from the turboprops under the Regional Pilot Priority Process; outside applicants from 1,500 h with 12 months of multi-crew command or jet time, up to 10% of new jet pilots in normal circumstances (checked 17 October 2026) — careers page
• EVA Air F/O: Recruiting
  Direct entry First Officer A321 / B777 / B787 (several regional pages also list the A330) — EVA’s own pilot pages, 4-year contract · Direct entry First Officer B787 via Rishworth Aviation — all Rishworth’s EVA pilot jobs were filled on 1 November 2026; it invites type-rated and non-type-rated pilots who meet or are close to EVA’s requirements to register, which it gives as 2,000 h total with 500 h, or 1,500 h with 1,000 h, on the B777/B787 (rated) or on commercial jets over 20 t MTOW (non-rated); undated (checked 1 November 2026) — careers page
• Japan Airlines F/O: Recruiting
  Contract First Officer B787 via CAE Parc Aviation, rated or non-type-rated: a 5-year commuting contract, based at Haneda or Narita (listing open on a job board, posted or refreshed about 5 October 2026) (checked 21 October 2026) — careers page
• Riyadh Air F/O: Recruiting
  Direct entry First Officer B787 (checked 17 October 2026) — careers page
• Royal Air Maroc F/O: Recruiting
  Type-rated First Officer B787 — via FCI, Brookfield Aviation and AeroProfessional, Casablanca (300 h on type in FCI’s campaign as Bladi.net reported it, 500 h SIC on the B787 in Brookfield’s advertisement) (checked 2 November 2026) — careers page
• Vietnam Airlines F/O: Recruiting
  Contract First Officer B787 via Rishworth — type-rated (checked 1 November 2026) — careers page
• Jetstar F/O: Not recruiting
  Jetstar Cadet Pilot Program (a CPL with a multi-engine instrument rating, then an A320 or B787 type endorsement) — no 2026 intake found at last check (checked 22 October 2026) — careers page
• TUI Airline (TUI Airways, TUI fly) F/O: Not recruiting
  Direct entry First Officer, type-rated — in 2026 at the UK, Belgian, Dutch and Swedish AOCs: a valid B737 rating with base training completed or, at TUI fly Netherlands, a B777/787 rating for the B787, in the postings’ copies; none open on 18 October 2026 (checked 18 October 2026) — careers page
• LOT Polish Airlines F/O: Unconfirmed
  First Officer B787 — an undated job-board copy asks for 5,000 h with 1,000 h on LOT Group aircraft (checked 30 October 2026) — careers page

Before you apply to Riyadh Air: operations at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, its base, were suspended after an attack on 10 October 2026, and the airline canceled flights (checked 17 October 2026). Press reports said on 25 October 2026 that the airport had partly reopened, as search results showed them on 30 October 2026; check the airline’s own news for its flights and assessments.

Agencies and expatriate contracts

Several of the 787 operators on this page fill seats through recruitment agencies, on contracts for pilots from abroad. The agency may be your employer rather than the airline, and its contract sets the term, the roster and who obtains the work permit. In our records: Japan Airlines’ 787 First Officers, rated or not, are recruited by the agency CAE Parc Aviation on five-year commuting contracts, based at Haneda or Narita; CAE Parc said it was exclusively accepting the applications, and Aviation Wire quoted JAL that an overseas agency employs the pilots and dispatches them to JAL, a campaign we could not confirm on JAL’s own pages (checked 21 October 2026); Vietnam Airlines’ type-rated B787 First Officers and its B787 Captains come through its expatriate recruitment partner Rishworth Aviation, whose Vietnam Airlines page, read on 29 October 2026, advertised the First Officers from early 2026 and the Captains on a four-year renewable assignment with an immediate start (checked 1 November 2026); Royal Air Maroc’s type-rated B787 First Officers come through agencies: Flight Crew International’s campaign, as Bladi.net reported it in September 2026, asked for 300 hours on type, and Brookfield Aviation’s B787 First Officer advertisement, read on 2 November 2026, for 500 hours as second in command on the 787, based in Casablanca with start dates from April 2026, on a one-year contract renewable up to five years; whether you can apply to RAM directly is among the points we could not confirm (checked 2 November 2026); Korean Air recruits expatriate Captains only, type-rated on the B777, B787 or A330, through agencies; CCL Aviation, which says it manages the contracts of close to half of them, recruits them on five-year renewable contracts and said on its home page on 30 October 2026 that Korean Air had resumed recruitment, with monthly screenings planned from January 2027, and that it was seeking B787 Captains now (checked 30 October 2026); China Southern’s expatriate A350 and B787 Captains have come through agencies, type-rated and with a CAAC license, reverse-rostered from their home base, but no current campaign surfaced in search results at its last check: job-board copies of its A350 and B777 Captain vacancies were marked closed (checked 30 October 2026); Ethiopian Airlines lists its Expat Captain B777/B787 posting on its own vacancies pages, with applications by e-mail (checked 16 October 2026); EVA Air recruits its 787 First Officers on its own pages, on four-year contracts; Rishworth Aviation, which also recruits for EVA, showed all its EVA pilot jobs as filled on 1 November 2026 and invites rated and non-rated pilots to register (checked 1 November 2026). Apply only through the agency or airline named on the airline’s own careers page, and read who employs you before you sign.

Captain routes on the 787 (6)

15 of the 41 airlines on this page publish no Captain route for pilots from outside: they make their Captains from their own First Officers. These 6 records name a Captain route on the 787, worded as recorded; the Captain seat was open at the last check at 4 of them. Every airline that takes Captains from outside, on any type, is on the direct entry Captain jobs page.

787-8, 787-9 and 787-10: one type rating

By model, as the records name them: 787-8 15; 787-9 29; 787-10 6. The records of Air Canada, American Airlines, British Airways, KLM, LATAM Airlines Group, Qantas Group, Turkish Airlines and United Airlines name the 787 without its models (“B787”; “Boeing 787”).

For the license the model makes little difference. The three share one type certificate, and the FAA’s Flight Standardization Board rates the differences between any two of them at level A, the lowest: differences training by self-instruction, with no differences check. In Europe the 787 also shares its rating with the 777: EASA’s operational suitability data give one pilot type rating, B777/787, covering the 787 models and the 777-200, 777-300 and 777F, while the FAA designates a B-787 rating and treats the 787 and the 777 as separate ratings with commonality, with level D differences training and checking between them (as our Library’s 787 family and flight deck article cites them). What differs from one airline to the next is whether you need the rating to apply, and how your hours are counted: see the next sections.

Do you need a 787 type rating?

Whether you need the rating to apply is the airline’s call, and it splits the list four ways:

• No type rating needed to apply (16): Air Canada, Air France, Air New Zealand, Alaska Airlines (incl. Hawaiian), American Airlines, Avianca, EgyptAir, Ethiopian Airlines, Jetstar, Kenya Airways, Qantas Group (Qantas & QantasLink), Riyadh Air, Scoot, Thai Airways, United Airlines and WestJet. The airline provides, arranges or sells the rating, or only prefers it; a multi-fleet airline may still put you on another type. Whether Riyadh Air’s 787 First Officers need a 787 rating is among the points we could not confirm: its portal’s posting, as indexed, lists none among the mandatory requirements, but a job board’s copy says one is required (checked 17 October 2026).
• Separate rated and non-rated streams (8): Air Europa, Air India (incl. Air India Express), British Airways, IndiGo, Japan Airlines, LATAM Airlines Group, LOT Polish Airlines and TUI Airline (TUI Airways, TUI fly). The streams open and close separately, and the rated one usually asks for hours on the type. Japan Airlines’ contract route takes 787-rated and non-rated pilots alike, but asks for a valid rating on another type (checked 21 October 2026); TUI fly Netherlands’ B787 posting asked for a B777/787 rating, in its copies, beside rated and non-rated B737 streams (checked 18 October 2026).
• A type rating needed to apply (8): Etihad Airways, KLM, Oman Air, Royal Air Maroc, Royal Jordanian, Singapore Airlines, Vietnam Airlines and Virgin Atlantic. Not always on the 787: Vietnam Airlines asks its First Officers for a valid B787 rating (checked 1 November 2026); Etihad’s vacancies at the last check were for rated pilots, and whether it will list non-type-rated First Officers again, as a 777/787 listing did earlier in 2026, is among the points we could not confirm (checked 20 October 2026).
• Not published or unclear (9): Austrian Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, China Southern Airlines, EVA Air, Korean Air, Lufthansa Group, Qatar Airways, Saudia and Turkish Airlines. This includes airlines with no First Officer entry outside a cadet scheme.

Since EASA counts the 777 and the 787 as one rating, a 777-rated pilot holds the rating a European 787 vacancy asks for, though the differences training to the 787 that EASA’s data set out still comes first, while an FAA pilot moving between them takes level D differences training. The airlines that train you on type, on the 787 or another aircraft, are on the non-type-rated First Officer jobs page, and the routes from zero on the cadet programs page.

New 787s on order

An airline taking new aircraft has to crew them. What our records say, with the date of each check:

• On order. Korean Air finalized an order for 25 787-10s, among 103 Boeing aircraft, on 16 September 2026 (checked 30 October 2026); Air New Zealand had 14 787s and 10 more on order on its fleet page at 30 April 2026, and two due in its 2026 financial year moved to the first half of 2027, as reported (checked 17 October 2026); Alaska Airlines had five 787-9s in operation in January 2026, and that month’s order took its firm future 787 fleet to 17, the five new ones intended as 787-10s (checked 13 October 2026); WestJet ordered seven 787-9s, with options for four more, in September 2025 (checked 15 October 2026); Japan Airlines has more 787-9s on order, with deliveries from fiscal 2027, as Aviation Wire reported in June 2025 (checked 21 October 2026); Ethiopian Airlines ordered nine 787-9s for delivery between 2031 and 2033, finalized in December 2025 (checked 16 October 2026); Riyadh Air has 787-10s on order beside the 787-9s it flies (checked 17 October 2026); flydubai, which flies only 737s today, has 30 787-9s on order, the first due in August 2027 at the earliest, as its chief executive put it in April 2025 (checked 20 October 2026).
• The fleet today. Air Europa flew 29 787s in July 2026 (checked 2 November 2026); Oman Air’s fleet page listed ten 787-9s, and Gulf Business reported in October 2025 that its two 787-8s had been sold (checked 22 October 2026); Kenya Airways’ engine turnaround times of 90 to 120 days limited the availability of its 787-8s in the first half of 2026, as Aviation Week reported its half-year results (checked 21 October 2026).

An order is not a vacancy: deliveries slip, and an airline may fill new seats from its own First Officers first. Watch the careers page of the airline that will fly them.

How to read a 787 vacancy

• The employer may be an agency. See agencies and expatriate contracts: the contract, its term and the work permit may be the agency’s, not the airline’s.
• Hours with a qualifier. Riyadh Air’s 787 First Officers need 2,000 hours on multi-crew, multi-engine jets, and only operating-seat time counts, not simulator, Flight Engineer or Second Officer time (checked 17 October 2026); Japan Airlines’ contract route asks for 4,000 hours with commercial airlines and 1,500 hours in command of aircraft of 55 tonnes or more (checked 21 October 2026); Vietnam Airlines’ First Officers need 1,500 hours in total and 1,000 as a B787 First Officer (checked 1 November 2026); LOT’s 787 First Officer terms are among the points we could not confirm: one undated job-board copy asks for 5,000 hours with 1,000 on LOT Group aircraft, another for 1,000 hours on aircraft over 120 tonnes with 500 on type (checked 30 October 2026); Air New Zealand’s jet fleet, the 787 Second Officer seat included, takes outside applicants from 1,500 hours with 12 months of multi-crew command or jet time (checked 17 October 2026). A First Officer at the 3 US airlines here needs the FAA’s airline transport pilot certificate, full or restricted, and a type rating for the aircraft (14 CFR 121.436(b)). Every airline’s minimum is on the hours requirements page.
• Second Officer is not First Officer. Some long-haul airlines hire into a Second Officer seat before the First Officer one: Air New Zealand’s jet entry for outside pilots is as Second Officer on the 787 or 777, or First Officer on the A320 or A321 (checked 17 October 2026); Jetstar’s undated FAQ names B787 Second Officers, whom it does not sponsor for a visa (checked 22 October 2026); Singapore Airlines lists a Direct Entry Second Officer route, closed at the last check (checked 30 October 2026). Riyadh Air, above, does not count Second Officer time toward its 787 First Officer minimum. Ask what the seat involves and when promotion follows.
• Provided is not always free. Scoot trains you for the rating of the fleet you are assigned to against a co-payment and a training bond whose terms its postings do not give (checked 25 October 2026); Etihad publishes no bond terms, although a training bond is reported, and its terms are among the points we could not confirm (checked 20 October 2026); Air France provides the type rating with no bond or cost published for its direct-entry stream (checked 21 October 2026). Ask who pays and what the bond is before you sign.
• Language, passport and the rest. Air France for the nationality of an EEA state or Switzerland and fluent French; Vietnam Airlines, on every stream, for a height above 165 cm for men and 160 cm for women and an age under 58 for men and 53 for women; Korean Air, through CCL, for a license issued outside Russia and Thailand: it cannot currently accept Russian or Thai ATPL holders; China Southern’s agency route for a CAAC license; WestJet for Canadian citizens and permanent residents. The 3 US airlines here ask for the right to work in the US. Of the 41 airlines on this page, Riyadh Air says it sponsors a visa or work permit for at least one pilot entry, and 20 ask for a nationality or right to work you must already hold, or say they sponsor none. The airlines that sponsor, on every type, are on the visa sponsorship page.

For the technical interview, the Library’s 787 articles cover the family and flight deck, the no-bleed architecture, the electrical system, the flight controls and the GEnx and Trent 1000 engines, and the complete interview guide covers the HR and competency stages.

Common questions

Which airlines are hiring Boeing 787 pilots? 19 of the 41 airlines on our board that fly the 787 had their First Officer seat open, recruiting or holding a pool, at the last check, and 9 name a First Officer, Second Officer or cadet route on the 787 itself; the tables on this page list them, each with the date it was checked. An open First Officer seat is not always a 787 seat, because multi-fleet airlines place new pilots by their needs or by seniority. Check each airline’s current status on the jobs board before applying.

Can I get a 787 job without a type rating? Yes. 24 of the 41 airlines publish a First Officer entry for pilots without a type rating, 8 of them alongside a separate rated stream; 8 want a rating held when you apply, not always on the 787, and for 9 it is not published or unclear. Where the airline provides the rating, ask who pays for it, whether it is bonded and which fleet you will fly.

Is the Boeing 787 type rating the same as the 777’s? In Europe, yes: EASA’s operational suitability data give one pilot type rating, B777/787, covering the 787-8, 787-9 and 787-10 and the 777. The FAA designates a B-787 rating and treats the 787 and the 777 as separate ratings with commonality, with level D differences training and checking between them. Moving between the three 787 models takes differences training only.

How many hours do I need for a 787 First Officer job? There is no single figure. The lowest published First or Second Officer entry points for pilots without a type rating among these airlines, each in the airline’s own measure of hours and not always on the 787: Air France (no minimum); Air Europa (no minimum); LATAM Airlines Group (150 h); IndiGo (200 h); LOT Polish Airlines (200 h); Kenya Airways (250 h). A direct seat on the 787 usually asks for much more, often with multi-crew jet or wide-body time: see “How to read a 787 vacancy” on this page.

Which airlines hire 787 Captains from outside? 6 of the 41 airlines on this page name a Captain route on the 787 in their records, with the Captain seat at the last check in brackets: Ethiopian Airlines (recruiting); Korean Air (recruiting); Riyadh Air (recruiting); Vietnam Airlines (recruiting); China Southern Airlines (unconfirmed); Scoot (unconfirmed). 15 of the 41 publish no Captain route for pilots from outside and make their Captains from their own First Officers; the direct entry Captain jobs page lists every airline that takes them from outside.

Which 787 airlines sponsor a visa? 1 of the 41 airlines on this page say they sponsor a visa or work permit for at least one pilot entry: Riyadh Air. 20 ask for a nationality or a right to work you must already hold, or say they sponsor none, and for the rest it is not published or unclear. An agency contract may include the permit: read who obtains it before you sign.