Turboprop Pilot Jobs 2026: 18 ATR and Dash 8 Airlines and Their Minimums

The ATR and the Dash 8 fly with 18 of the 121 airlines on our jobs board: 11 fly the ATR 42 or 72 and 8 the Dash 8, 7 of them through a group or partner airline. At the last check 10 of them had the First Officer seat open, recruiting or holding a pool, and 14 publish a First Officer entry for pilots without a type rating. This page lists each one with that status, what it asks of the rating and its published minimum, then the First Officer and Captain routes that name the ATR or the Dash 8, the ladder of hours, and the traps in a turboprop vacancy: the airline that actually flies the turboprops, turboprop hours that a jet airline may or may not count, the flow to the jets, and who pays for the rating. An open First Officer seat is not always a turboprop seat: where the airline names a route on the type, we quote it as recorded.

First Officer seat open (10)

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 (1)

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 (2)

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 (5)

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

First Officer routes on the ATR and the Dash 8, in the airlines’ words (8)

The First Officer, co-pilot and cadet routes our records name on the ATR, a Dash 8 or the turboprop fleet, worded as recorded at the date shown, open or closed. An airline missing here may still put new pilots on its turboprops; it just does not name them in its routes.

• Aegean Airlines F/O: Recruiting
  Non-type-rated First Officer, A320 or ATR 42/72 (Aegean and Olympic Air), from 70 h PIC — on Aegean’s list of pilot vacancies on 18 October 2026; deadline 31 December 2026 in job boards’ copies (checked 18 October 2026) — careers page
• Air New Zealand F/O: Talent pool
  Expression of interest — First Officer, turboprop fleet (ATR 72-600 or Dash 8 Q300), from 500 h; the usual way in, with a strong pool of applicants already (careers site, read 17 October 2026) · Mangōpare Air New Zealand Pilot Cadetship — ab initio for New Zealand citizens, about 14 months to an ATR 72-600 type rating, mostly funded by Air New Zealand; first intake of 30 from September 2024; applications closed at the last check, another cadetship being developed (cadetship site, read 17 October 2026) (checked 17 October 2026) — careers page
• Azul Linhas Aéreas F/O: Recruiting
  Co-pilot Embraer E1 / E2 and ATR 72 — Azul (checked 21 September 2026) — careers page
• Binter F/O: Recruiting
  ATR-rated First Officers and Captains (Binter Canarias) · Naysa ATR 72-600 — low- and high-experience First Officers, Captains and a Fast Track Captain stream (checked 29 September 2026) — careers page
• Porter Airlines F/O: Recruiting
  First Officer — Dash 8-400, Toronto (job boards’ copies: 1,000 h with an ATPL or the IATRA) (checked 21 October 2026) — careers page
• WestJet F/O: Recruiting
  Direct entry First Officer Dash 8-400 — WestJet Encore, Calgary, from 750 h with a CPL; posting open until 1 December 2026 (checked 15 October 2026) — careers page
• Cebu Pacific F/O: Unconfirmed
  Direct entry First Officer ATR 72 (non-rated) — relayed (checked 21 September 2026) — careers page
• Widerøe F/O: Unconfirmed
  Direct entry First Officer Dash 8 (checked 21 September 2026) — careers page

Captain routes on the turboprops (3)

3 of the 18 airlines on this page publish no Captain route for pilots from outside: they make their Captains from their own First Officers. These 3 records name a Captain route on the ATR or the Dash 8, worded as recorded. Loganair’s Direct Entry Captain posting covers all its bases and fleets, its ATRs among them, and calls an ATR 42/72 or ERJ 145 rating desirable (checked 18 October 2026). Every airline that takes Captains from outside, on any type, is on the direct entry Captain jobs page.

The hours ladder

Each airline’s lowest published First Officer entry for a pilot without a type rating, lowest first, in the airline’s own measure of hours. It is the airline’s lowest door, not always one onto the turboprop: where the record says which route the figure belongs to, we say so.

1. No hours minimum at Binter, on its E-2 jet route; its ATR listings want a current ATR 72-600 rating (checked 29 September 2026)
2. 70 hours at Aegean Airlines, in command, for the A320 or the ATR 42/72 (checked 18 October 2026)
3. 200 hours at IndiGo, for its Junior First Officer round of September 2024, which named no fleet (checked 14 October 2026)
4. 500 hours at Jazz Aviation (Air Canada Express), for a Jazz First Officer, one application covering every base; graduates of Jazz-affiliated schools from 250 (checked 21 October 2026)
5. 500 hours at Qantas Group (Qantas & QantasLink), at QantasLink, which flies the Dash 8s and was not accepting applications on 16 October 2026 (checked 16 October 2026)
6. 500 hours at Air New Zealand, on the turboprop fleet, the ATR 72-600 or the Dash 8 Q300 (checked 17 October 2026)
7. 500 hours at Cebu Pacific, on the ATR 72, without a type rating, as relayed (checked 21 September 2026)
8. 750 hours at WestJet, on WestJet Encore’s Dash 8-400, with 100 in command of fixed-wing aircraft (checked 15 October 2026)
9. 1,000 hours at Loganair, for experienced First Officers, type-rated pilots preferred, a door not being recruited at the last check (checked 18 October 2026)
10. 1,000 hours at Porter Airlines, on the Dash 8-400, in job boards’ copies of its postings (checked 21 October 2026)
11. 1,500 hours at Ethiopian Airlines, on the 737NG, in an advert now marked closed (checked 16 October 2026)

No figure for a non-rated entry that we could count: Air Mauritius, Azul Linhas Aéreas, Finnair, Luxair, Malaysia Airlines (MAG), Royal Air Maroc and Widerøe. The doors at 500 hours or less, on any type, are on the low-hour pilot jobs page, and every published minimum on the hours requirements page.

The ATR and the Dash 8

The ATR 42 and 72 (11): Aegean Airlines, Air Mauritius, Air New Zealand, Azul Linhas Aéreas, Binter, Cebu Pacific, Finnair, IndiGo, Loganair, Malaysia Airlines (MAG) and Royal Air Maroc. The Dash 8 (8): Air New Zealand, Ethiopian Airlines, Jazz Aviation (Air Canada Express), Luxair, Porter Airlines, Qantas Group (Qantas & QantasLink), WestJet and Widerøe. Air New Zealand flies both. The turboprops column gives each record’s fleet entry as worded, often with the group or partner airline that flies them in brackets.

The current models are well above the 10-tonne line that many jet vacancies draw: EASA’s type certificate data sheet gives the ATR 42-600, which it certifies as an ATR 42-500 with the new avionics, a maximum takeoff mass of 18,600 kg; ATR’s factsheet gives the ATR 72-600’s as 22,800 kg, or 23,000 kg as an option; and De Havilland’s specification sheet gives the Dash 8-400’s as 29,574 kg, as search results showed it on 22 October 2026. None reaches 40 tonnes, which matters for the vacancies that count only time on heavier aircraft (see the last section).

One rating for the ATR 42 and 72. EASA’s type certificate data sheet for the family (EASA.A.084, Issue 14) lists a single ATR42/72 license endorsement, a multi-pilot rating, and treats every ATR 42/72 series aircraft as a variant needing familiarization or differences training, not a new rating. ATR’s operational suitability data for flight crews (Revision 6 of 30 March 2026, as Brazil’s ANAC publishes it) sets the minimum for starting the initial rating as second in command at a commercial license, an instrument rating, a multi-engine rating, 500 hours as pilot of airplanes and 200 on CS-25 or CS-23 aircraft in a multi-crew environment, and ATR recommends that pilots with fewer than 500 flight hours first take Entry Level Training at its training center, which brings a pilot without the knowledge and skills for the rating to the level an approved training organization sets. So an airline that takes First Officers below those figures may add training before the rating: ask what it is and who pays for it.

Fleets change. Luxair’s chief executive told Aviation Week in July 2026 that the aircraft order Luxair announced at the Farnborough Airshow gives it a timeline to retire all 11 of its Dash 8-400s, for a two-type fleet from early 2030; Air Mauritius is replacing its ATR 72-500s with ATR 72-600s, one of which landed on 5 November 2025 after another in August 2025; MASwings, whose ATRs flew for Malaysia Aviation Group, passed to the Sarawak government, and AirBorneo took over its operations on 1 January 2026; Austrian Airlines, off this page, flew its last Dash 8-400 on 31 May 2021, as its newsroom showed in search results on 22 October 2026. Check an airline’s current fleet on its own site before you aim at a type.

Other turboprops in our records, not counted on this page: Loganair also flies the Twin Otter (checked 18 October 2026); Azul Conecta flies the Cessna Caravan, the Pilatus PC-12 and the SkyCourier, with Captain and co-pilot routes of its own (checked 21 September 2026); FedEx’s ATR feeders are flown by contract operators, not by FedEx pilots (checked 13 October 2026).

How to read a turboprop vacancy

• The airline is not always the employer. Many of these turboprops fly with a group or partner airline that recruits for itself: WestJet’s Dash 8-400s fly with WestJet Encore, which posts First Officer vacancies of its own (checked 15 October 2026); Qantas’s Dash 8s fly with QantasLink (checked 16 October 2026); Aegean’s ATRs fly with Olympic Air, whose non-type-rated First Officers are recruited in Aegean’s own call (checked 18 October 2026); Binter’s ATRs fly with Binter Canarias and Naysa, which list ATR vacancies of their own (checked 29 September 2026); Royal Air Maroc’s ATRs fly with RAM Express (checked 21 September 2026); Finnair’s ATRs fly with its regional partner Norra, which the record calls a feeder (checked 21 September 2026); Malaysia Aviation Group’s ATRs fly with Firefly (checked 12 October 2026). The First Officer seat in the tables is the parent airline’s, as its record has it, so read the operator’s own careers page too.
• Turboprop hours and the jet minimums. Many jet vacancies count multi-crew turboprop time, often above a mass: Jet2’s First Officers need 500 hours on multi-crew, multi-engine jets or turboprops above 10 tonnes (checked 16 October 2026); Cargolux asks for 1,500 hours on multi-pilot jets or on CS-25 turboprops above 10 tonnes or 19 seats (checked 18 October 2026); flydubai’s non-rated First Officers need 1,000 hours on modern EFIS multi-crew aircraft above 10 tonnes (checked 20 October 2026); Akasa Air’s experienced First Officers need 500 hours of jet or turboprop flying (checked 17 October 2026); FedEx counts command time on multi-engine turboprops of 12,500 pounds or more toward its 500 hours as pilot in command (checked 13 October 2026); Air India Express’s non-rated Transition Captains can qualify with 1,500 hours of airline turboprop time and 500 in command on aircraft above 10,000 kg (checked 15 October 2026). Some count only heavier aircraft: Aegean’s A320 Captain calls count commercial air transport time only on aircraft above 40 tonnes (checked 18 October 2026); LOT’s 737 First Officers need 500 of their 800 hours on aircraft over 40 tonnes (checked 21 September 2026), and no ATR or Dash 8 reaches 40 tonnes. Log your turboprop time by type, by crew (single or multi-pilot) and in command or not, so that you can total it the way each posting counts.
• The flow to the jets. Air New Zealand fills most of its jet seats by internal transfer from the turboprops, under its Regional Pilot Priority Process, and its jet expression of interest for outside pilots is not open to pilots who flew its turboprops in the last eight years (checked 17 October 2026); WestJet Encore pilots move to the mainline by seniority, with no second pilot interview (checked 15 October 2026); the terms of that flow beyond seniority are among the points we could not confirm (checked 15 October 2026); Jazz has a preferential flow to Air Canada (checked 21 October 2026); Qantas fills mainline seats from QantasLink and Network Aviation (checked 16 October 2026). Cargo airlines in the United States run turboprop pathways of their own: FedEx’s Purple Runway gives an upfront FedEx interview, then 36 months and 500 hours in command of multi-engine turboprops at a partner carrier (checked 13 October 2026); UPS’s FlightPath II takes Ameriflight pilots from a turboprop captain’s seat and 1,000 hours toward a UPS First Officer interview (checked 14 October 2026). A flow moves by seniority, not by date: ask how long pilots wait before you count on one.
• The type rating: provided, required, bonded. 14 of the 18 airlines here publish a First Officer entry that needs no type rating to apply, 3 of them beside a separate rated stream; 1 wants a rating held when you apply, not always on the turboprop, and for 3 it is not published or unclear. Binter’s ATR listings want a current ATR 72-600 rating (checked 29 September 2026); Cebu Pacific’s ATR route needs none (checked 21 September 2026); Widerøe provides the Dash 8 rating (checked 21 September 2026); Air New Zealand starts the rating right after the introduction phase, and the rating and line training typically take three months (checked 17 October 2026); Aegean trains the ATR or A320 rating through its own approved training organization, without publishing the cost or the bond (checked 18 October 2026); Loganair’s rating is fully paid and bonded, on a paper bond with no upfront cost, whose amount and length it does not publish (checked 18 October 2026); Air New Zealand’s Mangōpare cadetship, mostly funded by the airline, took cadets to an ATR 72-600 rating in about 14 months, and was closed to applications at the last check (checked 17 October 2026). Ask who pays, and what the bond is, before you sign. The airlines that train you on type, on any aircraft, are on the non-type-rated First Officer jobs page.
• License and passport first. Air New Zealand asks for New Zealand citizenship, permanent residence or residence, or Australian citizenship (checked 17 October 2026); WestJet for Canadian citizenship or permanent residence (checked 15 October 2026); Jazz for Canadian citizenship or permanent residence too (checked 21 October 2026); Loganair for the right to live and work in the UK indefinitely (checked 18 October 2026); Aegean for the unrestricted right to live and work in the EU (checked 18 October 2026); Widerøe for the EEA and a Scandinavian language (checked 21 September 2026); Binter’s ATR listings for Spanish at level 4 as well as English (checked 29 September 2026). None of the 18 airlines on this page says it sponsors a visa. None of the US airlines on our board flies the ATR or the Dash 8 itself.

For the technical side of a turboprop, the Library has articles on propellers and propeller control, propeller ice protection, de-icing boots and airframe icing. For the selection, the interview guides for Aegean Airlines, IndiGo, Loganair and Qantas Group, the complete interview guide and the Library’s airline simulator assessment article.

Common questions

Which airlines are hiring turboprop pilots? 10 of the 18 airlines on our board that fly the ATR or the Dash 8 had their First Officer seat open, recruiting or holding a pool, at the last check; the table “First Officer seat open” on this page lists them, each with the date it was checked. That is the airline’s First Officer seat, not always a vacancy on the turboprop; of them, Aegean Airlines, Air New Zealand, Azul Linhas Aéreas, Binter, Porter Airlines and WestJet name a First Officer route on the ATR, a Dash 8 or the turboprop fleet in their records. Check each airline’s current status on the jobs board before applying.

Can I fly an ATR or a Dash 8 without a type rating? Yes, at many of these airlines: 14 of the 18 publish a First Officer entry for pilots without a type rating, 3 of them beside a separate rated stream; 1 wants a rating held when you apply, not always on the turboprop, and for 3 it is not published or unclear. Where the airline provides the rating, ask who pays for it and whether it is bonded.

How many hours do I need for a turboprop First Officer job? There is no single figure. The lowest published First 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 turboprop: Binter (no minimum); Aegean Airlines (70 h); IndiGo (200 h); Jazz Aviation (500 h); Qantas Group (500 h); Air New Zealand (500 h). The hours ladder on this page says which route each figure belongs to where the record does.

Do turboprop hours count toward a jet job? Often, if the turboprop is a multi-crew aircraft heavy enough for the posting’s line: Jet2’s First Officers need 500 hours on multi-crew, multi-engine jets or turboprops above 10 tonnes; Cargolux asks for 1,500 hours on multi-pilot jets or on CS-25 turboprops above 10 tonnes or 19 seats; flydubai’s non-rated First Officers need 1,000 hours on modern EFIS multi-crew aircraft above 10 tonnes. Some postings count only heavier aircraft, which no ATR or Dash 8 is: Aegean’s A320 Captain calls count commercial air transport time only on aircraft above 40 tonnes; LOT’s 737 First Officers need 500 of their 800 hours on aircraft over 40 tonnes. Read how each posting counts hours before you total your logbook.

Is a turboprop job a step to the jets? At several airlines it is the usual one: Air New Zealand fills most of its jet seats by internal transfer from the turboprops, under its Regional Pilot Priority Process, and its jet expression of interest for outside pilots is not open to pilots who flew its turboprops in the last eight years; WestJet Encore pilots move to the mainline by seniority, with no second pilot interview; Jazz has a preferential flow to Air Canada; Qantas fills mainline seats from QantasLink and Network Aviation. A flow moves by seniority, so ask how long pilots wait.

Do more airlines fly the ATR or the Dash 8? On our board, 11 of the 18 airlines on this page fly the ATR 42 or 72 and 8 the Dash 8, and Air New Zealand flies both. Many fly them through a group or partner airline, which recruits its own pilots.