---
title: "Aerospace Medicine Physician"
description: "A physician who keeps pilots, aircrew, and astronauts healthy and fit to fly, and studies how flight and space affect the body."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/aerospace-medicine-physician"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Aerospace Medicine Physician

**Category:** Healthcare Practitioners and Technical · **SOC code:** 29-1229 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 29-1229.05

A physician who keeps pilots, aircrew, and astronauts healthy and fit to fly, and studies how flight and space affect the body.

Also advertised as: Flight Surgeon; Aerospace Medicine Specialist; Aviation Medical Examiner; Space Medicine Physician; Aeromedical Physician.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $265,930 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $127.85/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $69,170 to $452,360, with the middle half between $102,930 and $378,770
- **Total US employment:** 342,720
- **Typical entry education:** Doctorate
- **Preparation required:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +3.4% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 9,400 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 37/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 342,720 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $69,170 |
| 25th | $102,930 |
| 50th (median) | $265,930 |
| 75th | $378,770 |
| 90th | $452,360 |
| Mean (average) | $262,040 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| ND | $454,550 | $510,966 | 740 |
| MT | $438,850 | $463,680 | 580 |
| ME | $419,410 | $432,159 | 1,340 |
| WI | $391,740 | $416,324 | 6,350 |
| MN | $367,320 | $372,456 | 5,350 |
| IN | $366,190 | $392,365 | 6,760 |
| NH | $361,300 | $346,854 | 1,000 |
| AK | $355,100 | $346,916 | 270 |
| LA | $350,920 | $397,837 | 4,740 |
| OR | $347,180 | $335,891 | 4,130 |
| VT | $343,050 | $350,201 | 440 |
| WY | $342,800 | $369,831 | 440 |
| HI | $339,290 | $308,583 | 1,830 |
| NM | $327,670 | $355,344 | 1,930 |
| KY | $327,390 | $363,125 | 3,340 |

37 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 52 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/aerospace-medicine-physician/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/aerospace-medicine-physician.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 367,400 in the 2025–2035 base year to 380,100 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 12,600 jobs, or +3.4%. About as fast as average: 3.4% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 9,400 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Doctoral or professional degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** Internship/residency.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Post-Doctoral Training | 73.7% |
| Doctoral Degree | 26.3% |

## What the work involves

- Perform flight physicals and determine medical fitness to fly
- Treat pilots, aircrew, and astronauts for illness and injury
- Advise on the effects of altitude, acceleration, and fatigue
- Monitor astronaut health before, during, and after missions
- Research physiological effects of spaceflight and long flights
- Investigate aviation accidents for medical and human factors
- Develop medical standards and waiver policies for aviators
- Teach aircrew about hypoxia, disorientation, and survival

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Science — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Complex Problem Solving — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Evaluation — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Medicine and Dentistry — importance 4.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Biology — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Public Safety and Security — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Psychology — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Expression — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Inductive Reasoning — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Investigative (I), Social (S), Realistic (R).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| I — Investigative | 6.70 |
| S — Social | 5.63 |
| R — Realistic | 4.01 |
| C — Conventional | 3.39 |
| E — Enterprising | 2.37 |
| A — Artistic | 1.88 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| INTJ | 58.7 |
| ISTP | 57.6 |
| ISFP | 57.2 |
| INTP | 56.9 |
| INFJ | 56.8 |

Best-fitting types: not scored.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Preventive Medicine Physician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/preventive-medicine-physician) — median $265,930
- [Emergency Medicine Physician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/emergency-medicine-physician) — median $335,550
- [General Internal Medicine Physician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/general-internal-medicine-physician) — median $256,560
- [Family Medicine Physician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/family-medicine-physician) — median $244,180
- [Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Physician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/physical-medicine-and-rehabilitation-physician) — median $265,930
- [Pediatrician, General](https://nuecareer.com/careers/pediatrician-general) — median $210,040
- [Obstetrician and Gynecologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/obstetrician-and-gynecologist) — median $292,910
- [Cardiologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cardiologist) — median $496,010
- [Allergist and Immunologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/allergist-and-immunologist) — median $265,930
- [Epidemiologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/epidemiologist) — median $87,220

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/aerospace-medicine-physician