---
title: "Widebody Airline Captain"
description: "Commands twin-aisle jets such as the Boeing 777, 787, or Airbus A350 on long-haul and international routes for a major airline."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/widebody-airline-captain"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Widebody Airline Captain

**Category:** Transportation and Material Moving · **SOC code:** 53-2011 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 53-2011.00

Commands twin-aisle jets such as the Boeing 777, 787, or Airbus A350 on long-haul and international routes for a major airline.

Also advertised as: Widebody Captain; Long-Haul Captain; International Captain; 777 Captain; 787 Captain; A350 Captain.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $232,140 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** Not published by BLS
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $106,710 to $463,830, with the middle half between $182,280 and $384,440
- **Total US employment:** 103,560
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +8.3% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 11,200 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 36/100 — 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 103,560 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $106,710 |
| 25th | $182,280 |
| 50th (median) | $232,140 |
| 75th | $384,440 |
| 90th | $463,830 |
| Mean (average) | $288,650 |

### 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 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| GA | $618,090 | $641,885 | 8,770 |
| ID | $507,640 | $531,594 | 330 |
| MI | $428,570 | $445,420 | Not published by BLS |
| CA | $353,900 | $319,635 | 10,670 |
| KY | $350,950 | $389,257 | 6,260 |
| CO | $307,490 | $298,383 | 5,830 |
| IL | $293,490 | $293,613 | 6,460 |
| NY | $255,240 | $236,506 | 6,900 |
| AK | $232,140 | $226,790 | 1,350 |
| WA | $229,900 | $214,834 | 3,450 |
| AZ | $227,870 | $226,338 | 2,200 |
| FL | $225,020 | $217,591 | 7,760 |
| TX | $215,150 | $221,674 | 10,930 |
| MN | $211,470 | $214,427 | 2,960 |
| OH | $204,170 | $220,072 | 1,550 |

23 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 38 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/widebody-airline-captain/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/widebody-airline-captain.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 104,600 in the 2025–2035 base year to 113,300 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 8,700 jobs, or +8.3%. Much faster than average: 8.3% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 11,200 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:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** Less than 5 years.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** Moderate-term on-the-job training.

### 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 |
| --- | --- |
| Bachelor's Degree | 61.0% |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 18.2% |
| Less than a High School Diploma | 8.0% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 6.3% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 5.1% |
| Some College Courses | 1.5% |

## What the work involves

- Review flight plans, weather, fuel, and aircraft status before departure
- Command the flight crew and brief cabin crew on the flight
- Fly the aircraft and supervise first officers and relief pilots
- Manage crew rest on long-haul and ultra-long-haul flights
- Follow oceanic, polar, and international air traffic procedures
- Decide on diversions, weather deviations, and emergency responses
- Complete recurrent training, simulator checks, and medical exams

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.1 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.

- Operation and Control — importance 4.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Operations Monitoring — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Transportation — importance 4.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Public Safety and Security — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mechanical — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Geography — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Response Orientation — importance 4.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 4.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Control Precision — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reaction Time — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Near Vision — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Far Vision — importance 4.3 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 Realistic (R), Conventional (C), Enterprising (E).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| R — Realistic | 5.12 |
| C — Conventional | 4.91 |
| E — Enterprising | 4.11 |
| I — Investigative | 3.15 |
| S — Social | 2.50 |
| A — Artistic | 1.44 |

### 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) |
| --- | --- |
| ISTJ | 91.0 |
| ESTJ | 87.4 |
| ISFJ | 73.1 |
| ISTP | 68.8 |
| ESTP | 68.0 |

Best-fitting types: ISTJ, ESTJ.

## Related occupations

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

- [Airline Pilot](https://nuecareer.com/careers/airline-pilot) — median $232,140
- [Commercial Pilot](https://nuecareer.com/careers/commercial-pilot) — median $123,220
- [Air Traffic Controller](https://nuecareer.com/careers/air-traffic-controller) — median $148,080
- [Airfield Operations Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/airfield-operations-specialist) — median $56,850
- [Aircraft Service Attendant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/aircraft-service-attendant) — median $40,450
- [Captain, Mate, and Pilot of Water Vessels](https://nuecareer.com/careers/captain-mate-and-pilot-of-water-vessels) — median $92,460
- [Aircraft Mechanic](https://nuecareer.com/careers/aircraft-mechanic) — median $79,870
- [Aviation Inspector](https://nuecareer.com/careers/aviation-inspector) — median $92,100
- [Locomotive Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/locomotive-engineer) — median $81,410
- [First-Line Supervisor of Passenger Attendants](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-passenger-attendants) — median $62,840

## 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/widebody-airline-captain