Roughly 9.1% of European pilots fly for a wet-lease or ACMI operator rather than the airline painted on the fuselage, according to Ghent University’s 2025 UGent 2.0 survey of about 6,900 pilots and cabin crew across more than 100 airlines.
That figure is a survey finding, not a regulatory census. The same project found that contract type shapes safety decisions for a large share of aircrew—and no public dataset compares safety between ACMI and directly hired pilots.
If you flew a European legacy carrier through a busy summer weekend, there is a reasonable chance part of your journey was not operated by the airline on your ticket.
At least one ACMI contract supported operations at 63% of European airlines during peak summer 2025. In that same season, the active global ACMI fleet had grown from around 180 aircraft before the pandemic to more than 480. Wet leasing is no longer a short-term plug. It has become the quiet backbone of European capacity.
But the more consequential shift is in the workforce behind those aircraft. The Ghent University follow-up known as UGent 2.0 puts a number on it: just over one in ten pilots works under an atypical arrangement, overwhelmingly with operators most passengers would not recognize. The study, coordinated by Ghent’s IRIS institute with the European Cockpit Association, ETF, and ENAA, was voluntary and drew responses from sampled airlines. It describes a pattern, not a census.
What a one-in-ten finding actually measures
The UGent 2.0 survey ran from 29 October to 6 December 2024 and captured roughly 6,900 responses from pilots and cabin crew working at more than 100 airlines. It classified self-employment, agency work, and anything other than direct employment as atypical.
Among pilots specifically, the share working under those arrangements lands at 9.1%. The broader aircrew figure is 10.3%, including 5.8% who describe themselves as self-employed. No independent academic journal article using a different methodology has emerged, so those numbers should be read as the study’s finding rather than a Europe-wide census.
That matters because voluntary participation and airline-by-airline response rates can skew the picture. The burden of atypical contracts clustered at low-cost and wet-lease carriers, but the data cannot tell us exactly how many pilots across every EU operator fall into these arrangements.
When a contract decides whether a pilot calls in sick
The same survey asked aircrew whether their employment model affects core safety decisions. Roughly four in ten said their contract status determines whether they feel able to call in sick or declare themselves unfit to fly. Between 35% and 45% of the same cohort hold back fatigue or health reports because they worry about the career consequences.
This is not a hypothetical edge case. On a busy European short-haul rotation flown by wet-lease staff, close to half of the flight deck and cabin might be weighing job security against the decision to report fatigue just before pushback. The survey question was paraphrased in most public write-ups rather than quoted word-for-word, so the exact phrasing remains less transparent than the headline number suggests.
Independent investigations have repeatedly documented that labor costs and social security contributions are minimized through self-employment contracts for ACMI pilots. That employment design is precisely what the safety question exposes—when income disappears the moment a pilot is unfit to fly, the pressure to downgrade physical symptoms is structural, not individual.
Flight deals
most people never see
Our AI monitors 150+ airlines for pricing anomalies that traditional search engines miss. Air Traveler Club members save $650 per trip per person on average: see how it works.
Each deal saves 40–80% vs. regular fares:
The branded flight that isn’t operated by the brand
Eurowings, a Lufthansa Group carrier, has built its summer 2026 schedule with 19 wet-leased aircraft supplementing its own operation: six Airbus A320s from GetJet, eight A320s from Avion Express Malta, and five Boeing 737s from Smartwings.
Passengers buy the flights as Eurowings. Operationally, the aircraft belong to GetJet, Avion Express Malta, or Smartwings, covering Mediterranean getaways and intra-European pairings. Lufthansa Group sources 23 aircraft from specialist ACMI providers in a January 2025 snapshot, nearly four times the six at Air France-KLM. There is no comprehensive public ranking of long-term ACMI contract hours or capacity across Europe, so calling Lufthansa a leading user is safer than saying it is the largest.
How oversight actually works—and where the paper trail thins
The legal framework is split. An EU carrier wanting to wet-lease an aircraft registered in a third country must obtain prior approval from its licensing authority under Regulation (EC) No 1008/2008. Where the stated basis is exceptional needs, approval lasts at most seven months and can be renewed once for another seven months—effectively a fourteen-month ceiling.
On top of that, EASA requires any non-EU ACMI provider entering EU airspace to hold Third Country Operator authorisation for the aircraft on its AOC. Those operations face SAFA ramp inspections and, in some cases, Article 83bis agreements that shift oversight duties between states.
What none of this does is compare safety incident rates between ACMI and directly employed pilots. No quantitative public dataset does that. Regulators can check the aircraft, the AOC, and the route approval. They cannot peer into a pilot’s contract.
What this means for the passenger
You may never know who employs the crew on your next European flight. The airline selling the ticket is not required to list the ACMI operator on the boarding pass, and many wet-lease arrangements are sold as the mainline carrier’s own capacity.
For travelers who care about labor practices, the question is whether the fare supports direct employment with stable protections or a contract that can disappear with one unfit-to-fly report. The absence of incident-rate data means there is no easy safety comparison to consult. It is a known gap, not a settled finding.
The trajectory points one way: the European ACMI market is projected to nearly double, from $5.82 billion in 2026 to $10.94 billion by 2034. As that happens, the 9.1% figure is less an outlier than the leading edge of a structural shift in who actually flies the aircraft.
Questions? Answers.
What share of European aircrew work under atypical employment arrangements?
Over one in ten aircrew in Europe—10.3%—work under atypical arrangements, including self-employment and agency contracts. About 5.8% of pilots work as self-employed individuals.
How does an atypical contract affect a pilot’s willingness to report illness or fatigue?
Four in ten crew members say their contract status determines whether they feel able to call in sick or declare themselves unfit to fly. Between 35% and 45% avoid reporting fatigue or health issues due to career concerns.
What limits does EU law impose when an airline wet-leases aircraft from outside the EEA?
Under Regulation (EC) No 1008/2008, an EU air carrier must obtain prior approval from its licensing authority before wet-leasing an aircraft registered in a third country. For exceptional needs, that approval lasts at most seven months and can be renewed once for a further seven months.
Which European airline group shows up as a major ACMI user?
Lufthansa Group sourced 23 aircraft from specialist ACMI providers in January 2025, compared with six at Air France-KLM. No comprehensive public ranking exists, so Lufthansa is best described as a leading user rather than definitely the largest.
Is there public data comparing safety between ACMI and directly hired pilots?
No. No quantitative dataset comparing safety incident rates between ACMI-employed and directly employed pilots was found in public regulatory or statistical sources. This remains a known data gap.
