Pilot is one of the most important factors to ensure aviation safety. The article focuses on the Pilots Development Planning (PDP) problem. It is different from other countries that pilots are developed by airways themselves in China. Promotion of every pilot needs specified quantity of flight experience hours which are accumulated in daily flights. In the same time, the promotion routes of pilots are diversified. So keys of PDP problem are to estimate the number of pilots who have promotion qualification in different planning period and to optimize their promotion and transfer in all routes. After analyzing characteristics of pilot training, a PDP road map is drawn which shows the typical process for pilots’ promotion and transfer. An optimization model which has promotion qualification constraints is built to solve PDP problem. According to different pilot development patterns, the method is proved to be effectively by a case study. The research has practical significance for Chinese airways.