Irish airline Aer Lingus, part of the IAG group, has launched the Future Pilot Program, a programme aimed at training its own pilots in order to address the global shortage of pilots that air operators have been facing since the end of the pandemic.
This programme consists of 14 months of intensive training at an Irish pilot school, which will involve a stay at the school. After this training period, the students will obtain their airline pilot licence and will begin an additional 4-month adaptation to the company at the Aer Lingus training Academy in Dublin, after which they will join the airline’s staff as pilots with a permanent contract. It goes without saying that before all this, the candidate must pass a demanding selection filter and various tests established by the company.
Such programmes, in which airlines directly train their pilots, were unthinkable in Europe just a few years ago. However, the strong growth in air traffic and passenger numbers has led to a race first to recruit as many active pilots as possible and then, to increase the total number of pilots by growing the aviation training sector.
Our association, AEFA, confirms that, indeed, this growth in the aviation industry needs to be accompanied by greater investment in the training of new pilots, both by governments and private companies. It is to be assumed that this will be the trend over the next few years and that Aer Lingus will not be the last airline to resort to this type of programme to keep up with a heightened pilot demand.
