Spirit Airways provides novel college companion to crimson meat up pilot coaching pipeline as scarcity persists

A Spirit Airways aircraft takes off at Los Angeles Global Airport in Los Angeles, June 1, 2023.

Mario Tama | Getty Pictures

Spirit Airways on Thursday stated this is able to companion with Liberty College, the Tenth college that it be working with, to lend a hand crimson meat up a pilot coaching pipeline as the industry continues to face a shortfall of aviators.

This system will enable students pursuing aviation levels at the college’s College of Aeronautics in Lynchburg, Virginia, to practice to the firm’s pipeline program after ending their sophomore year. Prospective trainees will need a recommendation from a college member sooner than being eligible to launch up the program.

College students working toward an aviation level can gain conditional job affords as they produce their learn and work on accruing flight hours. They should then full airline pilot coaching programs, becoming a member of as first officers.

“We build rather a few labor into increasing the Spirit Wings Pilot Pathway Program and assembling a super neighborhood of partners making it extremely rewarding to realize this key milestone,” Ryan Rodosta, senior director of flight operations and machine chief pilot at Spirit, stated in a press launch.

Other carriers maintain furthermore sought to amplify their present of up to date pilots. U.S. industrial airline pilots can handiest flit till age 65 beneath U.S. law. A surge in retirements and buyouts all the plan in which thru the Covid-19 pandemic maintain exacerbated a shortfall, in particular at regional carriers.

JetBlue offered final month that its Gateway Rotor Transition Program will instruct U.S.-militia trained helicopter pilots to transition to airline pilots. Better than 10% of JetBlue’s novel pilot hires in 2023 are anticipated to advance from regarded as one of its Gateway programs, JetBlue stated at the time.

In February 2020, United Airways purchased a flight academy in mutter to hire bigger than 10,000 novel pilots over the last decade.

Airways are incentivized to practice novel pilots the usage of pipeline programs. U.S. law requires pilots to receive 1,500 hours of coaching to flit with industrial airlines. Exceptions exist for some, equivalent to U.S. militia-trained pilots and these that motivate two- and four-year programs that consist of flight coaching.