Many people have of course many different opinions on this. Some always dreamt of flying and would be pilots even if not paid. Some others like the money and the prestige. Others just think that it's a great career.

Let's see what the key advantages of a pilot career are:

Career path: You are a manager in control of a multi-million dollar asset and managing at least 30-50 people around you. It's a prestigious position, very well respected all around the world, with very good career opportunities to grow. If you enter the airline as a Second Officer, the career path starts becoming a full effect Junior First Officer that means that you will be able to fly for real and then it goes through First Officer, Senior First Officer, Captain, and Senior Captain. Once reached Senior Captain, some will dedicate themselves to training; some will start a career as a manger inside the company. Most of the top management of an airline is composed by ex Captains.

Short work time: You work 50-60 hours a month, comparing to 160-180 hours of a normal job. This means a lot of free time for yourself, your family, and your hobbies.

High salary: As an average pilots earn way more than other office jobs. A second officer in CX, new entry pilot, can earn around 30 or 40K HKD, arriving to more than 150K for senior captains. Are a lot of money, especially if compared with the hours you work. Very few jobs pay like this

Traveling opportunities: You travel when you work, if you do a long distance flight you always have some time to visit the destination and rest, usually 1 day, and if you don't then you can still use the Crew discount tickets for you and your family. Usually you pay 10% of the normal fare. So a flight to New York will cost you around 1000 HKD for you and your wife in the worst case. Not bad.

Reputation and respect: It's one of the most respected jobs in the world. Say you are a pilot and everybody will say "ohh a pilot ! wow"... this does not happens if you say you are a lawyer, or an accountant. Well the common imaginary is very high for pilots, and people know how difficult it is to become one.

If I were not a pilot, I would for sure become one after thinking of this.

We received a lot of enquiries from customers for CPL/ATPL because they think it is necessary to get the license before enter airline. In fact, for those who want to enter the Airline Cadet Program (CX/KA/etc..), paying for the licenses is ABSOLUTELY USELESS, and it is even counterproductive in some cases. This is because Airlines look for reliable, self-assured, committed and passionate people with the ability to learn, recognize and correct their own errors, work in team, recognize and manage their stress and fears, understand their responsibility and limitation and possess a high degree of problem solving and situational awareness, in other words the capability to understand what are the important information in a specific context and never lose control of the situation. The licenses cannot prove any of the above.

Moreover, the world is changing. In 2006 ICAO, the international civil aviation organization, has introduced a new type of license called MPL. The MPL license can be ONLY taken with the airline training centers because it's tailor made for the specific airline. This license focus on the Multi crew skills, the one needed to fly a large commercial jet, and airline all over the world.

In the modern planes the role of the pilot is important not for everyday operations, that can be automated, but for the emergency situations and the un-usual non automatable tasks. MPL focus on training the pilot in the simulators more similar to modern airlines, and use a competency based evaluation to evaluate the skills needed by a modern pilot, instead of the old flying hours evaluation typical of the CPL license. MPL tends to increase safety, speed up pilot readiness to fly, and focus on the real skills that a pilot needs in an automated environment like the modern planes.

All airlines are moving to this new license schema. This means that in the future, people that want to start a career as commercial pilot, can only start it through an Airline Cadet program. Most of the airlines, in fact, hire only people through this program, allowing direct entry only to very experienced pilots with more than 3000 hours of flight.

Most of the commercial airlines offer a Cadet Program tailored for their own company use. Some of them are fully sponsored and some partially sponsored. It means that some airlines pay in full for your training, in exchange of a contract that oblige you to work for them for 10 or 15 years, and some airline ask you to pay, but once trained, you are also free to go somewhere else. Cathay Pacific, Dragon Air, Hong Kong Airlines in HK offer fully sponsored programs, China Southern in China offers a partially or self-sponsored program, so many other Chinese airlines.

Even if you are involved in a self-sponsored cadet program, the one in which you need to pay for part of your training, you don't need to worry about the money. Banks are more than willing to loan you the amount of money needed because they know that selection are tough and that when you will be a salaried pilot you will be easily able to pay back the loan. And most of the airlines have agreement with banks to loan you the money so they can simplify the procedure and make it easier for the training.

Once you are selected, you will go for 18 months of basic training, plus more training on the simulators and on the real jets. Entering the program is not the end of the selections. Almost 10% or 20% of the pilots selected to enter, will not complete the program or will be sent away.

Three biggest advantages that an airline pilot job offers: high salary, good future career development and heavy responsibility make the first impression of people that the selection of airline pilot must be extremely harsh and those who are able to pass the selection must have excellent physical and psychological qualities. This impression, nevertheless, is only partially true.

For candidates, airlines have few if any requirements on nationality, place of residence, gender, education, work experience, degree, school performance and etc. If you compare the requirements for a management trainee program in a big company, you will find the things airline ask for is just essential. But the number of people airline recruit is a lot more than the number of management trainee... and I don't see the need to compare their starting salaries...

But this does not mean it is easy to get into airline. Actually, airline pilot selection is one of the most, if not THE most, rigorous selection procedure you can find. Then what are the criteria airlines use to select their new hires?

The answer to this question is, instead of appearance, education or other external factors, airline value more about professional knowledge and people skill. To be specific, the professional knowledge in flying theories, planes and flight environment and stress management under pressure, management and control of multiple tasks and accurate communication. In other words, the airline selection is structured around its professional knowledge and skill needs and the criteria are to test how passionate and committed the candidates are, how much efforts the candidates contributed and how their psychological development is.

Concretely speaking, the basic requirements to be an airline pilot include:

Age & gender: between 18 to 35. There is NO discrimination in genders. So male and female have the same opportunities;

Vision: The current normative on pilots affirms that "If normal sights can be restored with the help of lenses or glasses, visual defects are not a impediment for becoming a pilot". This means that you can become a pilot if you suffer from visual defects that can be corrected by glasses or lenses. Astigmatism, Hyperopic (long sightedness), Presbyopia and Myopia are not cause for pilot rejection.

LASIK or laser operation: Pay attention though not to do a LASIK or laser operation, because this in most of the cases will stop your career forever. A Lasik or Eye Laser operation, can have slight sight effects that are a deterrent for pilots. A common side effect is night starburst of halos effects. These are typical in low lights situation with bright lights sources, usually the cockpit is low light with bright lights coming from the instruments. These effects can reduce the ability to judge or read an instrument and therefore will impede the pilot to do his own job.

Medical conditions: The medical conditions that will impede you to enter will be: serious heart problems or coronary problems, clinical hypertension, color blindness or retina damages, brain damages or reduced motor skills, serious psychological problems like clinical depression, or any serious life threatening problem. For sure you will have known in advance if you have such serious medical conditions.

Candidate nationality: For the cadet pilots programs in China, like the one of China Southern, you need to be a Chinese citizen to apply. For most of the other cadet programs, like the one in HK or Singapore, any nationality can be admitted, including Mainland Chinese nationals;

Education requirement: A degree or diploma is needed, in any discipline, or a Form 7 equivalent with a pass in Math or Physics will do the fare. There is no preference for any discipline, so even if your degree is in art it will be accepted and will not handicap you;

Major: The airline companies do not have any requirement on the major in university. Well, they don't even require a university degree, so... The general belief is that actually, a business major will be good for the long term development if you want to get a management position after;

Health conditions: In terms of health, a normal youngster health condition will be more than enough to enter and pass the medical selections. You will need to pass 2 medical checks called ICAO Level 1 and Level 2 Medical, but usually these are no hurdle for entering the cadet.

Anybody who satisfies these requirements above is capable for the airline pilot career. Then, let's move to how to change the "capable" into "very capable". In other words, what are the key criteria the airlines value and how to improve these criteria so you can pass the interviews to be an airline pilot.

Whist selection processes change from Airline to Airline; basically the selection criteria and the measurement are widely the same all over the world. At the end aviation is a very global business and airlines exchange experiences and ideas very often.

One thing that is quickly changing with the introduction of MPL is that more and more airlines will use simulators to do their selections, instead of a small plane or a interview/test only based process. Experience on simulators is therefore a hedge in the future selection processes

The criteria that every airline will measure and check are:

Commitment and Passion. How committed you are and how passionate you are to become a pilot. With a vast number of applicants the airlines want to choose only the most committed people, this will assure long term success and secure the airline investment in you. Commitment and passion are difficult to measure, but airlines usually will measure it checking your aeronautical and aviation knowledge with the assumption that if you are passionate, you have studied a lot about planes and aviation.

Situation awareness. This is a mantra for pilots. It means how well you can understand the situation in which you are, get the right information and take quick decisions based on the information you selected. Imagine when you are in a cockpit. There are 6 computer screens, 500 plus buttons, 200 plus lights, manometers and indicators, numeric displays, radio and ATC chatting. At any time you need to understand what is important and take the right decisions. This will be measured during the interviews, the practical test, and now also in the simulator test for the airlines that start using it.

Stress management: How well you manage your stress? What is your breaking point? In other terms, if you are on a flight with all four engines on fire and with the cockpit filling with smoke, will you panic? or you will follow procedures and save everybody ? This is usually a million dollar question, but it's an important question that airlines try to understand during the interviews with the captains, with the psychologist, and during the practical test. This is the difference between life or death for 300 or more passengers and should not be taken lightly

Problem solving: Can you solve problems; can you do it following procedures? Can you figure out solutions that will comply with the context, procedures and safety? Airline will measure this with practical test, including navigation tests. The more you prepare for this, the better

Can you follow procedures? or you are a reckless boasting person that just want to show off ? Airline pilots should be able to follow procedures, comply with safety, be aware of their limits and take always the safest path. Most of the people that apply will be discarded for this. Just a hint that you are not able to comply, that you are out. Why? Because there is no other job in the world with 300 lives responsibility while driving a 200 Million USD machine. Reckless people have no place in the cockpit.

People management: Are you a team worker? are you able to work with other people, communicate, solve problems together ? Being a pilot does not mean seating in the cockpit and drive, like a taxi driver. Pilots are managers, they have a crew of 5 to 20 people on board, they have a ground crew they need to manage and interact with, they need to work with Air Traffic Controllers (ATC) in different countries, with different cultures and attitude. Are you able to do this? The more you will grow in the pilot career the more the management skills will be needed. No one will make captain without proper management skills.

Error recognition. Can you understand, admit and explain your errors? Without looking for justification? Are you able to learn from them? Also for pilots errors are common, the important thing is to admit them, recognize them and make a root cause analysis that will allow us to train more, study more and avoid it next time. There is no space for blaming others, justify themselves or avoiding the problem. This is a skill and an attitude at the same time. Airlines will test this during the interviews and the practical flying and non-flying exercises. Be ready.

Somebody, when I make this list, usually says.. "What about driving skills? I mean how good you are with your hands in piloting the plane". Well they count, but not too much. Using your hands it's quite easy usually and common skill. At the same time commercial planes nowadays are almost fully automated, and hand skills are not really required, unless for hand skills you mean typing on a computer or pressing buttons. The hand skills were useful for combat in the First World War with the Red Baron ... but 90 years have passed since then... and on a commercial flight we do not want any Red Baron.

To conclude, the Airline Cadet Program (CX/KA/etc..) is the only way to enter an airline. How to get into the Airline Cadet Program (CX/KA/etc..) then? Same as every other profession, candidates will go through 4 interviews aim to evaluate their professional knowledge and personal quality. In the interviews, captains will lead the talk and simulators will be used to imitate the real cockpit setting. The whole selection procedure is very strict and the passing rate is around 1%. Of course, considering the responsibility the pilots have over the airline companies and all passengers on board, the criteria in the selection cannot be overemphasized

Instructors are all current Airline pilots that went through the CX/KA Cadet Program and are now captains or FO with CX or other airlines; Using airline pilots as instructors gives us two advantages: for one, the MPL is designed by different airline companies and we learnt through these people working everyday in these companies their culture and value, which enable us to determine the lecture and training focus; for another , all of them went through the complete interview process and there are familiar with the questions asked, the skills needed and tips.

Debriefing sessions after each lessons, stage tests and final exam provide constant feedback. After each session, there is a 20 mins debriefing session in which the instructors will discuss with the student about his/her performance and potential improvements, give assignments and arrange preview contents. The whole programs also include two mock tests and a final exam. If the student failed air final exam or the first interview with the airline, we will provide 6 free review courses (once for each student);

4 mock-up interviews to simulate the real airline pilot interviews. Based on the interview experience from our airline pilots and long relationship with the airline, we set up 4 interviews that are identical to the real pilot interviews with the same procedure, same evaluation criteria and same setting.

Ample opportunities to practices with the instructor on the simulator. The course combines lectures with practice on the 737-800 simulators so the students can test their knowledge in practices and find what they do not understand from the lectures. The instructors are there to explain the problems and also question the students. Moreover, practices make the abstract knowledge concrete; the hard to explain practices more friendly;

High quality simulator provide close-to-real simulation environment and pilot operation condition. Our simulation is approved by New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority for pilot training. Aimed at FNPTII/FAA level 4 / MCC Trainer / MPL Level 2, our simulator has fully enclosed cockpit, full functioning avionics and computers - FMC's; autopilots and auto-throttles; 180degree external visuals that accurately represent the terrain with some to photo realistically enhanced. We allow student to fly in & out in 24,000 airports. We have countless flight tracks and routes can be flown anywhere in the world. All these provide the student with the simulator environment they will face in the interview.

Total flexible time. The course takes around 2 to 6 months. Since it is a one-to-one individual course, the students have full control of the time. Even if you received the interview notice in the middle of the program, you can still finish the whole program before the actual interview.

This course is specifically designed to prepare you for the cadet program selection process. All our instructors are local Airline pilots that went through the CX/KA Cadet Program and are now captains or FO with CX or other airlines. This guarantee that you have the best training possible.

The course is a mix of :

Home Study (Consider around 9/10 hours of home study for each ground hour you do with us)

Ground School

Simulator Flights. The simulator flights are a key part of the course. We will use the standard operating procedure and we will put you in real situation, to improve your coordination, skills, practical knowledge and ability to react under stress. All the key requirements for an Airline Pilot.

Our student success rate after AIP is much better than the average success rate. The AIP Course is one-to-one divided in 22 lessons of around 3 hours each and can be taken between 2 to 6 months. Most of the students complete the course in an average of 5 months. We are so committed to bring you at the right skill and knowledge level to be admitted into the CX/KA cadet program, that our instructors will give you up to 6 extra lessons if he deems necessary to bring you at the right level.

What you get:

26 Hours of real Airline Procedure Flight Simulator time (Up to 32 hours)

18 Hours of Ground School (Up to 24 hours)

3 Professional Books

First Officers or Captain as your instructors

What you learn:

All you need to know to pass the CX/KA selection process

Advanced Flight Skills and Airline Procedures

Aircraft Systems and their usage

Key Concepts of VFR and IFR navigation

Handling of the key phases of the flight

This course is for you if:

17 years or older

You want to become an airline pilot

You applied to the CX/KA cadet interviews

You already failed once the CX/KA cadet interview