Meet the trainees paying $136,000 to become the next generation of airline pilots

Skyborne trains about 180 pilots a year at its UK base.

Skyborne is a pilot training academy based at Gloucestershire Airport in southwest England. It has nine intakes of 20 cadets this year for its Airline Transport Pilots Licence (ATPL) course that costs £105,500 ($136,000).

The company was founded in 2018 and finished building its UK base in April 2019. In less than a year the pandemic would strike, wreaking havoc on the global aviation industry.

Carla Booth, Skyborne’s commercial director, tells B-17: “We were the ones going, ‘we need to expand because we know this is going to bounce back, and we know it will bounce back pretty quickly because airlines have laid off so many pilots.'”

It acquired another site in Vero Beach, Florida, where UK cadets spend six months of their course. It also trains US pilots and has a partnership with Delta Air Lines.

Booth says airlines are “very much knocking on our door” as they look to recruit new pilots.

After an oversupply prior to the pandemic, the management consulting firm Oliver Wyman estimates that North America is short of about 17,000 pilots due to factors such as early retirement, while the global figure could hit nearly 80,000 by 2032.

Skyborne received a further boost after being selected as the UK base for British Airways’ Speedbird Pilot Academy program, which covers the training costs for up to 200 cadets. Booth said the course gets about 40,000 applications.

Skyborne cadets and British Airways CEO Sean Doyle at this year’s Farnborough Airshow.

Life at Skyborne

When a new course starts at Skyborne, cadets move into the academy’s accommodation in nearby Cheltenham. Before classes begin, the previous intake will take the new recruits to the pub.

When B-17 toured the academy, there was a palpable camaraderie in the hallways and crew lounges, where noticeboards advertised running clubs and other extracurricular activities.

One of the two lounges overlooks Skyborne’s hangar, where its in-house maintenance crew worked on one of the eight light aircraft parked inside.

Vicky Harriss, head of operational delivery, says cadets also spend time with the engineers and air traffic controllers.

“It’s really important to us to ensure that we help the trainees build those relationships and break down any barriers that may be there very early on in their training,” she adds.

After graduating from high school, 21-year-old Skyborne trainee Libby Roebuck spent the first post-pandemic summer working as cabin crew for TUI Airways, part of the European package holiday group.

Libby Roebuck is a Skyborne student.

Flying in helicopters with her dad throughout her childhood engendered a love of aviation, but school counselors often suggested cabin crew or the military as a career path.

“I think that just kind of pushed it for me more to just go, ‘I am doing this’ — the motivation to just do it,” Roebuck told B-17.

There’s also the challenge of entering what she called “a very male-dominated industry.” Just 12% of trainees on Skyborne’s ATPL course are women, and female pilots account for just 5% of the global total pilots, per the International Civil Aviation Organization.

Roebuck said she’s attended many open days and careers events with only one or two women, prompting her to keep pushing for change. “Especially since I’ve got back from Florida, I’ve seen far more females in the building, which has been really nice.”

Ground school, flight school, and simulators

Skyborne’s pilot course starts with six months of classes, which Harriss described as “really intense” and has just two seven-day breaks.

Roebuck said she would get up at 7 a.m. and be in classes or studying until 11 p.m. as well as putting in another 12 hours on weekends. “What you put in is what you get out of this course.”

There’s also customer-service training that includes roleplaying different scenarios. “Airlines are really starting to realize how important that is now, far more than maybe before,” Harriss said.

Cadets then spend the next six months in Florida doing single-engine flight training with Piper PA-28 planes before returning to often-cloudy England for multi-engine flight training.

This starts in simulators for the twin-engine Diamond DA42 before trainees take to the skies and learning how to cope with only one engine running.

A Skyborne Diamond DA42 in front of its hangar. 

It also includes a course with aerobatic aircraft called Upset Prevention Recovery Training to learn techniques to recover a plane from “unusual attitudes” such as stall events or a spiral dive.

The final few weeks involve learning how to work in a multi-pilot crew, and getting to grips with large jets in a Boeing 737 Max simulator — preparing for the reality of being an airline pilot.

After landing a job, airlines assign a specific aircraft type for which there’s typically another eight weeks of training.

Booth tells B-17 the best part of her job is seeing trainees progress over the 18 months. “They’ve developed and changed so much during that time. To support them in getting in that first job is just so rewarding.”

Skyborne’s UK social media pages celebrate trainees accepting offers from airlines including British Airways, easyJet, TUI, and Jet2.

Roebuck said she’s on a BA pathway waiting for an interview date, and hopes to become a first officer on the Airbus A320.