EFTA spreads its wings to expand pilot pipeline

Emirates Flight Training Academy (EFTA), which was started with a focus on the national cadet pilot programme for Emirates, now offers its world-class training to cadets from all over the globe. Besides the exceptional success of its graduates – who’ve all been snapped up by Emirates after a stringent recruitment process – the academy is flying high on the integration of three brand-new Diamond aircraft into its training programme.

Although the majority are students who’ve recently graduated from high school, the cadets range in age from 17 to 26 years. In fact, an Emirates cabin crew is now a cadet at EFTA, having met the academy’s strict eligibility criteria.

EFTA’s cadets now also fly the Diamond DA42-VI light piston twin-engine aircraft, which has successfully introduced multi-engine piston training at the academy. This means cadets train on three different aircraft types – single-engine, twin-engine and multi-engine light jets. This is a rarity among flight training academies that generally train cadets on just one or two aircraft types.

Flight deck careers have seen a huge resurgence post-pandemic and are riding another wave of popularity. Salaries have increased, airlines are fast tracking career paths and expanding at a phenomenal rate, aircraft are more sophisticated, demand for travel is booming – all these and more have made aviation a sought-after career. According to Oliver Wyman’s latest research, the gap between supply and demand of pilots is currently about 17,000 and it will increase to 24,000 in 2026.

EFTA combines cutting-edge learning technologies and a modern fleet of 29 training aircraft – 22 Cirrus SR22 G6 single-engine piston, four Embraer Phenom 100EV very light jets and three Diamond DA42-VI light piston twin-engine aircraft.

EFTA’s state-of-the-art facility, which is spread over 12.5 million ft² (1.2 million m²) equivalent to 200 football pitches, currently has 36 modern classrooms, six full-motion flight simulators, an independent Air Traffic Control Tower and a dedicated 1,800m runway.