Cathay Pacific is relaunching its Cadet Pilot training programme in a new collaboration with the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) that will further enhance Hong Kong’s reputation as a leading centre for aviation training in Asia. The airline’s Flight Operations department has been forward-planning and reviewing its resources in preparation for the post-pandemic recovery in the aviation market and is looking to recruit and train more than 800 local cadet pilots by 2025. Together with PolyU, the airline has developed a new integrated pilot training course that offers young people in Hong Kong professional pilot training, while also creating job opportunities for instructors and trainers as well as other indirect roles in the local market. The airline’s original Cadet Pilot programme was suspended in March 2020 due to the emergence of COVID-19.
The new 55-to-60-week training course is structured so that candidates will undergo their ground theory programme under the auspices of PolyU in Hong Kong. Successful candidates will then commence flight training in either Adelaide in Australia or Phoenix in the USA, before returning to Cathay City for multi-crew simulator training. The new partnership with PolyU will greatly expand the number of cadets that can be trained each year. The airline aims to welcome about 190 candidates in 2022 and will have the capacity to take in between 240 and 300 per year from 2023 to 2025. This compares to around 180 cadets trained in 2019. Since the inception of the Cadet Pilot programme in 1988, the airline has trained more than 1,000 cadet pilots from Hong Kong.
In addition, 150 of the 2020 programme’s fully trained and qualified graduates, who were unable to take up places with Cathay Pacific due to the pandemic, will be joining the airline before the end of 2022.
