The battle to recruit pilots is intensifying across Europe, and Luxair is determined to take the lead. Luxembourg’s national airline announced on Friday 10 July that it has already allocated 12 million euros to its programme for training and funding future pilots, an investment designed to secure its flight crew requirements in a market where qualified candidates are in short supply.
At the heart of this strategy is the Ab Initio programme, which enables candidates to become airline pilots without any prior aviation experience. Young people can be selected as soon as they have completed their secondary education. The training programme combines theoretical instruction, simulator training and flight hours, with the aim of training pilots directly to Luxair’s operational standards. At the same time, the airline offers a funding scheme for trainee pilots who have already begun training to obtain an EASA professional licence, in order to remove one of the main barriers to entering the profession: its cost.
“Training our own pilots is a strategic investment in human capital, safety and Luxair’s future,” emphasises the CEO 
A minority of pilots trained in Luxembourg
To ensure this skills development, Luxair works with European partners, notably BAA Training in Spain and RWL German Flight Academy in Germany. The airline says it closely monitors the trainees’ progress so that they can quickly join its operations once their training is complete.
The figures provided by Luxair also highlight the limitations of the local training sector. Of the more than 130 pilots recruited over the last six years, only seven – less than 5 per cent – had completed their initial training at a flight school based in Luxembourg. The airline therefore believes that its requirements cannot be met by domestic training facilities alone and will continue to rely on a European network of partner schools, whilst giving priority, where possible, to candidates from Luxembourg and the Greater Region.
