Envoy, SkyWest, Avelo, Republic and Air Wisconsin all recruit here. None of them can hire you before 1,500 hours, because the FAA will not let them. What a pathway changes is what happens to you while you build them.
An airline cannot put you in the right seat of a jet until you hold an ATP or a restricted ATP, and that means hours. Fifteen hundred of them, or eleven hundred with a qualifying degree. No school, ours included, has a way around this, and anybody telling you otherwise is selling something.
So the honest question is not which school gets you hired. It is what you are doing for the two years you spend getting from a commercial certificate to airline minimums, and whether an airline is paying attention to you while you do it. That is what these five relationships are for.
The instructor ratings are the mechanism. Most graduates build those hours teaching here, on payroll, which is why the program includes CFI and CFII rather than stopping at commercial.
The only one of the five with published levels, so it is the only one we will describe in specifics. Envoy is American Airlines’ largest regional carrier, and cadets flow to American.
A private pilot certificate and an HR interview is the whole entry requirement. From that point you have mentorship, access to internships, and Envoy’s material in front of you while you are still early in training.
Senior Cadet needs the commercial certificate with multi-engine and instrument ratings, plus HR and technical interviews. The technical interview happens here, years before you would otherwise sit one.
Cadet Instructor means passing an internal review board and signing a commitment letter. In return: travel privileges on American for you and immediate family, a 401(k) with matching, American’s profit sharing, paid vacation, and health, vision and dental.
To join the Envoy Cadet Program you need to be at least 18, hold a current FAA first-class medical, an FCC license and IFR currency, be able to work in the US and travel to every city Envoy serves, and be enrolled at a partner school such as Thrust. Level 1 needs a private pilot certificate and the Envoy HR interview. Senior Cadet adds the commercial certificate with instrument and multi-engine ratings and the technical interview. Cadet Instructor needs the internal review board and a signed letter of commitment.
And at the end of it. Once a cadet reaches ATP or restricted-ATP minimums, Envoy covers the ATP/CTP course itself along with the hotel and ground transport, then places them in the next available new hire class. The interviews are already done by then — that is the whole point of doing them early.
SkyWest, Avelo, Republic and Air Wisconsin recruit out of this school: recruiting events on campus, conversations with people who make hiring decisions, and a relationship that means your application is read rather than filtered.
We are not going to publish cadet mechanics for these four that we cannot point you at in writing. Ask an advisor what any one of them currently offers — airline programs change more often than websites do, and a page that is eight months stale is worse than no page.
Ask what is current→Worth a look.
The hours are the road. We are the on-ramp.
Zero Time to Airline takes somebody with no flight experience to commercial, multi-engine and both instructor ratings — the ratings that let you get paid to build the hours these airlines are waiting on.
See the program→