US Air Force expects to graduate 1,500 pilots this fiscal year

The US Air Force expects to graduate 1,500 pilots this fiscal year. It calls that figure a milestone for its reworked undergraduate training system. Air Education and Training Command, or AETC, began reshaping the training more than a year ago under an initiative called Future of Undergraduate Pilot Training.

The drivers included too few instructors, restricted access to aircraft and a broader aviator shortage that AETC puts at nearly 2,407.

Under the revised model, some introductory flying goes to civilian schools. The partner institutions operate under FAA Part 141 rules and are hosted by four states. Students complete private pilot, instrument and multiengine courses before the military phase, arriving with roughly 120 flight hours. Under the earlier Initial Flight Training programme, that figure was about 30 hours.

The arrangement lets the service hold back its own aircraft, instructors and flying hours for training specific to military operations.

Military instruction then centres on the T-6A Texan II and simulators. The 19th Air Force rewrote the T-6 syllabus around competencies linked to what operational units need. AETC says the change lowered the number of T-6 training days by 31%, and that more students are now moving through the system without the addition of a further military flying-training wing.

Lt. Gen. Clark J. Quinn, the AETC commander, said in the announcement that reaching 1,500 pilots is a milestone but not the finish line. The command says it will keep refining the model as it seeks to sustain pilot output and prepare graduates for operational assignments.