When people learn that I run a flight school, they tend to ask the same thing. How do you hold onto good instructors when the airlines keep poaching them?
For a long time, that question used to nag at me. These days it makes me grin.
Here is the truth most people in my industry will not say out loud. A flight school is a stepping stone. We take a keen young pilot, we help them build their hours, and then one day an airline offers them a cockpit and a real career. So they go. That is the deal, whether any of us admit it or not.
I spent my early years in this business swimming against that current. I lost sleep over it. Eventually I worked out that the current was never going to change, so I changed instead.
The poach chain nobody warns you about
There is a pecking order in aviation that runs from the top down. The major airlines take pilots from the regional carriers. The regionals, in turn, take them from schools like mine. And right at the bottom of that chain sits the flight school, watching its best people climb the very ladder it built for them.
Now, I am not competing with a regional airline’s pay packet. I am competing with the promise of a forty-year career flying jets. No small business in Cowra wins that fight on salary alone. Once I accepted as much, everything got easier.
The numbers tell the story plainly. An instructor in this country might earn somewhere in the fifties or sixties. A first officer at a big carrier can clear well past triple that within a few years. When the gap runs that wide, loyalty is not the answer. Honesty is.
What changed when I let go
So I stopped pretending my instructors would stay forever. Instead, I started helping them leave well.
That sounds backwards, I know. But picture it from a young pilot’s seat. They want their 1,500 hours. They want the airline job. If I help them get there faster and fly safer on the way, where do you reckon they send the next keen student? Back to us. Funny enough, the school that openly helps people move on becomes the school people choose.
We track our hours honestly. We sit down with each instructor and map out the path in front of them. And we never treat anyone like cheap labour to be squeezed before they bolt. That small shift in attitude has done more for our name than any advert ever could.
Building a place worth staying at
Here is the part that surprises people. Not everyone wants to fly off into the sunset.
Some pilots love teaching. Others have put down roots in the country and have no wish to chase a base in a capital city. So I built a ladder for them too. An instructor here can grow into a senior role, into examining, into running operations. I came to aviation from adult education myself, so developing people is the part of this job I care about most.
Cowra helps more than you might expect. We get clear skies and short taxi times, which means students fly more and instructors instruct more. Living costs stay sane. The community is tight. On a Friday we fire up the barbecue and everyone hangs around. People who feel they belong somewhere do not leave in a hurry, even when a shinier offer lands in their inbox.
Train them so well they could leave
There is an old line I keep coming back to. What if we train them and they leave? Well, what if we do not, and they stay?
I would far rather run the best first chapter of a pilot’s career than a holding pen full of people who feel stuck. The ones who move on still ring me. Some send students our way. A few drift back later in life, once the airline grind loses its shine and teaching pulls them home.
So no, I do not lose much sleep over the airlines these days. They are not my rivals. They are where my graduates were always headed. My job is to send them off ready, keep the door open, and stay part of their story long after they have gone.
That is a business worth running. And it is a much happier one than the version I used to have, back when I thought keeping people meant holding on tight.
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