Over 500 people visited Pilot Careers Live at Croke Park on Saturday which was back in Dublin after a three-year break due to Covid. The event is aimed at those interested in a career as a pilot and is attended by most of the more prominent flight training organisations in Europe. In addition, there was a seminar programme that ran throughout the day.
The programme kicked off with Aer Lingus ATO Chief Instructor Capt. Karl O’Neill who gave an overview of what they look for in candidates for pilot positions. He gave an overview of the process and offered attendees some tips on how to prepare for assessments. He was joined by Senior First Officer Lauren Cusack who spoke about her journey to the flight deck of an A330. She touched on many important topics including how underrepresented females were in the flight deck and encouraged many of those in attendance to consider flying as a career.
Leah McLoughlin, Pilot Recruitment Office from Ryanair, also spoke as part of the seminar programme and outlined the options available on the Ryanair Mentored Programme. This initiative allows students to do their training through specially selected ATOs around Europe and are then guaranteed an interview with Ryanair when their training is complete. As part of the process, they will be trained using Ryanair specific standard operating procedures throughout their training but particularly on their APS MCC course. A number of the Ryanair partner schools were at the event including AFTA from Cork, Aviomar from Rome, Bartolini from Lodz and the newest school to join the programme Astonfly from Paris.
It wasn’t just airlines and flying schools represented at the event, the Irish Air Corps exhibited to discuss the option of a career in the military. Capt. Niall Dungan, a PC-9M instructor in the Flight Training School at Baldonnel spoke to attendees about life as a pilot in the Air Corps and the various options and streams available. This included an overview of the assessment process and an insight into military training and the Wings Course.
It was great to see such strong interest from students and young people looking at a career in the industry. Since Covid, there has been a lot of anecdotal evidence indicating that young people were losing interest due to the traditional cyclical nature of the business. Still, PCL 2022 was a clear signal to the industry that the interest is back.
Take a listen to this week’s Squawk 7000 podcast below which features some interviews from the event.
