Earlier this year, Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) announced a significant shift in how it supports the next generation of pilots. From June 2025, aspiring SWISS pilots will no longer be required to make an upfront financial contribution toward their training – a change that removes a longstanding obstacle for many talented candidates. Instead, the full cost will be covered by a loan, repayable in instalments once they begin working for the airline.
In this exclusive interview with Aviation Business News, Nicolas Burren – head of training supervision pilot school and commander Airbus A320/A321 at SWISS – discusses how this initiative, which starts in June 2025, aims to make a cockpit career more accessible and to ensure that financial constraints no longer stand in the way of aviation ambition.
SWISS’s decision to remove the advance financial contribution requirement for pilot training is a significant change. What was the primary motivation behind this move, and how does it align with SWISS’s broader workforce development goals?
We expect to have an annual need of around 110 new pilots in the next few years. We want the door to a flight deck career to be open to everyone who has the skills and the aptitude required, and we don’t want financial hurdles to stand in their way.
We’re sure that some individuals who have had aspirations of becoming a pilot in the past have had to abandon that dream because they were unable to provide the advance financial contribution required. And we just don’t want financial backgrounds to be a factor in whether a person can fulfil their flying dream.
Given these ambitions, we’re delighted that we are now able to eliminate this hurdle, and will no longer require our trainee pilots to make such an advance financial contribution from this June onwards.
This is a major step for us, both in cultivating the training of our own cockpit personnel and in ensuring that, even with our present sizeable crewing needs, we continue to recruit the best people to our cockpits, to pursue their professional passion and fly our customers safely to their destinations.
How will the new loan structure work for future pilots, and what measures are in place to ensure that pilots can successfully manage loan repayment after their training and employment with SWISS?
Of the present total pilot training costs of CHF 140,000, the Swiss state pays CHF 60,000 for Swiss nationals or CHF 36,000 for EU or EFTA nationals.
To cover the remaining training costs, our trainee pilots can obtain a loan from SWISS of up to CHF 80,000 if they are a Swiss national or up to CHF 104,000 if they are an EU or EFTA national. They will then repay this loan amount after they have completed their training and have been accepted into the SWISS cockpit crew corps.
These loan repayments are made in instalments, and at a very low interest rate that is fixed in accordance with the guidelines of the Swiss federal tax authorities. The repayments are made in CHF 1,000 monthly instalments, which are deducted directly from the employee’s salary. The employee is also free to accelerate these loan repayments if they wish.
Needless to say, our trainee pilots can also opt to make their own financial contribution to these total training costs before they commence their training, to reduce the amount of the loan they require and thus also their interest payments.
This interview continues after the below picture…
SWISS is seeking to attract more women into a cockpit career.
What impact do you anticipate this initiative will have on the diversity and inclusivity of your pilot recruitment efforts?
Inclusion has always been a firm fixture in our corporate culture. We are convinced at SWISS that diversity plays a vital part in our success, promotes innovation and has a positive impact on any team’s dynamics. This holds true throughout our company; and in the cockpit, too, it’s an attitude and an approach that we have maintained for many years now.
Irrespective of the financial support available and these new financing provisions, at SWISS it’s performance that counts – in our selection, in our training and later in the cockpit, throughout which all our requirements must be met in full. In all such matters, we pay no heed to gender, origin, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation: we have the same expectations of everyone, and provide everyone with the same encouragement and support.
We are seeking to attract more women into a cockpit career. But we do not believe that financial considerations are a decisive factor in this area. What we repeatedly hear, however, is that, owing not least to their own preconceptions, women feel they are less likely to pass the selection process or complete the training. And that they see few female role models on flight decks to date.
“We are convinced at SWISS that diversity plays a vital part in our success, promotes innovation and has a positive impact on any team’s dynamics.”
In response to this, we specifically stress at SWISS that women are just as able as men to achieve their flying dream. We also make a point of including female pilots in our marketing campaigns. And we’re convinced we’re on the right track here to raising the proportion of women on our SWISS flight decks from its present level of just over five per cent.
With SWISS’s annual need for 110 new pilots in the coming years, how does this new training initiative help the airline meet its staffing requirements, and what role does it play in securing long-term operational sustainability?
By enabling our future pilots to begin their training with us without the need to make an advance financial contribution of their own, we’re certain that we’ll attract even more interested individuals to a SWISS cockpit career.
Our first findings on this – in the form of the feedback we’ve had and the numbers of registrations we’ve received for our initial aptitude assessments over the past few weeks – confirm this trend. Which further underlines just how significant our action here has been.
Recruiting an average of 110 new pilots a year not only enables us to secure our cockpit crewing needs for the mid-to-longer term. It will also allow us to take optimum advantage of the further projected market potential. SWISS has expanded over the past few years; and we aim to continue to grow, too, to maintain our competitive credentials.
The aviation industry is constantly evolving. How do you see this new approach to pilot training contributing to the broader trend of innovation and modernisation in aviation workforce development, especially with the rise of new technologies and training methods?
Competence-based training is firmly rooted in our SWISS corporate culture – not just on-the-job throughout our airline, but also (and increasingly) as early as our basic pilot training. Our training approach and philosophy are separate, however, from our training financing model.
We are aware, too, that the needs and the priorities of our potential applicants are also subject to change, and that the pilot’s profession today must also compete with countless other possible career options. This is a further reason why we want to keep the financial hurdles to a SWISS cockpit career as low as possible.
We are also currently working on a new model that would allow basic pilot training to be combined in future with studies in aviation or completed in a modular manner in parallel with other work activities. In doing so, we are seeking to address a growing demand for such further development options, especially among the younger generation.
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