I am watching a programme about Easyjet and they have just said that the educational requirements for a pilot is just five GCSEs. That seems very basic for someone who is responsible for understanding an aircraft and I wonder whether the same level is required of BA pilots?

Criteria in careers section of website

https://careers.ba.com/future-pilots

This is the minimum requirement.

In reality, many pilots in the world, not just BA, have more advance education than simply secondary education.

Even when they don’t exceed those requirements (my partner is a qantas pilot and his highest completed qualification is year 12, kind of like 6th form I suppose), once all the study is done for ATPL it’s considered equivalent to a bachelor’s degree here

the theoretical study component of a pilot’s licence is phenomenal

6’3” cutoff for airline pilots seems odd

I would have expected a bachelor's degree to be required. Most military pilots in the USA are officers and have either graduated from one of the military academies or have done ROTC at university.

Minimums are minimums.

I’d say few are accepted with the minimum.

There’s also a growing movement of Mickey Mouse-esque “bachelor of aviation” in Australia, as the universities etc have cottoned onto the fact that they can charge$120k for something the flight schools/modular program have been providing for $60k plus a crappy wage for eons

also re many meeting minimums, there is a big push for diversity (specifically in Australia, to get the male:female ratio to 50:50 which is insanity). So we are all equal but some are more equal than others, when it comes to requirements

In BA’s case, they have historically employed many ex-RAF pilots (plus I’m sure ex-FAA and maybe ex-AAC). A degree isn’t required for the majority of Commissioned Officer training in the UK Armed Forces, including flying training. UK and US initial officer training differ in some significant areas, therefore there isn’t the link between degrees and military aviation that you have in the US.

Joining requirements to go direct officer are a-level equivalent, a degree is not necessarily required and can actually be a disadvantage if you want to get to the top, although this is being addressed. many fine officers that have come from the ranks just have GCSEs. We also have aircrew that aren’t officers too and they do a fantastic job.

It really is a modern world where individuals should be competency assessed not based on academia.

Advancement is generally based on seniority which is a numbers game only (ie if you start working on the 9th of May 2019 and I start on 10th May, you will automatically be 1 ahead of me in the queue for upgrade). Of course there are slight variations to that but they are usually down to individual choice, for example where a base change would be involved, or a transfer from short haul-> long haul or vice versa (as some prefer the rosters one way or the other).

certainly here, and I struggle to believe BA would be remarkably different, an upgrade out of seniority for educational qualification reasons would be unthinkable. Even flight hours barely come into it, merit seems to be totally excluded

(also from experience NZ/VA/JQ are the same so it’s not just QF/Australia)