More aircraft, more flights and more staff. Austrian Airlines is continually expanding. In the first half of 2018 alone, Austria’s home carrier hired 400 new employees, mainly pilots and flight attendants. At present Austrian Airlines plans to add 100 fully trained pilots.

In addition, training courses for future pilots will be offered again in the coming year. “We are pleased that we can offer so many career entry opportunities to experienced pilots and those who still want to become pilots”, says Helmut Haubenwaller, Head of Crew Training at Austrian Airlines.

More women in the cockpit

The job and training offering particularly targets women. Over the last three years, the percentage of female pilots at Austrian Airlines has risen from three percent in 2015 to the current level of five percent. This is a positive development.

However, it also demonstrates that women are still strongly underrepresented in this profession. For this reason, the declared objective of Austrian Airlines is to have more women in the cockpits of its aircraft.

Learning to fly from scratch

Four so-called ab initio courses will be offered in 2019, each with 24 training positions for interested candidates without previous flight experience. The requirements demanded of prospective candidates include EU citizenship, a secondary school leaving certificate, a secondary school vocational certificate, or the subject-related university entrance qualification of the country of origin.

Furthermore, candidates should be at least 165 cm tall and have an unrestricted passport. In addition, they should have a very good command of written and spoken German and English. People wearing glasses or contact lenses may only have maximum of +/- 3.0 diopter lenses.