Armed Forces News

The Air Force wants to teach high school-age Junior ROTC students how to fly, in hopes that someday they would enter the service and help abate a pilot shortage. Starting next summer, 120 lucky students who were selected from a pool of 800 applicants will start training under the auspices of the Air Force JROTC Flight Academy.

Another 250 would take part in the program in 2019. Successful candidates would obtain their private pilot’s licenses, though would not be committed to entering the Air Force upon graduation.

A pilot shortage is making ripples through both civilian and military aviation. The Air Force needs 1,500 more pilots. A mandated retirement age of 65 and increasing demands for air travel and cargo are driving a shortage, with airlines competing to hire and hang on to their current pilots. Some projections have airlines requiring 117,000 new pilots in the next 20 years in North American alone.

Many pilots get their training from the military. “We understand not all of the cadets graduating from the Flight Academy will elect to take a military track, but that’s OK,” said Brig. Gen. Michael Koscheski, director of the Air Force Aircrew Crisis Task Force. “Those young people electing to enter commercial aviation will have a positive impact on the overall national crisis.”

Training for the JROTC students would take place at several universities across the country.