PEMBROKE PINES, Fla. — In this city roughly 15 miles southwest of Fort Lauderdale, Cessna four-seater airplanes are lined up on a field beside Broward College, a community college offering two- and four-year degrees. Prospective students considering Broward’s professional pilot training program are about to take “discovery flights” to explore whether the experience of flying hooks them into wanting to pursue it as a career.
The demand for new pilots is growing: In the next few years, thousands of pilots will reach retirement age, freeing up openings for younger workers in a field where the median salary is more than $170,000.
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Until now, the pilot profession has been striking in its lack of diversity. In 2023, about 90 percent of pilots were male and 80 percent white. Those in the field describe multiple obstacles to changing these demographics: a lack of transparency around how to break into piloting, the high cost of most programs and the perception that the airline industry is unfriendly to women and people from underrepresented groups.
Broward College recently partnered with JetBlue on one of several new programs trying to change that. In 2023, the South Florida school became the first community college to partner with JetBlue’s Gateway University program. Students in the program are paired with mentors and get a conditional job offer (based on getting licensed and completing all other requirements) with JetBlue as a first officer pilot. And students at Broward, whose student body is roughly one-third white, one-third Hispanic and one-third Black, pay much less in tuition than JetBlue’s 14 other participating institutions.
A whiteboard lays out aspects of a flight lesson for students. Pilots are required to take courses in meteorology and mathematics. At Broward, the training is a combination of in-classroom learning and training in flight simulators and in the air.
Flight instructor Shiloh Hazin, right, guides student Zachary Clarke in one of Broward’s four flight simulators. Students get between five and 15 hours of flight simulator training per semester as part of their Broward tuition. Hazin can pause the simulator to give advice when needed. Afterward, he and Clarke debrief for about 15 minutes on how the lesson went and what to work on next time.
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Alonzi, who works as a flight instructor while pursuing his professional pilot degree, explains to a reporter that it’s normal to experience turbulence in a four-seat Cessna. It’s important for students to feel calm before taking the yoke — the control wheel — for the first time, he notes. While Alonzi describes how to steer the plane, he also pays attention to the plane’s controls and the flight map and listens for messages from the air traffic control towers.
Students come from all over the world to attend Broward College. Alonzi, originally from Venezuela, pays for his education and builds his flight hours by serving as an instructor. Once students complete flight instructor training and reach a certain number of hours in the air and on simulators, they can work as instructors while completing their degrees. Here, Alonzi parks the Cessna after a flight.
Clarke, who is from South Florida, is a second-year student at Broward who plans to apply for the JetBlue Gateway University program. He says he can afford the pilot training costs by living at home and working three days per week as a photographer. He has pilots in his family and has accompanied his uncle on cargo flights, but he says he looks forward to the program’s extra mentorship.
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On a hot day in August, Broward College’s aviation maintenance program students work in the maintenance hangar surrounded by aircraft and airplane parts. They learn how to fix all mechanical aspects of airplanes in programs that last between 13 and 19 months. The 13-month express option requires classes for more than 8 hours per day, while the traditional option is partial day. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, median pay for aircraft and avionics equipment mechanics and technicians was $75,400 per year in 2023.
James Rauschkolb, a third-year student in Broward’s bachelor of aerospace science program, is studying to become a pilot. He long wanted to become one but thought joining the military was the only way to get into the profession. It wasn’t until Rauschkolb got a job with the Transportation Security Administration that he learned from pilots he met that it was possible to get pilot training in college. They recommended pricey options such as Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, but he found Broward College through his own research.
Rauschkolb says he speaks to his mentor in JetBlue’s Gateway University program by phone or text every week: “My mentor, Bill, gives me all sorts of great advice, especially since I don’t have a family background in aviation.” Rauschkolb’s mother is a piano teacher from Indonesia and his father is from New York and works in oil. “I can’t go to my dad to ask him, ‘Hey, what should I do in this situation?’” he says.
This story was written by Reyna Gobel. The photographs were taken by Alfonso Duran.
This story about pilot training was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
