UNITED AVIATE ACADEMY (how to become a United pilot)

Good morning from Goodyear, Arizona. Today is the grand opening of the United Aviate Academy. It's going to be an awesome day. Scott Kirby's here. Marianne Schaefer's here. She's the chief pilot of all the United Pilots. CNN, MSNBC are here. It's pretty cool. So we're going to go have a grand opening ceremony. We're going to get a tour of the facility. We're going to talk to some students and in a little bit we're going to go up in one of these Cirruses. It's going to be fun. Let's go. After he let me get used to the airplane, my instructor Matt showed me an example of the great instruction available at the Academy by talking me through an emergency descent. Rainbow Valley Practice Area Cirrus 842, Echo Foxtrot 5000 south of the green fields. We'll be doing an emergency descent. Watch out below, Rainbow. All right, yeah, let's do it. Let's pull the power to idle. Idle. About 45 degree left turn. 45 degrees to bank? Yep. And then pitch it down for about 160 on the airspeed. Okay. And really just down to about 3,500 feet. Holy crap, man. Yeah, it's pretty wild, right? You feel like you're flying right at the ground. Yeah, just don't let it go over that speed. Pitch up a little bit more. Slow down. Sink rate. Yeah, I can't do these in the big planes. There we go. There's about 2,000 feet AGL, so we'll level out. And then just kind of keep the power at idle and pitch up until we hit 133, and that's where we would simulate pulling caps after 133. So you see, that only took about 30 seconds, so we'd be on the ground in about a minute, a minute and a half. That's crazy. It's pretty wild. We headed back to the airport and landed just in time for the grand opening ceremony. Echo Fortunica Foxtrot runway two on clear to land. Today is a dream come true for me. I've dreamt about this day for a decade. And, you know, it's very also personal to me. As I walked in today and started talking to the students, it took me back to when I was 17 years old and got off the first airplane I'd ever been on in my life to attend the United States Air Force Academy. And while this is a little different because no one's screaming at you or making you do push-ups, the feeling is very similar. You know, on that bus driving to the cadet area and seeing those airplanes and thinking about, I'm going to be flying one of those someday. Dreaming about what the future was going to look like. Knowing that you've been given the opportunity to fulfill a dream and live out a dream. And that's what this, at its core, is really about. Thank you all for joining us here today. This is a historic day. Thank you. After the ribbon cutting, I was able to catch up with one of the students, Amelia, who shared why she wanted to be part of the AVA program. Two years ago, I got diagnosed with breast cancer and after beating that, I decided this is kind of my second shot at doing what I want to in life. And I wanted to be a pilot the whole time. So I finally pulled the trigger on that. Now I'm here. Wow. So you beat breast cancer. Yeah. And now you're going to be a United pilot. Man, I love stories like that. Okay, time for a quick tour with my instructor Matt. So when a student gets here, they'll walk in through usually these doors. This is our lobby. CFI and student will meet here and they can break off to a few different areas to do their briefing before the flight. This is one of the briefing areas that you'll see people occupying a lot of times. Just instructors telling their students what the layout of the flight's going to be. There's really never any surprises in training for us. We always know exactly what's going to happen once we get into the airplane. Because when I do a simulated engine failure, I don't want the student to think it's real. You know, something like that. In a traditional flight school, a lot of the ground instruction that happens is done one-on-one, instructor and student. But for us to maximize our flight time with a student, we actually do group grounds. For the majority, there's still a few evaluation grounds that happen that are one-on-one, instructor student. But this is basically the classroom environment. You'll see about, you know, 30 to 40 students in one class at a time, all talking about the same topic. And that's not hard to do because here we actually keep all of our classes of students in line with each other in their progress. They stay together in progress. Kind of like United does with their training. Matt also shared a new tradition they have at the school. When you solo for the first time, you get thrown in the pool. Yeah, so even though it's a little chilly, we were throwing students in the pool yesterday. They loved it. After the tour, we returned for some photos on the flight line and we found Scott Kirby sharing a story about his first solo. You know, I've told some of you, the tradition at the Air Force Academy is slightly different when you solo. They take the, you get wings, you know, which of course have the little, the pins in the back. And instead of pinning them on your shirt, you take your shirt off, they put it on your chest, and they pound it on your back. We're not doing that. It sounds worse than it is. Welcome to United. Well what a great day for United Airlines and the United Aviate Academy. The grand opening was a huge success. If you are interested in becoming a United pilot, you have no flight experience, or maybe you have your private pilot license, I'd consider looking into this. It's an awesome program. It's a seven-step process. Step one, apply for funding. It runs roughly $71,000 and your private pilot license is free, which is amazing. Step two is to start your training. Once you get your private pilot license, you move on to step three, which is apply for the Aviate program. That interview with Aviate is your interview for United. Step four is to continue your training, so you get all the way up through your flight instructor rating. Step five is to start flight instructing or working for a Part 135 carrier that's affiliated with the Aviate program. Step six is to move on to a commuter airline. And finally, step seven is to become a United pilot. And you'll get to fly with me, which would be incredible. So I hope this inspires you to maybe look into the United Aviate program, or inspires you to maybe just go get your private pilot license. This was an awesome day. Thanks for joining me. I'll see you on the next layover. This will be you guys someday. It's free! United!