London, United Kingdom
Prepare for British Airways
2 courses prepare you for the British Airways selection process.
British Airways screens with cut-e / Aon at the cadet selection (Speedbird Pilot Academy).
This covers the Speedbird Pilot Academy cadet route; British Airways' own pages describe the online and psychometric stages without naming a provider.
British Airways Speedbird
Preparation for the British Airways Speedbird Pilot Academy — the fully funded cadet programme: the online assessments and speaking activity, the Waterside group exercise and multitasking assessment, the flight school stage and the final assessment day.
Aon (cut-e) Test Preparation
Prepare for the Aon (formerly cut-e) online assessment used by Ryanair, Delta, FTEJerez, Skyborne and many other airlines and academies. Covers the reasoning, spatial, multitasking and personality modules with a matched practice plan.
Provider mappings are based on public information and may change. Last checked September 2026.
British Airways is the flag carrier of the United Kingdom, built around a hub at London Heathrow with a substantial second operation at Gatwick and a City Airport shuttle. A founding member of oneworld and part of International Airlines Group alongside Iberia, Aer Lingus and Vueling, it flies the Airbus A320 family short-haul and a long-haul fleet of A350-1000s, Boeing 777s and 787s with the A380 still on the heaviest routes. Its history runs back through BOAC and BEA to the earliest years of scheduled British aviation.
Flying for British Airways
The Speedbird Pilot Academy is BA's fully funded cadet scheme and one of the very few in Europe where the airline pays the training bill outright. The 2026 intake — its fourth year — put £18 million behind 160 places, down from 200 the year before, taking candidates from little or no flying experience to a British Airways first officer seat in about eighteen months of integrated training delivered by contracted partners including Skyborne. Entry requirements are modest on paper: six GCSEs at grade 4-9 including maths, English and a science, and a passport allowing unrestricted travel. Cadets accept a reduced starting salary of around £37,000 plus allowances and a five-year bond. BA also runs direct-entry recruitment for experienced and type-rated pilots.
The catch is the field. Application windows last days rather than weeks — 2026's opened on 14 April and closed on the 23rd — and past intakes have drawn in excess of 25,000 applicants for a few dozen places. Stage one is a set of online assessments; stage two adds in-depth psychometric testing, which BA's partner academies run on the Aon battery. With a ratio like that, no interview technique saves a weak online score: the first sitting is where almost everyone is filtered out, and it is the one part of the process that answers directly to practice.
Where British Airways is based
British Airways is headquartered in London, United Kingdom.