Etihad Airways

Etihad Airways is the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, based at Abu Dhabi's Zayed International and flying a fleet that spans the Airbus A320neo family, A350-1000s, A380s and Boeing 787s and 777s. Founded in 2003, it spent its first decade pursuing an aggressive equity-alliance strategy before restructuring around a leaner network built on its own hub, and it has been growing sharply again as Abu Dhabi expands its tourism and cargo ambitions. It sits alongside rather than inside the major alliances, partnering selectively instead.

Flying for Etihad

Etihad runs parallel recruitment streams: direct-entry First Officer and Captain pathways across the narrowbody and widebody fleets, open to a broad range of nationalities, and a Cadet Pilot Programme that is explicitly a national-talent scheme. Relaunched in 2025, the cadet route is open to UAE nationals aged 18 to 29 and runs two years split between Abu Dhabi and Spain, with practical flight training delivered at FTEJerez and classroom and simulator work at home. The airline has also opened a cadet pilot scholarship for its own employees, a route into the flight deck from elsewhere in the business that few carriers offer.

Cadet selection is a sequence of hurdles rather than a single day: tests in English, mathematics and physics, psychometric evaluation, and in-person panel interviews and group exercises at the Etihad Airways Training Academy in Khalifa City A. Candidate accounts describe an online aptitude stage on the Aon battery ahead of an in-person COMPASS assessment, with an IELTS Academic 5.5 or TOEFL 510 as the language floor. The psychomotor and aptitude components sit early enough in the sequence to end an application before any interview happens, which is where preparation pays.