EVA Flight Training Academy

EVA Flight Training Academy is the ab-initio flight school of Taiwan's EVA Air, founded in 2013 and operating as an FAA Part 141 school at Sacramento Mather Airport in California. It flies a Diamond fleet of DA20, DA40 and DA42 aircraft on Garmin G1000 avionics, and has grown steadily on the field since opening its classroom building in 2014 — a maintenance hangar followed so it services its own training aircraft, and a four-storey dormitory of 87 studio apartments is due to complete around the end of 2026. It exists to feed EVA Air's own flight decks rather than to sell training on the open market.

Training at EVA Flight Training Academy

The academy runs private pilot, instrument and multi-engine commercial pilot programmes together with upset prevention and recovery training, taking EVA Air cadets from no experience to the licences and ratings they need before returning to Taiwan for type and multi-crew training. Because intake is tied to the airline's cadet scheme, the route in is an application to EVA Air rather than to the school.

It also offers an unusual second path onto the airline: instructor pilots who complete a minimum three-year contract at the academy and reach at least 1,500 flight hours become eligible for hire as EVA Airways First Officers — a way of converting instructing time into a jet seat that few airline-owned academies formalise. Either route begins with the airline's selection process, where aptitude and psychometric testing sits alongside interviews and, for the instructor path, a simulator assessment.