Singapore Flying College

Singapore Flying College was established in 1988 as the Singapore Airlines Group's own cadet training school, and it remains the route through which cadets reach the flight decks of Singapore Airlines, Scoot and Singapore Airlines Cargo. Ab-initio training runs from Seletar Airport in Singapore, with the later flying phases delivered at the college's branch at Jandakot in Western Australia, where airspace and weather allow a training throughput Singapore itself cannot support. A third centre at Maroochydore in Queensland, where cadets once flew the Learjet 45, closed in 2014 when the syllabus changed.

Training at Singapore Flying College

The college's flagship is a Multi-Crew Pilot Licence programme approved by Singapore's civil aviation authority, taking selected cadets from no flying experience to airline first-officer readiness by blending ab-initio flying, simulator work and airline-oriented multi-crew and type-specific preparation. Because it is owned by the airline group, cadets are not training toward the open market: they train for a specific operator, on that operator's standards, with a seat waiting at the end. The commitment runs both ways, with a substantial bond after appointment.

There is no separate admission to the college. Cadets are selected by Singapore Airlines before they ever arrive, through the airline's own four-stage cadet pilot recruitment — a long online aptitude assessment first, then interviews and a Class 1 medical — so the college itself runs no aptitude screening of its own. That places the whole burden of selection on a computer-based battery sat months earlier, against a field drawn to one of the most generous fully sponsored schemes in the industry. Anyone serious about this route is really preparing for that first sitting.