United Aviate Academy

United Aviate Academy is United Airlines' wholly owned ab-initio flight academy, based at Phoenix Goodyear Airport in Goodyear, Arizona. Opened in January 2022 as the first flight school owned by a major US airline in decades, it forms the entry point of United's Aviate pilot career pathway and continues to train new classes of aspiring United pilots.

Training at United Aviate Academy

The academy takes students with no prior experience through private, instrument and commercial pilot training in a single full-time programme, with graduates continuing along the Aviate pathway — typically building hours as instructors or at Aviate partner carriers — towards a United Airlines flight deck. Training and fleet are concentrated at the Goodyear campus in the Phoenix area.

Admission runs through United's own multi-stage selection, combining an application review, computer-based aptitude and psychometric testing and structured interviews before an offer is made. With the airline choosing its future pilots at the very start of training, strong performance in these assessments carries real weight, and dedicated preparation for pilot aptitude testing helps candidates present their best on the day.