What are the academic requirements for airline pilots?

“What are the academic requirements for airline pilots?” “Do I have to have perfect grades in science and math?”

We ask Captain David Santo.

Paula Williams: What are the academic qualifications that are required for any of your programs or any programs that you know of?

Captain David Santo:  It’s not that challenging academically.  I know that people like to promote aviation as being a very tough career field.  It’s not.  You do have to be able to memorize.  You do have to be able to study and apply yourself.  You do need to be able to understand situationally the things that are going on around you.  Academic qualifications really almost anybody could be trained to fly, and I think if you’re of average intelligence and average academics, you’re going to successful if you apply yourself.

Paula Williams:  You don’t have to be a straight A student or be really fantastic at science or math or any of the things they told me with I was a kid?

Captain David Santo:  When I was growing up, Paula, they told me that I had be really good at math in school.  Now I think of the absurdity of we’re not really doing algebraic equations while we’re shooting an approach at 200 miles an hour.  If you can ad subtract, multiply, and divide, you’re probably fine on the math, and the science is not much different.

Paula Williams:  Right.  Okay.  That’s a relief to a lot of people an the line, myself included.