Flight School Loans
Ready to Take Off?
Want to pilot the “friendly skies?” Flight school can take you to immediate careers in commercial aviation, and large airlines are constantly in the market for highly trained professionals. But how do you finance the cost of your training when you are locked out of traditional financial aid programs?
For trade programs like flight school, federal and even many private alternative students loans are completely untouchable. Products like these require applicants to be engaged in a more traditional track of collegiate studies: undergraduate or graduate, degree-seeking and enrolled at least half time, sometimes full-time.
The Costs of Flight Training
If you’ve chosen the commercial pilot career track you’ve not chosen poorly. Commercial pilots have exciting jobs and earn up to and over six-figure salaries. According to CNN Money the highest percentage of commercial pilots makes a little over $80,000 a year, still pretty nice change.
However, the cost of a relatively short-term program in flight school is half what a commercial pilot earns in a year. It’s not cheap to learn how to fly.
Funding Flight School
Unless you have a purse of savings to put toward your flight school costs you will have to find financial assistance somewhere. A few traditional student loan providers now offer loans suited to professional or trade schools.
Sallie Mae’s Career Training Loan, for example, may be able to provide you with all the benefits of a traditional alternative student loan: funds up to the full cost of the flight school, non-degree seeking program, full-time or part-time participation, and flexible repayment terms.
What the Flight Schools Offer
Some of the larger flight schools are usually able to accommodate your financial needs. They have their own Financial Aid offices and know that most applicants must have some form of student financial aid in order to participate. These schools are large enough and lucrative enough to have developed key relationships with lenders who know flight school graduates are a good bet when it comes to repayment of loans.
Airline Transport Professionals (ATP) is an industry accredited provider of commercial flight school training and is held in high regard by the airline industry. Schools are located in about a dozen areas in the country and the school maintains collegial relationships with large carriers who come looking for the best new recruits. ATP, because of its reputation and that of its graduates, has partnered with SLM Financial, part of Sallie Mae, to offer ATP students a customized loan program just for the purposes of the flight school. Repayment is tailored to the time frame necessary for most grads to land a job and the loans offer quick approvals and allow most borrowers the full cost of the training. Flight school students may apply with a creditworthy co-borrower if necessary and borrowers have up to an extended 20 years to repay the loan. ATP offers a slew of “airline hiring partnerships” which means flight students may land a job early in their program with a major airline, guaranteeing an excellent salary upon graduation.
Phoenix East Aviation located in Daytona Beach, Florida also provides top-notch accredited commercial flight training the likes of ATP and with similar tuition attached. Phoenix accommodates the financial needs of their students by offering loan programs from partner lenders like SLM and commercial banks like Wells Fargo and SunTrust, both of which are experienced with alternative student loans. Phoenix also maintains relationships with airlines that regularly hire their graduates giving their financial aid process even more credibility.
Career Options
After flight school, graduates have a couple of different career avenues open to them. While many are focused on commercial airlines, others find good careers as instructors and as cargo pilots and even in aviation management jobs.
