easyJet chief executive Carolyn McCall was joined by UK Secretary of State for Transport Patrick McLoughlin MP for the official opening of the airline’s new training facility ‘The easyJet Gatwick Academy’.
The new Academy, a £2.7 million investment by easyJet, has been built to accommodate easyJet’s continued growth and houses a world-class training facility comprising classrooms, cabin simulator, evacuation slide and fire training rig. This will bring 40 new jobs to Gatwick. The Academy is located within Concorde House at London Gatwick Airport and will train easyJet pilots and crew from bases across Europe. easyJet currently has crew based in the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Portugal and from 2016 Spain.
Carolyn McCall also announced that easyJet, the UK's largest airline, will recruit 1,140 crew over the next year with a split of approximately 830 cabin crew and 310 pilots.
She said: “Over the next twelve months we will recruit over 1,100 pilots and crew. easyJet is a dynamic airline and we are looking for people who are as passionate about aviation as they are about customer service. We are fully committed to nurturing new talent and there are plenty of development opportunities available.”
There will be job opportunities for both pilots and crew at all easyJet's bases across the UK - Belfast, Bristol, Edinburgh, Gatwick, Glasgow, Liverpool, Luton, Manchester, Newcastle, Southend and Stansted.
As well as training new pilots and cabin crew around 7,000 current easyJet crew complete annual recurrent training. Around 60% of this training will now take place at the new easyJet Gatwick Academy with the remainder being delivered at easyJet’s existing training facility in Luton.
In keeping with easyJet's commitment to develop its people, over the next year the airline will also promote 200 Cabin Crew to Cabin Managers and 140 Co-Pilots to Captains.
easyJet has launched a new initiative to increase the recruitment of female pilots. Just over 5% of easyJet's 2,500 pilots are female - in line with the industry as a whole. Currently women make up 6% of easyJet’s new pilot intake. The airline plans to double the proportion of female new entrants to 12% over two years.
As part of the programme easyJet will promote the career of a pilot to young women in a number of ways including:
• Highlight the opportunities of pilot careers to female audiences such as school groups and other youth organisations - building on the work easyJet already does in mentoring young women.
• Work in partnership with organisations which promote female take-up of STEM (science, engineering, technology and maths) subjects.
• Work with easyJet’s pilot training providers to attract more women to apply for the easyJet cadet programme.
• Offer ten places for women each year on the easyJet pilot training programme with the around £100,000 training loan underwritten by easyJet
easyJet has also committed to provide additional support to develop and retain female pilots, so that more of them can go on to achieve captaincy and pilot management roles.
To achieve this easyJet will run a series of activities including:
• Introduce enhanced mentoring for female pilots (in addition to current mentoring for all pilots).
• Introduce training loan underwriting for A320 type ratings for female pilots entering from other airlines.
• Develop female captains to help them take on leadership roles such as training and base management roles.