Pilot Training at Vero Beach: FlightSafety to Skyborne — Vero Beach, Florida

The largest pilot school in Vero Beach is Skyborne Airline Academy Vero Beach, a residential flight school on a 10-acre campus at Vero Beach Regional Airport. For 55 years the same campus was FlightSafety Academy, which FlightSafety International founder Albert L. Ueltschi opened at what is now Vero Beach Regional Airport in 1966, according to Vero Beach 32963. The British company Skyborne closed on its purchase of the former FlightSafety facility here May 1, 2021, Vero News reported.

The Vero Beach academy trains cadets toward airline careers rather than recreational licenses. When the sale was announced in February 2021, Pilot Career News reported that Skyborne Aviation Group had acquired its first pilot training base in the United States in Vero Beach, and that the school would offer FAA Part 141 approved training on a 13-month residential programme. The airport neighbor is Piper Aircraft, and the two Vero Beach companies have since built a buyer and supplier relationship around Piper trainers.

FlightSafety Academy spent more than five decades at the Vero Beach airport. In December 2019 a FlightSafety executive told Vero Beach 32963 that 25,000 of the academy's graduates have gone on to become professional pilots since 1966. The school held accreditation from the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges from the 1970s until 2019, and its programs were regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration.

International students shaped the Vero Beach campus in its later decades. In November 2009 Vero News reported that Pilot Training Network, a Lufthansa Flight Training subsidiary, would begin training students at the Vero Beach facility in 2010, moving from Zadar, Croatia, and that Britain-based Cabair had signed on as well. At that time the school could handle up to 350 students.

By 2019 the academy had grown larger. FlightSafety reported enrollment of about 500 students that year, with 70 airplanes and 250 employees at Vero Beach, and said 65 percent of the academy's students came from outside the United States. Its catalogue listed a 10-month Commercial Pilot Program with tuition just under $60,000 and a 15-month Professional Career Pilot Program just under $84,000, according to the December 2019 report.

The sale followed a difficult stretch for the Vero Beach school. The accrediting commission placed FlightSafety Academy on warning in 2017 and on probation in 2018 over graduation rates in its professional pilot program, which fell from 38 percent in July 2016 to 14 percent in July 2017 and 3 percent in February 2018. The commission vacated the probation in December 2018, but the Vero Beach academy surrendered its accreditation on Aug. 30, 2019, choosing to rely on FAA certifications instead, Vero Beach 32963 reported.

COVID-19 then sent many foreign students home. Vero Beach Regional Airport Director Todd Scher told Vero News in March 2021 that FlightSafety's takeoffs and landings had dropped to about one-third of their usual numbers. Skyborne signed a definitive agreement to purchase the Vero Beach academy on Feb. 16, 2021, under a confidentiality clause that kept the price private.

Skyborne, founded at Gloucestershire Airport in the United Kingdom in 2018, had searched for a U.S. site for about two and a half years, weighing Arizona, Texas and Florida before choosing Vero Beach. Closing required government approvals and work with city officials to transfer the school's lease at Vero Beach Regional Airport, which was complete when the deal closed in May 2021.

Skyborne inherited a working school in Vero Beach. It took possession of FlightSafety's fleet of 64 aircraft and the 10-acre campus with more than 200 recently renovated bedrooms, a swimming pool, soccer field, volleyball court, cafes and book shops, according to the March 2021 Vero News report. The new owner planned to trim the student body from about 500 before COVID to 300 or 350 and to recruit more American students for U.S. airlines.

Continuity was high. In June 2021 the Vero Beach center reported that more than 90 percent of FlightSafety Academy's students agreed to transfer their contracts, and more than 90 percent of the instructors stayed. Enrollment then stood at 110 students. The campus added two Redbird flight simulators, renovated living quarters and classrooms, and began repainting training aircraft in Skyborne colors.

Airline pathway agreements became the core of the Vero Beach business. In February 2022 Vero Beach 32963 reported a partnership with United Airlines' Aviate program that gives accepted trainees mentors and a conditional first-officer job offer; the Vero Beach campus then had 200 students and 52 aircraft on site. In August 2022 the school added Delta's Propel program, whose candidates spend 30 to 40 weeks at the academy training in single-engine Piper Warrior aircraft.

Other partners named in the Vero Beach coverage are SkyWest Airlines, Endeavor Air and Envoy Air, along with agreements to train pilots for two charter airlines. In June 2023 the first 20 Delta Propel students arrived in Vero Beach, and in August 2023 a renovated building at Vero Beach Regional Airport opened as the Propel academy's administration headquarters, shared with Delta staff. Training costs at the Vero Beach campus reached as much as $85,000 for a student starting with no flight experience, the managing director said that month.

Growth in Vero Beach came quickly after 2022. In August 2023 about 60 percent of students on the Vero Beach campus were from the U.S. In September 2023 the departing managing director reported a 220 percent increase in students since March 2022. By October 2023 enrollment had climbed from 140 students in April to 350, more than the 314 cadets the on-site residences could hold, so three dozen students lived off campus, and about 100 more were on a waiting list.

Instructors were the constraint. The Vero Beach academy had 60 instructors in October 2023, wanted at least 80 to keep a 4-to-1 student to instructor ratio, and held a hiring day for instructors, mechanics and dispatchers. Its fleet then consisted of 53 Piper-built training aircraft.

That fleet ties the school to its neighbor. In March 2024 Skyborne signed an $8 million contract to purchase 20 new Pilot 100i trainer airplanes from Piper Aircraft, after an initial 11 were delivered in November 2023, and expected its all-Piper fleet in Vero Beach to grow beyond 80 aircraft, Vero Beach 32963 reported.