Hi Folks,


I will be starting my grade 12 year and looking forward to an airline pilot career. I recently stumbled upon the honours bachelor of aviation technology program at Seneca college by looking at forums on AV Canada and I want to know the following plz:


1. I expect my grade 12 average to be in the low 90's so what are the chances that I will be admitted into the program for next fall?

2. What are the chances of failing this program?

3. Whats the chance of being selected into the Jazz Aviation Pathway Program and/or Sunwing cadet program

4. How many years will it take for aviation to recover and hire loads of pilots?

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I consider myself as hardworking and I am willing to fly in the north after graduating and how many years until i could be flying for the major airlines after the Covid-19 crisis as i don't come from a rich family.

1. should be fine
2. high
3. low
4. no one knows

no one knows what the effect of covid will be on the industry

Hello YJL:

Welcome to the AvCanada forum community.

I concur with wingg's answers, above. The great difficulty in providing an answer to question 4 (how many years before things get back to normal) arises from the fact that pilot hiring has historically been a cyclical phenomenon - and that history goes back at least to the 1960s, well before COVID-19.

To try and come up with a credible answer to question 4, you would have to look at several datasets and make several predictions. First is a prediction about when commercial aviation will recover from the COVID-19 shutdown. My personal guess is that things will be back to normal so far as COVID-19 is concerned in about 2 years, either because a vaccination has been developed, an effective treatment has been developed, or an adequate amount of herd immunity amongst the passenger population has been reached. Which of the three will happen first I have no idea.

The next big challenge is to look at the demand for pilots and the retirement rate of pilots, and then try to forecast that. That's where the cyclical history of pilot hiring figures in.

If you are fascinated with aviation and passionate about flying aircraft, by all means go and take the Seneca program. If nothing else, you'll enjoy it. The worst case outcome would be that you finish the program at about age 21 and the pilot market is wretched. In that case, assuming you have maintained the same scholastic average that you currently have in high school, you can pursue another post-secondary program either in a related or non-related field, likely with the aid of scholarships. The best case scenario is that there is a high demand for pilots when you graduate, in which case you get employed and your career progresses from there. Keep in mind that flying large planes for an airline is not necessarily the holy grail for all pilots - there are lots and lots of very interesting career paths available such as corporate, engineering flight test, public service, humanitarian service, and other specialty areas.

Michael