Luxembourg pilot school suspension eased as lawsuit prompts negotiations

Luxembourg’s aviation safety agency has eased its shutdown of the country’s only training school for commercial airline pilots after a lawsuit sparked negotiations to satisfy what leaders of the Luxembourg Flight Training Academy (LFTA) called inflated and unjustified safety claims.

The Directorate of Civil Aviation (DAC) has allowed the academy’s 28 students to continue their classroom instruction in addition to simulator training, and for eligible students to progress toward exams needed for a top-level commercial pilot’s license. Flight lessons remain suspended, the DAC said in an update last week to its suspension decision announced last month.

No further court hearings are scheduled beyond one earlier this month in which the LFTA lodged its complaints about the regulator with a judge.

“After the court hearing the LFTA and DAC decided to meet in an effort to overcome miscommunication and misunderstandings,” the training school said in a statement approved by its lawyers. “Ground training has resumed and flight training will follow soon after some documentation updates.”

The DAC in an emailed statement said the “lifting of the suspension in its entirety is subject to the LFTA regaining full compliance with EU regulations.” The regulator, which LFTA leaders described as inefficient and haphazard, did not detail what this entails.

The mobility ministry, which oversees the DAC, referred questions about the changed direction on the LFTA and its alleged safety issues to the directorate. 

The Luxembourg Flight Training Academy is a non-profit group that grew out of the Aero-Sport flying club at the country’s airport in Findel  © Photo credit: Christophe Olinger

Flight academy reproach

The DAC offered no reasons why it suspended the LFTA’s training work in December “until further notice”. The DAC’s reasons for this and an earlier suspension of about three months in 2024, were confidential, an agency spokesperson said earlier this month.

The Luxembourg academy went to court after complaints including that the DAC imposed new rules and applied them retroactively to training performed months earlier. The DAC also demanded changes to training procedures, waited months to evaluate the LFTA’s revisions and then demanded further changes, group officials told the Luxembourg Times for an article published earlier this month.

“To pronounce a suspension, you need to base it on safety of flight, which is clearly not the issue at hand here,” LFTA President Frank Mack said previously of the DAC’s 10 December decision. “We’re talking errors in recordings and training files. We’re talking hours and minutes which were not recorded in the correct format or whatever. I mean, we’re down to this level of reproach.”

Other than the instruction that Luxair and Cargolux give their pilots on their specific aircraft types, the LFTA is the only school in Luxembourg training pilots to fly commercial airliners.

Its management and instruction primarily by unpaid volunteers allows them to train an aviation beginner to become qualified to pilot commercial airliners for less than €80,000, said Olivier Majeres, the LFTA’s chief flight instructor and a pilot for a Latvian-based company that leases aircraft and crews to other airlines. Lufthansa Group’s pilot training programme costs about €120,000, while other European flight schools can charge €140,000.

The world’s airlines are expected to create a huge demand for commercial pilots as India and the Middle East markets grow and experienced fliers reach retirement. Jet-builder Boeing estimates global demand for 660,000 new pilots by 2044.