Original article (in Serbian) was published on 24/06/2022
“No college – no flight” says the private Megatrend University in a new misleading advertising campaign for its College of Civil Aviation. By the way, Megatrend is known for its controversial ads (1, 2, 3), and almost four years ago, FN Tragac wrote about the claim that without a diploma from this college, “there will be no flying after 2018”.
Regardless, Megatrend ran a similar advertisement in 2019. At that time, potential Faculty of Civil Aviation students were told, along with showing them a photo of a plane in flames, to “take no risks” and “enroll immediately” in the faculty mentioned. In the ad’s description on Instagram, Megatrend claimed that without their diploma “there will be no flying from 2020. This university’s Faculty of Civil Aviation still maintains the information on its website that “according to the recommendation of the EU, starting in 2019, pilots will not be able to fly without completed academic studies”.
As FN Tragac already wrote, “Article 66 of the Air Traffic Act stipulates that the certificate for the provision of air navigation services is issued by the Civil Aviation Directorate of the Republic of Serbia”. Just like then, Megatrend University is not on the list of authorized training centers of the Directorate of Civil Aviation of the Republic of Serbia.
Moreover, at the end of April this year, the rector of Megatrend University, Mica Jovanovic, after receiving accreditation for Megatrend’s Faculty of Civil Aviation, told Danas that students at this faculty “can study through a course of four years and obtain the title of graduate aeronautical engineers, but with such qualification, they cannot fly a plane”. So, in all likelihood, with Megatrend’s diploma, there is no chance of flying a plane, not the other way around.
What about the EU regulation?
Mica Jovanovic also spoke regarding his university’s rumors that the EU recommendation implies that from 2018/2019/2020, pilots will not be able to fly without having a college degree, that is, without having collected 240 ESP points. “Before the emergence of COVID-19, there was a rumor in Europe that pilots would not be able to fly planes if they did not have a higher education”, said Jovanovic. However, we did not find such a story.
What we have found is a European Union regulation published in the EU gazette at the beginning of June 2020, which refers to “detailed rules regarding the acceptance of third country pilot certification”. In this, the last available regulation that deals with the mentioned issue, there is not even a word about the necessity of higher education for pilots.
How much does a college degree mean to pilots?
In response to the Megatrend advertising campaign a few years ago, the editor-in-chief of the specialized aviation portal Tango six, Petar Vojinovic, explained that the need for a university degree for civil pilots varies in relation to the market. “If the market is flooded with unemployed pilots, the airline companies will set as one of the mandatory conditions that the candidate must also have higher education in addition to the most complex license. If the airline urgently needs pilots, it will receive them even without a higher education diploma”, Vojinovic wrote at the time.
Following his words, we tried to determine what do aviation companies in Europe expect from their future pilots these days. By looking at the requirements of several of the most engaged European companies (Ryanair, Air France, Turkish Airlines, Lufthansa Group, Wizz Air), we concluded that it is possible to apply for this position even without having a university degree.