ANA sends its first cadet pilots through a new Airbus-run training program in Portugal

All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Airbus have set up a new pilot training partnership that will put cadets from ANA Group and its affiliated airlines through an ab-initio program at Sevenair Academy in Ponte de Sor, Portugal, taking them from little or no flying experience through to pilot certification. The first cohort of 19 cadets begins training later in 2026. The curriculum is built on Airbus's own flight-training concepts, methodologies and learning tools rather than a generic syllabus, and ANA's Takeshi Tsuchida, the airline's executive vice president of flight operations, said it incorporates the "latest safety insights" and follows Airbus's approach to Competency-Based Training and Assessment. The partnership extends a relationship between the two companies that Airbus says goes back nearly four decades. It comes against a backdrop of significant projected pilot demand: industry forecasts cited in the announcement put global demand at 633,000 new pilots over the next two decades, with the Asia-Pacific region alone needing around 104,000 of them.