BAA Training Signs with France's Société Générale for Pilot Training Financing

The agreement comes at a moment when demand for new pilots in France – and Europe – continues to grow.

Boeing projects European carriers alone will need roughly 153,000 new pilots by 2045, or about 8,000 per year. Both legacy and low-cost carriers continue to run year-round cadet and direct-entry assessment days; however, with limited training capacity, this may not be enough.

France's own training landscape has consolidated around a small number of providers. Outside of a single state-funded program – a fiercely competitive route with only around 30 places a year – many aspiring pilots pursue privately funded integrated ATPL training, which requires investments from €110,000 and up.

For most candidates, without access to that kind of capital upfront, financing is the difference between training and not training at all. The high training costs also affect the quality of the candidate pool, limiting career opportunities for especially talented individuals who lack sufficient financial support.

That's the gap BAA Training France and Société Générale are aiming to close. Under the agreement, students can apply for partial or full loans to cover training at BAA Training France, including ATPL Integrated, MPL (Multi-crew Pilot License), cadet programs, Type Rating, APS MCC certification, and cabin crew training.

“It's an important step for us as an ATO in France,” said Lina Svedarauskaite, Service Operations Manager at BAA Training France. “We're joining an already-compact list of aviation training institutions in the country that offer this kind of option through an official banking partner. Being able to provide a real financial solution through Société Générale is something we're very happy about.”

Becoming an eligible partner isn’t automatic. Société Générale puts prospective ATOs through a rigorous audit and evaluation process before extending this kind of support – one reason why so few training providers in France currently offer bank-backed financing at all.

The financing option arrives alongside a broader industry conversation about accessibility. As the pilot shortage keeps pressure on airlines to recruit faster, training capacity and affordability are increasingly seen as bottlenecks in their own right – not just in France, but across Europe. Partnerships like this one point to financing becoming a more standard part of how ATOs compete for students and how airlines ultimately fill their cockpits.

For BAA Training France, the partnership marks not just a new benefit for prospective students, but a bet that the training organizations able to solve the affordability question will be the ones that shape the next generation of French aviation talent.