Pilots Collective

By: Brandon Cheung, President, The Pilots Collective When we started The Pilots Collective, it wasn’t about building another aviation organization — it was about building a community . One rooted in honesty, mentorship, and a shared love for flying. A place where instructors, students, and aircraft owners could come together to learn, grow, and make aviation better for everyone. Over the past few months, we’ve taken real steps forward. We’ve hosted hangar hangouts, built partnerships, and...

Every pilot starts somewhere. Maybe it was a discovery flight that lit a spark, or maybe it was a career goal that seemed within reach. But somewhere along the way, the line between passion  and progress  starts to blur. There’s the pilot who looks at every flight as another number in the logbook just a stepping stone toward the next job, the next type rating, the next paycheck. And then there’s the pilot who shows up because they can’t imagine not flying . The one who stays late to brief...

The Advanced Qualification Program (AQP)  is an FAA-approved training system designed to prepare airline pilots using a data-driven and scenario-based approach. Rather than following a rigid checklist of maneuvers, AQP tailors training to real-world performance and airline-specific operations. It emphasizes Crew Resource Management (CRM) , decision-making , and line-oriented flying  to ensure pilots are ready for the realities of commercial aviation. AQP is broken into several structured...