Atlanta Investors Buy Florida Flight School to Train Foreign Airline Pilots

FTSI has ordered 30 Cirrus aircraft with options for 20 more as well as numerous full-motion flight simulators valued at more than $15 million. The school is expanding its hangar and flight simulator buildings in Florida.

"If you do a good job screening applicants and then you put them through a well-structured, fast-paced program, they learn sound procedures from the start," Raker said. "When they get to the airlines they have a very high success rate because the training doesn't come as a shock to them."

Raker, a Boeing 757/767 first officer, said he examined the best practices of military and airline flight training and created a hybrid that aims to replicate the best of both.

"It's a leap of faith to start a totally new company with a brand new approach to training pilots," he said. "But we have a system that works. There's tremendous demand for it, and we have a great team that can replicate our program all over the world."

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