National Test Pilot School

The National Test Pilot School (NTPS) is the only civilian test pilot school in the United States, located in Mojave, California. It is organized as a not-for-profit educational institute under California state law and is governed by a Board of Trustees. NTPS is one of the seven test pilots schools worldwide recognized by the international Society of Experimental Test Pilots (SETP), giving pilot graduates of NTPS instant initial acceptance into their Society. The other six schools that receive this recognition are military or military-sponsored schools.

The National Test Pilot School was initially conceived to service the needs of aerospace manufacturers for qualified flight test pilots and flight test engineers. Prior to the formation of NTPS, aerospace manufacturers had only two options: to either hire ex-military personnel who had formal flight test training, or to use on-the-job training programs to develop in-house test pilots and engineers.

The NTPS grew out of a successful series of introductory flight test courses taught for military test organizations in the United States and Canada. Using an instrumented De Havilland Dove (DH-104), introductory, two-week performance and flying qualities flight test courses were taught for Edwards AFB, California; Patuxent River NAS, Maryland; Eglin AFB, Florida; the Naval Postgraduate School, California; Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio; and the Aerospace Engineering Test Establishment, CFB Cold Lake, Canada. The success of these courses led to opportunities to teach broader content flight test courses abroad. The school was formally established as a not-for-profit educational institute in the state of California in April 1981. The initial years of the school consisted of teaching introductory courses within the United States, mainly for military organizations, and teaching longer courses abroad (in Israel, Taiwan, Brazil and South Africa) using customer aircraft. By 1986, the decision was made to construct a large hangar and classroom complex in Mojave, California. Over the ensuing years more flight test training was done in Mojave with a growing fleet of aircraft, rather than at customer locations. Today the school trains 20–25 students in year-long courses with approximately 200 students attending one of several short courses each year.

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