Flight school

Flight school was the name of the Imperial Navy's system for training TIE pilots. It was not a part of the Imperial Academy, however. Instead, the Navy's best junior officers would transfer to flight school after they left the Academy system.

Only the top five percent of Navy cadets could enter flight school, although at the central Imperial Naval Academy, this eligibility was extended to the top third. These restrictions reflected the demanding nature of pilot training, and flight school itself had a 90% failure rate, but with such strict measures in place, the Academy system alone could not provide enough pilots for the Empire.

As a result, additional flight school candidates included serving officers with proven potential, and skilled flyers from outside the Navy. The former group included men like T. Alvak, who had previously flown with a Navy shuttle unit for two years, while the most famous example of the non-military intake was perhaps Maarek Stele, who was put through flight school after just a two-month basic-training course.

Flight school emphasised a hands-on approach, putting the young officers behind the controls of TIE fighters in a training squadron from about half way through their course. Although this was not a front-line unit, it was normally part of a front-line wing, so that cadets would fly under combat conditions even during their training.

Reflecting this, many flight schools were located aboard Star Destroyers. The Tir training school was on the Inflexible, while the training squadron aboard the Victorious, the flagship of the Qeimet fleet, also provided new pilots for the Scimitar Assault Wing. The Vengeance also appears to have operated a flight school under Captain Trox

Behind the scenes

 * A number of prominent characters the Academy system to front-line postings as TIE pilots, including Soontir Fel's tour of duty with 6/37th aboard the Abrogator, and the service of Biggs Darklighter and Hobbie Klivian with Twilight Squadron aboard the Rand Ecliptic. It is possible that their initial postings were in fact to flight school units, but no explicit canon evidence is known to support this, and these characters seem to have relatively extensive TIE training as Academy cadets.
 * In out-of-universe terms, it is likely that the authors behind these stories were not aware of the nature of flight school as it had been laid down in earlier canon publications, or chose to discard it for storytelling reasons.

Appearances

 * The Making of Baron Fel
 * Darklighter
 * Walking the Path that's Given