Whanganui pilot Hana Beck's goal is to captain a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
It came as a surprise to Whanganui pilot and flight instructor Hana Beck when she learned she had been named the 2025 AeroFusion Young Aviator of the Year.
The award is a category at the annual Aviation Industry Association (AIANZ) awards, held at the Tākina Wellington Convention and Exhibition Centre in September.
Beck, 26, is the ground training manager at the New Zealand International Commercial Pilot Academy in Whanganui.
Her goal is to captain a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
She said the award was a shock because she was not aware she had been nominated.
“Someone told me to stay in the office for another five minutes; I thought there must be some sort of work thing, then my boss and team came towards me with a huge bouquet of flowers and told me the news,” Beck said.
Her goal of becoming an international commercial pilot began when she was on a school trip to Japan.
“I was sitting at the airport passenger gate looking out at a 787 and I thought, ‘what a massive aircraft, how cool would it be to fly it?’,” she said.
Beck began her journey at Southland Girls’ High School, taking subjects required for pilot training.
In her last year at school, she did a gateway course to learn flight radio and performed a trial flight with an instructor.
“Given the high cost of flight training, I needed to be sure it was what I wanted,” Beck said.
“The whole time I was up there I was grinning from ear to ear. That hasn’t changed. Every time I’m out flying, I’m thinking ‘this is just the coolest thing’.”
Beck then completed a two-year course at the Southern Wings Flight School in Invercargill, and gained her commercial pilot’s licence in 2019.
When Covid-19 hit New Zealand, the aviation sector was shut down.
“There were absolutely no jobs out there,” she said.
“My mentor advised me that becoming a flight instructor would be a good stepping stone to getting a flying job, so that’s what I did, self-funding study while working fulltime.”
She achieved her instructor rating in 2022 and was accepted for a job in Whanganui.
Beck attained her Category B Instructor Rating in 2023, and a Multi-Engine Instructor Rating in October 2024.
Within six months of starting at the academy, she was promoted to the managerial role, training, managing and mentoring international and domestic students.
“I love my job. It’s challenging and rewarding helping these students who’ve invested so much money and, in the case of international students, who’ve come so far to achieve their goals.”
However, the cost of pilot training was a big factor in the shortage of domestic pilots, Beck said.
“It is really expensive to train and would be great to see more domestic people be able to train to be pilots.”
She estimated about 90% of her students were international and returned home after graduating.
AIANZ chief executive Simon Wallace said flight training was “prohibitively expensive”, costing about $120,000 for the two-year course.
Students are expected to fund at least $50,000 on top of the $70,000 student loan they are limited to.
“It is awesome to see young people like Hana enter the industry, but many just don’t have the option because of the cost,” Wallace said.
Wallace said the Government’s Aviation Action Plan could help, with the promise of policy change to address systemic issues with the pilot training system.
“One of the most fast and effective ways to do this is lifting the outdated student loan cap so more people like Hana can train to [be] pilots and enter the workforce,” he said.