About PTS
Mission
Pilot Training System (PTS) was founded in 2011 with one simple mission: make flight training more affordable.
History
The company started by providing FREE online ground school for Private Pilot students and, later, Commercial Drone Pilot students, and we have grown to over 72,000 members to become the world's largest FREE online ground school.
In 2023, the company started offering a Professional Aeronautics Certification program in partnership with Wisconsin's largest flight school, Wisconsin Aviation, and Madison College. Since that time, the company has expanded to 7 other colleges and 11 additional flight school partners in 6 other states. You can see a full list of Professional Aeronautics Certification programs here.
Vision
PTS's mission of reducing cost barriers to flight education is more important than ever as the world faces an international pilot short crisis, driven by Baby Boomer retirements and the impending influx of new air-transportation services such as Advanced Air Mobility.
Tens of thousands of jobs are opening in the United States over the next decade because aviation is one of the only careers on the planet that forces a mandatory retirement age, which is 65 at US airlines.
The pilot-shortage crisis will only get worse with air-taxi vehicles begin to populate busier airspace as companies try to monetize last-mile delivery and "uber air" business models aimed at alleviating ground traffic.
With so many economic incentives tempting operators to cut corners on training, PTS is committed to retaining quality in flight training to preserve the safety record that has long elevated aviation as the safest mode of transportation.
Core Values
1) Safety First - No financial incentive will motivate PTS to cut corners on safety culture or flight-training quality.
2) Integrity - Mistakes happen, and PTS invites feedback so that we can work with our partners and affiliates to correct mistakes.
3) Service - PTS's commitment to its customers is relentless quality improvement that maximizes efficiencies and allows PTS to lower costs.
Founder & CEO
PTS was founded by Dr. Chris Johnson while finishing his PhD at the University of Wisconsin - Madison (UW). At the time, he was building flight courses in the UW College of Engineering to support his weather-related research funded by the FAA to make flying safer. Johnson is an Air Force Veteran, commercial pilot, and certified flight instructor (CFI) with CFII and MEI ratings, and he learned to fly at the University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign (U of I) where he began studying Human Factors and pilots' weather-related decision skills. Dr. Johnson spent years experimenting with pilots flying advanced aviation training devices (AATDs)..flight simulators equipped with custom weather software that he invented to help the FAA understand weather accidents like the accidents that killed Kobe Bryant and John F. Kennedy Jr. His research findings lead to follow-on funding from the US Army, developing simulations to train artificial intelligence algorithms that power drones and other robotic vehicles. In 2021, he left UW for a professorship at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, which is the world’s largest aviation university. When his Army research ended in 2023, Johnson began studying the pilot-shortage crisis for a major US airline, and six months into that research, he was convinced that the workforce problem is so bad that he quit his professorship to work full-time on PTS and started building PTS's Professional Aeronautics Certifications programs.