So you want to be an airline pilot?

A new study published in the International Journal of Applied Aviation Studies shows that flight hours and where pilots train are heavy predictors on how successful they will be in the airline environment. The study, which was written by a group of professors at U.S. aviation colleges and universities, found that 4.2 percent of those with an aviation degree didn’t complete airline training through initial operating experience, while 7.1 percent of pilots without an aviation-specific degree failed.

Flight hours also gave insight into how likely a candidate was to complete training, although in a surprising way. Only 3.4 percent of pilots with between 501 and 1,000 weren’t able to complete training, compared to 7.9 percent of those with more than 1,500 hours. Contrary to conventional wisdom, only 4.4 percent of pilots with fewer than 500 hours failed their training.

The study came to other interesting conclusions, including that pilots with previous military, corporate, or airline pilot experience were no more likely to successfully complete training than those without the experience. In all, 94 percent of those surveyed completed the training, although 40 percent of the total group had to undertake additional training somewhere in the process.

Data for the study came from 2,156 pilots hired between 2005 and 2009, and six regional airlines.