Mentour Pilot (Petter Hörnfeldt) Net Worth 2026: The 737 Captain Who Built an Aviation Media Group (Businesses, Income)

By TubeScope Editorial Team · 2026-10-09 · 12 min read

The Creator File: Mentour Pilot — channel avatar with live subscriber and view counts
Channel avatar © Petter Hörnfeldt / Mentour Pilot, via the public YouTube channel @MentourPilot · card composition and live stats by TubeScope

Petter Hörnfeldt normally spends months on a single video: a 44-minute reconstruction of an air accident, researched from the official report, animated in a flight simulator, and narrated by a man who spent two decades training airline pilots on the Boeing 737. Then, on the evening of September 30, 2026, a Flydubai co-pilot attacked his captain somewhere over the Saudi–Jordan border, and the most careful channel in aviation YouTube did something it almost never does. It went fast. Four short videos in six days drew about 6.8 million views, one of them ranked third across all of YouTube for views per day on the topic by our measurement, and one of them carried a theory investigators had not confirmed. The week is a good way into the Mentour Pilot story, because it shows both the reputation and the pressure on it.

Fast facts

  • Real name: Petter Hörnfeldt, Swedish, born September 22, 1981, in Billsjö near Örnsköldsvik (Swedish Wikipedia; one aggregator says 1980, his own site says 1981)
  • Training: Sweden's government-sponsored aviation programme at Hässlö, 1998 to 2000, one of about thirty places a year nationally (his About page)
  • Airline career: Boeing 737 first officer from about 2002, captain at 25, type-rating instructor and examiner, more than 10,000 hours on the 737; Swedish Wikipedia names the airline as Ryanair, his own biography says only "a small 737 operator" (Wikipedia, About)
  • Channel: @MentourPilot, joined March 5, 2015. 2.52M subscribers, 644,514,468 views, 814 videos on October 9, 2026, measured by our tracker (watch the live count)
  • The group: Mentour Now! (641K), Captains Speaking podcast (57.6K), Mentour's Black Box (140K in seven months), a Spanish-dubbed channel (104K)
  • Investor: Electrify Video Partners, since July 22, 2024 (Electrify)

A trial lesson at fourteen

He wanted to be an archaeologist. At fourteen his parents bought him a flying lesson in a Cessna 172, and the instructor let him land it. “It was one of those defining moments,” he told Simple Flying in 2022. “One moment when my life changed.” In 1998 he won a place on Sweden's state-funded airline pilot programme, did his military service as an airport firefighter, built hours in San Diego, and joined a 737 operator at around twenty as a first officer at London Stansted (About). He had the hours for command at 23 and deferred it to become a simulator instructor instead; he made captain at 25, line training captain and type-rating instructor at 26, and later an examiner (Simple Flying). By 2016 an independent profile described him as a training captain who had spent his entire fifteen-year career at one European low-cost airline, based in Girona, Spain (Karlene Petitt).

The channel started on March 5, 2015, for an unglamorous reason. “I was getting a lot of questions about aviation and how to become a pilot,” he said a year in, so he answered them on camera. He has also told the story with more domestic candour: his wife said he had far too much time off and needed a hobby, and he wanted to counter the sourness of the pilot forums, where, as he put it, “the people in there really hated what they were doing.”

The format: the report, read by someone who flew the aircraft

The early videos were talking-head Q&A. The thing that made the channel arrived around 2020: long, chaptered reconstructions of accidents and incidents, built from the official investigation reports, re-flown in a simulator, and explained by a working 737 instructor. A fan-maintained episode guide counts 196 episodes since May 2020 at an average of 39 minutes. Our own measurement of his latest ten long-form uploads puts them at 44 minutes each and about 991K views apiece, with 3 published in the last 30 days and 9 in the last 90. The biggest are the ones you would guess: the Concorde crash at 16 million views, Tenerife at 11.6 million, Air France 447 at 9.2 million, and the MH370 film of March 2024, 7.5 million views and, by Swedish Wikipedia's account, six months of research; Sweden's Dagens Nyheter covered it as the Swedish YouTube pilot whose film draws a million-strong audience.

His stated technique is a trick for the nerves: “I've always tried to picture my mom in front of me instead of the camera.” The trait pilots praise is restraint. On the professional forum PPRuNe, a thread rating aviation YouTubers in late 2025 credited him with saying “we do not yet know” when the evidence runs out, which in a genre built on speculation is the whole brand.

Leaving the cockpit

On August 2, 2023 he wrote on LinkedIn: “After 21 wonderful years I have taken the decision to take a career break and focus on my family and the Mentour group, full time!” A year later he told the audience directly, in a video titled I'm taking a break from flying that drew 831,000 views. Whether he has flown the line since is unclear from public sources; some 2026 bios still call him a working 737 captain and others describe a leave of absence (Ely Air Lines), so we do not assert either. What is clear is where his heart was even before the break. In Swedish, to DN: “Jag älskar att instruera, det är det roligaste som finns”: I love instructing, it is the most fun there is.

The businesses

The Mentour Group. Mentour Now!, launched October 18, 2021 as the “more relaxed” news-and-industry channel, has 641,000 subscribers and 149 million views. Captains Speaking, a podcast with the pilot and performance coach Ben Watts, began in 2025 (Apple Podcasts). Mentour's Black Box, created February 27, 2026 by “the team behind Mentour Pilot” to cover non-aviation disasters, reached 140,000 subscribers in seven months. A Spanish-language channel dubbed with AI voices followed in October 2024 (YouTube). A 2023 GE Aerospace profile put the operation at a six-person support team; it is plainly larger now.

Electrify. On July 22, 2024 Electrify Video Partners, the London firm that had earlier bought into Veritasium, announced an investment in Mentour Pilot and Mentour Now, with the stated ambition of building "a global aviation media franchise." Petter's line: “it will give me access to a bigger team.” Terms were not disclosed, and no company registry entry under the Mentour name is public.

Products. A Pro Virtual Boeing 737 type course at €199, ten modules co-taught with Ben Watts and promoted in video descriptions with a discount code. The Mentour Aviation app, free since 2019 with a $5-a-month premium tier for exclusive videos and livestreams, after an earlier VR cockpit app in 2016. A Patreon whose target he set publicly at four thousand patrons in September 2024. Merchandise through Fourthwall. And in November 2019 he co-founded the Airline Pilot Club with Andy O'Shea, formerly head of training at Ryanair, a membership community for aspiring pilots.

Sponsorships. The videos carry integrations from VPN, language, news and learning brands. A third-party tracker counted 36 sponsored uploads in twelve months across fourteen brands; its per-video estimates are inferences, not disclosures.

The Flydubai week, measured

His first video on Flydubai 1073 went up at 18:43 GMT on September 30, hours after the diversion, and now sits at 2.4 million views; three more followed by October 5, including “No ONE Is Reporting THIS!” on October 3 at 1.9 million. In our capture of YouTube's coverage nine days after the event, that October 3 video ranked 3rd of 72 across all of YouTube for views per day. The fastest were a fellow pilot, Captain Steeeve, and, at 3.0 million views, a reconstruction channel with 11.2K subscribers. The BBC was fifth. Pilots out-ran broadcasters on this story, which is itself worth an article.

The pressure showed too. Lebanese outlet Cedar News reported on October 3 that he had suggested the co-pilot may have switched off the aircraft's engines, a claim the outlet noted investigators had not confirmed. For a channel whose reputation rests on "we do not yet know," a theory published within days is a departure, and a fair thing to say about him is that the breaking-news format pulls even the most careful creators toward it.

Controversy timeline

No disputes, corrections, lawsuits, or regulator complaints appear in any source we could verify.

So what does he actually earn?

Estimated income streams for Mentour Pilot: sponsorships roughly 0.89 to 1.78 million dollars a year by industry benchmark, YouTube ads roughly 0.06 to 0.24 million by our method, with Patreon, the type course, the Electrify investment, merchandise and speaking undisclosed
The only solid bars are estimates with the method shown. The income the net-worth sites ignore is the largest.

What we can measure. On October 9, 2026 our tracker read 2.52M subscribers and 644,514,468 views. The last ten long-form videos averaged 991,400 views at 44 minutes, with 3 uploads in the last 30 days. We added the channel to our daily recorder today, so measured growth rates will appear on his live counter as history accumulates.

Ads, by our method. In the Education niche of our Money Calculator, with advertiser CPM of $3 to

2 and YouTube's 55% creator share, 3 uploads a month at that view count is worth about $9,814 a month, in a range of $4,907 to
9,629. Forty-four-minute videos carry many mid-roll slots and an older, affluent, largely Western audience, so the truth likely sits in the upper half. The Flydubai Shorts add views but Shorts pay a fraction of long-form rates.

Sponsorships, by benchmark. An integration in a video averaging 991,400 views is worth roughly

4,785 to $49,570 at the common
5 to $50 per thousand views, and at about three sponsored uploads a month that is $0.9 million to
.8 million a year. A third-party tracker's independent estimate of $681K to
.4M lands in the same band. This, not ads, is the engine.

What nobody publishes. Patreon income, course sales, the Electrify terms, and the group's payroll.

The net-worth sites, and why they are wrong. One puts his net worth at

82,900, computed from ads alone, and quotes a subscriber count that is four times out of date. Another says $664,000 at about
.21 per thousand views, with no method shown. Both ignore sponsorships, which plausibly out-earn ads five to one, and both ignore that he sold a stake in the business. Our honest framing: a seven-figure annual income across streams and a net worth plausibly in the low millions, with the exact figure unknowable from outside.

Recognition

No award turns up in any source. The recognition is of a different kind: GE Aerospace featured him at the 2023 Paris Air Show for a video on its RISE engine programme that drew three million views, Sweden's largest daily profiled his MH370 film, and he is booked as a speaker at pilot-training and product conferences. For a creator, a manufacturer treating your explainer as a reference is worth more than a trophy.

Lessons for creators

  • Depth is a moat nobody can buy. Ten thousand hours on the type and two decades as an instructor cannot be hired in, and it is why an airline's own engineers share his videos.
  • Restraint is a brand. "We do not yet know" is the most-praised thing about him. The Flydubai week shows how hard it is to keep under a breaking-news clock, and how quickly it is noticed when it slips.
  • Build the group before you need it. A second channel, a podcast, a non-aviation spin-off, a Spanish dub, an investor: by the time he stepped away from the cockpit, the channel was already a company.

Compiled from public sources linked above and from TubeScope's own tracker and dataset on October 9, 2026. All income and net-worth figures are estimates built from public data and stated methods; the Electrify terms are undisclosed, and nobody outside his accounting knows the real numbers. Corrections: support@tube-scope.com.

Frequently asked questions

What is Mentour Pilot's net worth?

No verified figure exists. The sites that publish one (

83,000 to $664,000) compute from ads alone, use stale subscriber counts, and ignore sponsorships, the type course, Patreon, and the 2024 sale of a stake to Electrify Video Partners. A seven-figure annual income across streams and a net worth in the low millions is the honest framing; the exact number is unknowable from outside.

How much does Mentour Pilot make per video?

By our public-data method, a 44-minute video averaging 991,400 views earns roughly

,635 to $6,543 from ads in the Education niche, and a sponsorship integration at that view count is worth about
4,785 to $49,570 by industry benchmark. Sponsorships are the larger stream by far.

Is Mentour Pilot still a pilot?

He announced a career break from flying in August 2023 after 21 years, and told viewers in September 2024 he was taking a break. Public sources in 2026 conflict on whether he has flown the line since, so this profile does not assert either way. He remains a type-rating instructor and examiner by training and co-teaches a 737 type course.

Which airline did Mentour Pilot fly for?

Swedish Wikipedia and several interviews name Ryanair, where he flew the Boeing 737 from about 2002 and became a captain, line training captain, instructor, and examiner. His own biography describes only a 'small 737 operator' and does not name it.

What did Mentour Pilot say about the Flydubai incident?

He published four short videos between September 30 and October 5, 2026, totalling about 6.8 million views, plus two long podcast episodes. One video suggested the co-pilot may have switched off the engines, a theory a news outlet noted investigators had not confirmed. His channel is otherwise known for withholding conclusions until the official report.

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