Parafield’s Diamond

Expansion into Queensland will overcome a bottleneck at Adelaide’s Parafield Airport, where the present flight operations with 48 aircraft account for about 70 per cent of traffic – “the airspace is pretty well full,’’ says chief executive Keith Morgan – and enable the Flight Training Group to bid for more business from the world’s airlines.

It also will allow the group to drop its Adelaide student numbers from a peak of about 240 to an optimal 200 on residential courses which average 12 months.

The ambitions face two immediate chal-lenges – the high value of the Australian dollar, and the critical shortage of instructors.

On the first issue, the group can only hope that the currency will slip to more competitive levels and that leading airlines – including present clients such as China Airlines, Emirates, Cathay Pacific and Qantas – will retain their policy of investing in quality training.

On the second, Flight Training Adelaide has taken over the ground floor of the old Parafield control tower and refitted it to train its own instructors, while continuing to recruit qualified people from overseas including, in the latest batch, a Russian. The present instructor pool stands at about 60.

It hopes to produce 12 home-grown instructors annually to help to staff both the Adelaide and Queensland operations, with Maryborough expected to begin its first pilot training course late next year.

As an enticement to instructor recruits, the college has started a scholarship scheme, slicing 50 per cent from the $14,000 cost of the course in return for a four year commitment to the group’s train-ing operations. That’s about as long as the Flight Training Group can expect to hold on to young instructors, before they move to an airline.

“Airlines love our instructors,’’ Morgan says, with a mixture of resignation and pride.

The ambitions face two immediate challenges – the high value of the Australian dollar and the critical shortage of instructors. As it moves to ensure sufficient instruc-tors for Maryborough, without robbing the Adelaide team, the group is holding prelimi-nary talks with airlines in the Middle East and Asia, relatively immature aviation markets with a rapidly growing demand for pilots.

“India and China alone are expected to need another 4000 pilots a year over the next five years,” Morgan says. “But only now is there a realisation that there are insufficient trainers. It’s a global issue, which we have to fix first. ” Young Brothers Aviation acquired the Adelaide operation from BAE Systems about two years ago, as it recovered from the SARS-induced slump which saw student numbers tumbled from about 130 to less than 80 a year.

The facility was founded as the Australian Aviation College by industry identity Barney Fernandez in 1982 and taken over by Hawker de Havilland in 1989, before being acquired by British Aerospace in 1998.

However, when the European group emerged as BAE Systems, it decided the civil-ian school did not suit its defence industry agenda (although it retains Tamworth for military pilot training and faces new contract negotiations to retain that business next year). It put the Adelaide college on the market in 2005 and Young Brothers Aviation, which previously had expressed an interest in the operation, conducted due diligence and de-cided there was a good business opportunity in the pilot training market.

“The current owner is committed to flight training and prepared to invest in the busi-ness,’’ Morgan says.

That commitment has included an expan-sion of the college premises at Parafield to add another 30 student rooms, taking the total to 230 rooms, and the orders for seven Diamond DA42 Twin Star aircraft and two simulators from the Austrian manufacturer, to replace some of the ageing Beechcraft BE76 Duchess aircraft which date back to the founding of the college.

The Duchess fleet is becoming more expensive to maintain and parts harder to secure with the production line long closed. Its operating costs are about double that of the Diamond’s, which is powered by enhanced Mercedes diesel engines consum-ing only 36 litres of jet fuel an hour com-pared with 80 litres for the Beechcraft. The Australian-based aircraft will be fully tested, flying up to 1000 hours annually after an initial target of 800 hours for the first year in service.

In addition to better operating economy, Morgan says the new generation Austrian aircraft offer improved reliability, and modern technology including a glass cockpit Garmin G1000 avionics suite with digital instrument displays similar to those in commercial pas-senger aircraft, to assist in the transition to airline flying.

The DA42 Twin Star will also be used at Maryborough, but operations will begin with single-engine aircraft, and the group is trialling both the single-engine version of the Diamond, the DA40, and the popular Cirrus.

Meanwhile, it has just bought two Cirrus SR20s to the associated Adelaide Flight Training Centre operation, to be used exclusively by private students – of which the college gets about 50 to 60 a year – and for flying instructor training.

And in August, former helicopter pilot Keith Morgan added chopper training to the activities, following delivery of a $300,000 Schweizer 300CBi to Adelaide.

Demand from the booming mineral resources industry as well as emergency and paramedical services and police forces has inspired the move, under which training will

That commitment has included an expansion of the college premises at Parafield and the orders for seven Diamond DA42 Twin Star aircraft and two simulators.

be streamlined by starting with fixed-wing flying and then introducing rotary wing elements.

The helicopter school could be duplicated in Maryborough, pro-vided demand is sufficient. Of the new Schweizer, Morgan says: “We’d like to think it’s the first of a few. ” And so to Queensland.

With an expansion of operations at Parafield facing airspace restrictions, and conditions even more restrictive at major airports around the country, the Flight Training Group has been study-ing regional opportunities and believe Maryborough is an ideal solution.

The airport has the ground space for a major residential aviation school, and plenty of airspace, with little traffic to impinge on training flights, as well as normally good weather conditions for visual flying.

Meanwhile, just 10 nautical miles away, Hervey Bay airport, served by Virgin Blue and Jetstar, soon will have an ILS system to assist with instrument training.

“We think it’s a great fit, the best technical solution for us,’’ Morgan says. “And we see a significant economic benefit to Maryborough. ” That view is supported by Queensland’s Minister for State Development, John Mickel, who says the greenfield project should encourage business development in the region, attracting “young, highly skilled people and their families’’ to the area, generat-ing direct wages of about $7 million annually and boosting the local housing and service industry sectors as well as education, social and recreation services.

And the facility will add to existing aviation infrastructure in the Wide Bay-Burnett area, which includes four regional airports, airside industrial estates, recreational aircraft manufacturer Jabiru and Seeker surveillance craft company Seabird Aviation, he says. It should help to establish the area as “a significant global aviation player” as the new Queensland outfit seeks a share of an Asia-Pacific market for at least 5000 airline pilots a year to cater for annual international travel growth of five per cent and Chinese air travel growth of nine per cent.

As it launches its operation, Flight Training Queensland is expected to employ about 32 staff initially, rising to 110 as the new training courses ramp up over three years from an expected intake frequency of one every 13 weeks to one every six weeks, eventually employing about 40 aircraft and generating annual revenues of more than $20 million for Flight Training Queensland, similar to the Adelaide college’s income.

The architectural plans have been completed for an integrated, two-storey complex which will accommodate 200 students and house their mess and rec-reational facilities, as well as providing lecture rooms, flight operations and ad-ministration, and incorporating aircraft hangar and maintenance facilities.

Once final approvals are obtained, construction is expected to take about 12 months, to enable training to begin by late next year.

Key management personnel, including a general manager, have been selected and Keith Morgan is confident the com-bination of recruitment and in-house training will ensure sufficient instruc-tors are available. A website devised to advertise future staff requirements has been getting plenty of attention from potential candidates and the lure of life on the Queensland coast, with ready access to the resorts and good air links to Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne will add to the appeal, he thinks.

And from where will the new aviation college gain its students? Business development manager Simon Bambridge says the Adelaide fa-cility has drawn most of its customers from Asia, including Air China, and the primary markets will be the traditional ones of North and South-East Asia.

“There’s plenty more business up there to try to capture,” he says.

With a bridgehead into the Middle East through its arrangement with Emirates, Bambridge sees further work coming from that region. “We’re having discussions with a couple of airlines in the Middle East at present,’’ he says.

And India is potentially a fruitful new market, with the rapid expansion of its civil aviation sector.

“We have not touched India yet, but it’s a very promising market for us,’’ he adds.

The group’s present biggest customer is China Airlines, with more than 300 graduates so far and its 26th course for the airline running now. It expects to graduate 60 pilots for the Taiwan airline this year.

Other major customers include Emirates and Cathay Pacific, for which it trains about 25 pilots each annually, while it is also training 20 cadets for Air Vietnam under a contract signed last year, and recently began a contract for JAL Express, involving 40 cadets annually.

That was a major coup, Morgan admits, and the Japanese airline has backed its appointment of Flight Training Adelaide by inviting the col-lege to assist in the selection of cadets and sending four of its own senior training officers and their families to live in Adelaide to help the students settle into the city and provide assist-ance with their course work.

Meanwhile the college is undertak-ing Level Two training (pilots with commercial licences who are taken to command instrument rating for multi-engined aircraft and ATPL theory level) for Qantas, and expects to take 30 pilots from the Australian flag carrier for this course next year.

“So we think we have a pretty good understanding of the market now, and don’t anticipate any problems in gaining students for Maryborough,’’ Morgan says. “We get enquiries from the Middle East and Asia almost daily. ’’ Helping to buoy the plans is the rapid expansion of such airlines as Emirates, which is seeking to hire 280 pilots this year and another 500 next year.

However, despite present nego-tiations, no airline has signed up to Maryborough yet.

Simon Bambridge says “a lot of people are aware of our plans and informal talks have been held with several potential customer airlines. But we have not formally approached anyone, and won’t until we have final approvals and a timetable. ” He hopes to start signing up airlines towards the end of this year.

Apart from its own reputation, the organisation has some powerful connections, not just in the global aviation activities of its Hong Kong parent, which operates in North America and Europe as well as Asia, but also in Canberra.

Recently the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, brought 21 Ambassadors and High Commissioners on a mission to his home town, includ-ing a visit to Flight Training Adelaide for a briefing on its capabilities. o The Flight Training Group takes pilot cadets selected by its customer airlines and puts them through a program aimed at graduating with an Australian commercial pilot licence with multi-engine command instrument rating and theory credits for an Airline Transport Pilot Licence (ATPL). It has regulatory approvals from civil aviation authorities in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Japan and the United Arab Emirates as well as Australia.