Flight Training Adelaide

Another batch of eight DA40s, at a cost of about $300,000 each, is scheduled to arrive next year and FTA has options on a further 10 of the Austrian single-engine aircraft, which it expects to exercise.

They will join the flying school’s seven twin-engined Diamond DA42s and progressively replace ageing Grob G115As and Socata TB10 Tobagos as initial airline pilot trainers.

With the remaining three Beechcraft Duchesses being hived off to FTA’s fee-paying private flying school at Parafield – and one of those about to be sold – the airline pilot training facility will end up with a more economical fleet of DA40s and 42s, improving performance and reducing maintenance and operating costs.

In addition to its equipment acquisitions, FTA – founded in 1982 – has expanded ac-commodation at Parafield to house a total of 280 residential cadet pilots.

All this at a time when the aviation world is still recovering from the effects of the global financial crisis.

“We did feel the pinch,” FTA chief executive Pine Pienaar admits.

Taiwan’s China Airlines withdrew from the school, while Emirates moved its focus to the northern hemisphere, seeking pilot qualifications to assist its expansion into Europe, and Qantas suspended its mainline training association.

However, the school was full at the time the GFC hit, giving the organisation time to adjust.

Its owner, Hong Kong-based interna-tional company Young Brothers Aviation – which had acquired FTA from BAE Systems in 2005 as the industry was recov-ering from its SARS-induced slump – was undaunted by the latest setback for its only pilot training school.

“One of the major benefits of Young Brothers is that it is passionate about the aviation business,” Mr Pienaar says. It took the opportunity to restructure and upgrade the South Australian business.

In that, it was greatly assisted by its larg-est client, Cathay Pacific, which according to Mr Pienaar had “the fantastic foresight” to boost its training during the downturn. FTA increased its intake from 60 to 100 cadets from Cathay, and at present the air-line accounts for about 180 student pilots annually. Cathay subsidiary Dragonair adds another 40 students and recently Qantas returned to the fold, with up to 12 students from regional carrier QantasLink.

Others come from the Hong Kong Gov-ernment Flying Service and China’s Rescue and Salvage unit.

Clearly Cathay Pacific is the mainstay of the present operation, although the flying school boasts a long line of former airline customers from around the world. Mr Pienaar describes the Hong Kong airline, which assigned its first cadets to Parafield in 1994, as a partner.

“It has made a huge investment in us,” he says. Apart from sending its pilot cadets to Adelaide, Cathay has helped to structure the course – within the strict parameters of the Australian regulator CASA’s require-ments – and assisted in the choice of new equipment. The latest includes a new Mechtronix Ascent XJ simulator, a generic Boeing 737-800 NG device which became operational in March.

Later this year, FTA also will take deliv-ery of a Mechtronix FFTX simulator for Airbus A320 training.

The two devices, says Mr Pienaar, will enhance airline training and also will give FTA an additional marketing tool in the search for new business.

The choice of a new single-engined aircraft came down to a contest between the Diamond DA40 CS and the Piper Archer, both meeting the need for a low-wing monoplane, giving the trainers a similar characteristic to most commercial airliners.

In the Diamond’s favour, after a com-petitive fly-off, was a constant speed unit required under Australian regulations, to-gether with reduced through-life costs. The new DA40 aircraft are powered by economi-cal and reliable Lycoming IO-360 avgas engines and equipped with Garmin G1000 glass cockpits and advanced avionics.

The new aircraft and equipment will ad-vance FTA’s program to develop skill-sets beyond conventional training, to improve the transition to airline operations, Mr Pienaar says.

The improved state-of-the-art capabili-ties will require sufficient skilled instructors – always an issue for flying schools.

FTA’s answer to this problem has been a form of scholarship, which covers 50% of the cost of training instructors under a three-and-a-half year bond system.

Mr Pienaar, a former South African Air Force pilot who was involved as an instruc-tor at FTA under BAE Systems, for whom he later worked in management roles at Tamworth and Jervis Bay before being enticed back to Adelaide by FTA‘s new owners, knows the importance of having top trainers, and of retaining them. Too often training schools lose their instructors to airlines.

The Adelaide flying school pays over-award salaries to its 64 instructors, and covers the cost of further professional de-velopment in return for the guaranteed 42 months of service. Then, although it seeks to retain as many as possible, it cooperates in finding work for instructors who want to migrate to an airline.

That process was useful when the GFC caught up with the organisation and it had more instructors than required, helping to place several pilots with Cathay Pacific.

Now the search goes on for new clients.

That is being impeded at present by two major and related factors – a current reluc-tance among many airlines to spend scarce revenue on premium training, and the high value of the Australian dollar, which makes many overseas flying schools more attrac-tive in economic terms. “Service exporters like us are really bat-tling,” Mr Pienaar says.

One target for FTA’s sales pitch is over-seas airlines with strong Australian traffic, such as Cathay Pacific. Locally-generated air fares can act as a “natural hedge” for those airlines to invest in training pilots here, Mr Pienaar says.

China’s rapidly-expanding airlines were seen as a good market opportunity, and past clients have included Shanghai Airlines, Xiamen Airlines and Xinhua, but Mr Pien-aar acknowledges the problems of getting business from China.

“It is very difficult to get into China at present,” he says – particularly with current exchange rates.

Instead, he sees a need to develop more business within Australia. QantasLink is a good start, with the first traineeships having begun in March this year, and there are hopes of a return of the mainline airline within 18 months, as the Qantas fleet expands and traffic grows.

Meanwhile, FTA has tendered for work to train up to 24 pilots annually for Virgin Australia and is seeking opportunities among other domestic aviation groups.

A new source of pilot trainees is tertiary education, with FTA recently achieving status as an approved provider to offer a Diploma in Aviation under the federal government’s grants system.

In a system similar to HECS for tertiary students, the government’s VET FEE-HELP offers tertiary students, who already hold a PPL, about $86,400 to gain multi-engine command qualifications.

The course requires a university af-filiation, and FTA has become the prime training organisation for the University of Adelaide’s Diploma of Aviation (Instru-ment Flight Operations).

“We have been inundated with applica-tions from all over Australia,” Mr Pienaar says. The first 12 residential students are undergoing the 12-month course already and the breakthrough was a factor in the $1 million expansion of the accommo-dation units at Parafield, lifting student capacity by 18 places to 280.

The organisation hopes the new diploma course with the University of Adelaide will attract overseas students as well as local ones.

FTA, which now owns four Schweizer 300CBi helicopters, is looking to extend the diploma course to rotary wing aircraft and hopes to be able to begin offering courses later this year.

Meanwhile, the flying school is up-grading student technology as well, with the introduction of iPads containing all elements of ground theory and flying requirements and enabling the students to ditch bulky manuals.

Although the computer-based approach is still under development – but with the iPads already in use and FTA about to offer an online ground theory syllabus for external students towards a commercial pi-lot licence – the technology is seen as both driving an improvement in training and an introduction to the electronic flight bag for future airline pilots.

Mr Pienaar sees them as part of evolv-ing training solutions “which best prepare people to become airline pilots”.

“We have made a very significant invest-ment in purchasing the latest training devices and revolutionising our training model to allow us to set the pace in the industry,” he says.

The battle now is to match the advances with new clients.