Addressing the gap

Associate director Neil Hansford told Australian Aviation : “This has been a long time coming, but now we are in a position to offer local and international students a world-class, purpose-built facility, and that is supported by Federal student loan assistance for Australian students. It’s a major breakthrough for Australian flying training capabilities. ” The developments will help address the imbalance in the funding arrangements for flying students that has dogged the industry and provide much-needed capacity to train commercial pilots for which there is a shortage locally and internationally.

Expanding facilities

AWA has been granted development approval for a 600-student residential airline pilot and aviation training academy at Glen Innes in north-western NSW.

“It has been designed for up to 400 flying trainees and 200 other students completing aviation-related courses, which will be built in four stages over up to five years” said AWA managing director Phil Sweeney.

The integrated facilities are planned in four stages, initially catering for 200 student pilots, but with expansion capacity to 600 aviation students by the fourth stage. The academy will also train aviation engineers and other licenced aviation personnel.

The precinct will be a closed campus with all essential student facilities such as accommodation, dining, sports and leisure contained on-site. The academy will also house all essential flight training infrastructure, including state-of-the-art flight simulators, teaching classrooms, flight briefing rooms, flight planning, administration and aircraft maintenance facilities, and in-house refuelling facilities.

Tertiary-level qualifications to enhance the pilot skills acquired through a vocational training program will be provided in collaboration with a university, likely to be the University of New England, with which talks are underway.

“This will expand the career opportunities available to graduating students and meet the demand of an increasing number of carriers who require their pilots to be degree-qualified,” said Sweeney.

AWA sees strong demand for pilots from countries where English is not the first language, primarily from China where years of successive rapid growth are challenging pilot availability.

AWA Director Kingsley Mundey explained: “When you’re developing airlines and expanding at a rapid rate (such as they are in China), the cost of pilot training is a very small input but a very significant issue in terms of the outcome. If there are not enough pilots the airlines can’t fly or expand, can’t carry the passengers, can’t generate revenue and aircraft manufacturers can’t sell planes. Pilot training really is a fundamental issue. ” All the executives of AWA have had senior airline experience and have valuable insight into the issues affecting airlines.

“There is a real issue that the airlines (in China) are taking delivery of new aircraft, but there are not enough pilots to fly them which must be of great concern to Boeing and Airbus in particular” Hansford summarised.

Extensive English proficiency training will be offered by AWA to have all graduating students leave the academy with English qualifications that meet ICAO standards.

“Furthermore, we do multi-crew from day one,” said Hansford, adding: “If they’re an airline cadet they are

This will expand the career opportunities for graduating students. SWEENEY

taught within the standard operating procedures of the airline from the start. They’re being trained as airline pilots from day one. ” He said this was important to airlines since it instils the airline’s culture in trainee pilots at ab initio level all the way through to entering airline service.

Glen Innes was selected after a seven-year search for a location that could meet the demanding criteria that a state of the art academy requires according to Mundey.

“Glen Innes’ excellent weather offers more than 350 days of uninterrupted flying a year off a sealed, lit runway of 1,498m and a 1,678m cross runway” said Mundey. He went on to say: “The airport is located close to controlled airspace to allow instrument training yet its own training area is within unrestricted airspace up to 10,000ft. ” According to Sweeney one of the primary factors in selecting Glen Innes was the fact that the town is clean and safe with a very low crime rate and there was demonstrated strong public support for the project by residents, council and local members of parliament. “Overseas students will be enthusiastically welcomed by local residents” said Sweeney.

The main educational qualifications will consist of a vocational Cert IV and Diploma in Aviation accompanied by Civil Aviation Safety Authority of Australia-issued Commercial Pilots Licence (CPL) and Airline Transport Pilots Licence (ATPL). These will be issued by AWA which is a Registered Training Organisation (RTO) with full CRICOS approval. Other aviation courses to be offered include aircraft maintenance, aircraft dispatch, crew resource management and airline operations.

VET fee support

AWA has become only the third flight training organisation to be approved to provide VET fee assistance for commercial pilot training that isn’t part of a degree course.

In so doing, AWA becomes part of the student loan scheme that offers up to $93,000 towards commercial pilot training.

“They can do their full commercial licence with us totally on a student loan where they only have to find their accommodation costs, which we estimate will in the order of $13,000 for the duration of the whole course,” Hansford said.

“It certainly not a level playing field. You’ve got the universities with their HECS. We have been fighting that for the last seven years,” Sweeney noted, adding: “When I first applied for VET in 2008 I was told I would never achieve it because we’re a private organisation. But in fact that turned out not to be the case. ” The ability to offer VET fee assistance has been made possible in part by personal guarantees provided by the company’s directors.

“They have asked for very significant personal guarantees,” Munday said. “One of our big advantages is that we have a very strong balance sheet, and we have high financial credibility. So the government has been concerned about a lot of training organisations starting up and taking advantage of training schemes and going broke. We’ve been around since 1985, so with longevity, a strong balance sheet and credibility we’ve been able to secure VET. ” The availability of student loans, said Hansford, has not only influenced the business model for the company’s new Glen Innes operation, but significantly will open up opportunities to Australian students who would not otherwise have had the opportunity to train.

“This has opened the market to a whole lot of Australians who could not have ever otherwise afforded to get through.

“This means now they can concentrate their training into an intensive 50 weeks rather than doing it over four or five years at weekends. That’s not an efficient way to learn because you’re learning and re-learning all the time. ” Hansford cited the recent experience of Virgin Australia which advertised eight cadet pilot positions for which it received 4,000 applications as a demonstration of the pent-up demand for local, loan-assisted flight training.

Value generator

On the role of government, AWA is clear. “We have never asked the government for a hand-out – but we have asked for a hand up,” Mundey said.

“What the government needs to do is create the propensity for young Australians to want to fly. ” For Glen Innes, it sees the AWA development as an international export opportunity and a generator of welcome income for the town and the region.

“130 jobs are being created by the AWA development in stage one,” Hansford explained. “If you use a multiplier of 2. 4 to calculate the consequential jobs and we’re putting $8 million into the economy each year, that has a multiplier of 3. 5 – so that’s over $20 million a year going into a town of 9,000 people. ” Construction of the AWA facilities in Glen Innes begins in July. It will transfer the 14-strong fleet of Diamond DA-40 and DA-42 aircraft from the Gold Coast to Glen Innes in late 2013 when the first phase of the project is scheduled to be completed.

From there AWA hopes to add to the list of airlines its graduates now fly for. To date students graduated from AWA are now flying for AirAsia, EVA Air, QantasLink, Jetstar, Virgin Australia, Oman Air, China Airlines, Air Vanuatu, Royal Flying Doctor Service, Aeropelican and Etihad.